More Words, Deeper Hole

For this discussion, useful numbers that are not simply context-free statistics for the overarching categories of fantasy and science fiction (NB there is obviously slosh between the categories, but most works will trend toward one or the other) would include:

-M/F breakdown of slush pile manuscripts over, say, 25 or 30 years (to encompass pre-digital, traditional publishing)

-M/F breakdown of agented submissions, same time period

-M/F breakdown of acceptances, both of those categories

-M/F breakdown of high, low, median, and mean advances paid to authors

-M/F breakdown of in-house costs (to resolve the question of whether publishers support authors differently by sex), similarly with high, low, median, and mean amounts spent

-M/F breakdown of sales figures


Because this is really about money. About whether women are getting the same access to an income-producing opportunity as men, or whether bias is affecting the overall likelihood that a woman who writes science fiction will be published at Tor.


Don't tell me those numbers are hard to get. Money is tracked. With computers, even. The slush numbers will be tricky, but someone must keep track of names and initials-only authors can be either split down the middle between the two groups, excluded altogether, or assigned otherwise. If slush numbers aren't available, perhaps this is something a publisher should be thinking about looking at. If women are not even bothering to send a publisher work, that publisher may have a problem they don't want to own up to.