and to be even more blunt, I'm often inclined not to buy anthologies that don't have at least one female author's name on the cover, even if the contents are 50/50 or slanted toward more female contributors. I don't care what a market's excuse is, the end result pisses me off regardless.
Right. If you can't even remember to include a token women on the cover? Then you've managed to piss me off before I've even taken the book off the shelf to look at the back cover.
It's up to you to decide if there are enough of me out there that humoring me instead actively angering me will offset the loss of all those [insert name of male author] fans, of course.
ps. saying "whoops, we screwed up"? Would go over a lot better than angry defensiveness.
Re: The real answer
and to be even more blunt, I'm often inclined not to buy anthologies that don't have at least one female author's name on the cover, even if the contents are 50/50 or slanted toward more female contributors. I don't care what a market's excuse is, the end result pisses me off regardless.
Right. If you can't even remember to include a token women on the cover? Then you've managed to piss me off before I've even taken the book off the shelf to look at the back cover.
It's up to you to decide if there are enough of me out there that humoring me instead actively angering me will offset the loss of all those [insert name of male author] fans, of course.
ps. saying "whoops, we screwed up"? Would go over a lot better than angry defensiveness.