Inflammatory Reporting 101

[coalescent]

Controversial though it may sound, men write better books than women, at least according to the staff of Britain's biggest book chain, Waterstone's.

Courtesy of the Telegraph Main article (Waterstone's "denied suggestions yesterday that its book tills were manned by male chauvinists"), comment ("Great to see William Gibson, but where’s Neal Stephenson?"), and of course the list, which is an HTML table I'm not going to attempt to reformat so I can post it here.

Comments

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

Strictly speaking, it would be more accurate to say "Controversial though is may sound, men write more good books than women do, at least according to the staff of Britain's biggest book chain, Waterstone's", since they didn't ask about the relative quality of the books compared to each other. But, you know, that's not as inflammatory, wot?

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

And indeed, this: "Though women authors may not have fared well in the staff vote, the only author to appear in it with three titles is a woman, the Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood" might imply that women _do_ write better books.

(Might.)

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

You know, it strikes me that they haven't actually reported the numbers of books by men and women, they just state that there are more by men. Have I missed something? And if not, can anyone be bothered counting the list and seeing what the split actually is?

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

You think I'm here for content? This is SPAAAAAAAARTAAAAAAAAAAAAA! I'm here for the SNARRRRRRRKAAAAAAAAAAA!

(Good questions, though.)

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I make it 27 books by women (although there are a couple of names I don't know for sure but I think I've looked them up). Three of those are Atwood, so 25 women on the list, about 67 men (Banks, Bryson, Hornby and others have two books).

Disturbing how many of these I have or would consider buying at a quid.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

"May?"

Oh, you funny, funny Brits.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

Is The Wasp Factory sf these days?

Good to see topping polls ensures Tolkien gets his name spelt right.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

Or The Crow Road for that matter.

[andrewducker]

It's not an SF list...

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

Nope, it's not, but they credit The Wasp Factory and The Crow Road to Iain M Banks when eny fule kno he's the sf writer and these were published as by Iain Banks.

Still, the irregular way in which they use A, An and The in titles (or not) and the listing of Iain M Banks when it should be Banks, Iain just adds to the sloppiness of the whole piece.

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

Its always been SF, that's why it got written about in Vector. I forget who by. (Twice in fact.)

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

That's either terrible reporting or a complete lack of understanding of statistics, unless there's numbers I don't know about which show that men and women get equal amounts of books published, and equal amounts of books stocked in Waterstones.

[andrewducker]

It's not done by sales. It's the favourite books for the people that work in Waterstones...

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, it is still terrible reporting.

[andrewducker]

Oh God, yes. But that's to be expected from The Telegraph.

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

I know, but if most of the books written/ stocked are by males, then (theoretically) most of the books read will be by males, and therefore more of the books recommended will be by males.

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

Actually, it turns out that a great many more women than men read (or, at least, buy books).

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

As previously established, my wife is singlehandedly keeping some publishers afloat.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Yes. And yet (according to Jo Fletcher, I think it was, at Eastercon), a higher proportion of published books is by men than women.

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

That's true in all genres, I think.

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

Oh, except for romance.

Grammar thort

[twic.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

"a higher proportion [...] is"? Is that right? Not "are"?

I can see where you're coming from, but it sort of sounds wrong and i honestly don't know. Hmm.

-- tom

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

It would be interesting to know how the publicity budgets for the authors on the list broke down, and, indeed, which of them had been the subject of in-house promotions by Waterstones, both of which could well ahve influenced staff perceptions. There is, I notice, a predominance of newer titles in the list (as is usual in all such polls, as they are closer in memory): it may well be that there is a link between perceived excellence and the amouint of promotion a book received, and this in turn might be gendered. It certainly used to be the case that, despite Mills & Boon type books, more men were professional writers than women. It would be logical, therefore, that they might receive more of the publicity spend. Women's writing still suffers from tokenism, and established female writers seem to get less publicity (as far as I can tell) than estabnlished male ones -- the latest Louis de Bernieres was more trumpeted than the latest Atwood, for instance.

[white_hart]

Did you fill in the related 'literary census'? That was a marvel of leading questions - for instance, they asked 'Should Shakespeare be taught in schools?' and the two options were 'Yes, he's the most important writer our country has produced' or 'No, kids should be taught something more interesting and relevant'. So by saying yes I was being pushed into claiming an opinion about the relative worth of Shakespeare and other British writers that I don't actually hold.

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