At the risk of generalizing wildly from a single datapoint--my own work--the market for synthesis rather than polemics, journalism-you-can-use, or narrative is miniscule, regardless of gender. Even Malcolm Gladwell presents most of his work as profiles, complete with the personal descriptions that so annoyed Richard Posner when he reviewed Blink in The New Republic. That said, women are even less interested than men in reading, or producing, work without lots of personal content. Hence, the brilliant but stereotypically female essays of my Atlantic colleagues Caitlin Flanigan and Sandra Tsing-Loh.
For the record, my second book, The Substance of Style, did not fall into the libertarian-politics category. It did have more female readers than TFAIE, but, as far as I can tell, men still predominated. Subject matter also makes a difference. The book I'm working on now, about glamour, is by far the biggest big-think thing I've done and will probably have a higher percentage of female readers than either of my first two books.
vpostrel
· 9 months ago
I wonder if a publishing house would buy Gödel, Escher, Bach today, regardless of its author's gender.
irsbod
· 3 months ago
Are big publishing houses still not giving women a fair chance? Surely they'd be mad to adopt this attitude.
BethanyTri
· 3 months ago
How many great authors are slipping through the net because they are unproven? Everyone has to start somewhere and, sadly, the bias against young female authors is still very much alive.
All Comments
For the record, my second book, The Substance of Style, did not fall into the libertarian-politics category. It did have more female readers than TFAIE, but, as far as I can tell, men still predominated. Subject matter also makes a difference. The book I'm working on now, about glamour, is by far the biggest big-think thing I've done and will probably have a higher percentage of female readers than either of my first two books.