Proof Copy of the Day

[coalescent]

Item one: the difference in spelling between the front cover and spine.

Item two: "Female SF writers are a rarity; good ones even scarcer!"

If anyone wants to play guess-the-publisher before clicking through to the photos, feel free. That said, I'm still looking forward to reading it.

Comments

[truecatachresis.livejournal.com]

Some might argue that there's a difference between there not being many good female sf writers published in Britain and there not being many good female sf writers ...

Fair point, but we can't easily talk about numbers we don't have. I would be interested to see the gender balance of all SF books submitted to publishers in all countries (because we really can't fairly talk about anyone who writes something for themself and never tells anyone), but I suspect that it would still show an imbalance.

How many female SF authors are published in the US cf men?

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

How many female SF authors are published in the US cf men?

I don't know. I'm willing to believe it's pretty imbalanced, but look at it this way: Locus records the publication of about 1500 English-language original sf and fantasy novels each year, at the moment. Assume that about two-thirds of those are fantasy, and that women only write, say, 30% of published sf novels. That still leaves 130-odd original science fiction novels by women published each year. Even if it's proportionally a minority, it's still more books than most people can read in a year -- it's about 30% more than I read last year -- and I think it rules out the use of words like "rare" and "scarce".

[redbird]

The other thing is, it's hard to get data on what's been submitted: even if you know that publisher A received X books, and accepted Y percent, and similar numbers for B, that doesn't tell you how many of those rejected novels went to both publishers. Nor does it tell you how many writers those books represent: someone could have several novels out there looking for publishers.

I know of a book by a woman that has been rejected by ten different British publishers. How, if at all, does that affect the calculations?

Would knowing whether the book has been published in the United States affect your answer?