Kulturkampf

[Potato]

This should be an interesting story to watch.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/apr/28/new-independent-press-to-focus-on-male-writers

A writer and critic has launched a new independent press that will focus on publishing books by male writers.

Conduit Books, founded by Jude Cook, will publish literary fiction and memoir, “focusing initially on male authors”.

Cook said the publishing landscape has changed “dramatically” over the past 15 years as a reaction to the “prevailing toxic male-dominated literary scene of the 80s, 90s and noughties”. Now, “excitement and energy around new and adventurous fiction is around female authors – and this is only right as a timely corrective”.

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“This new breed of young female authors, spearheaded by Sally Rooney et al, ushered in a renaissance for literary fiction by women, giving rise to a situation where stories by new male authors are often overlooked, with a perception that the male voice is problematic,” he said.

These “overlooked narratives” might address fatherhood, masculinity, working class male experiences, sex, relationships, and “negotiating the 21st century as a man” – “precisely the narratives” that Conduit hopes to publish.

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Men have not suddenly stopped reading and writing literary fiction, said Cook – rather, they are simply “not being commissioned”. He pointed to 2020 data suggesting that 78% of those in editorial roles in the publishing industry are women.

“Whenever I send out a novel to editors, the list [of names] is nearly all female,” a male agent told Johanna Thomas-Corr for an Observer piece in 2021. “But it’s not the gender makeup that bothers him, he insists, it’s the prevailing groupthink – the lack of interest in male novelists and the widespread idea that the male voice is problematic,” wrote Thomas-Corr.