I'm an author – here's everything that's wrong with a book imprint set up specifically for men like me
There are, of course, two answers to that. The more straightforward response would be, ' 19 November, mate, has been for about 30 years, and if you actually cared about men's issues instead of just wanting to punch down on women, you'd probably know that already.' The second, perhaps more honest response would be to point out that asking that is like going to a supermarket car park and asking where the non-disabled parking spaces are. Hint: it's all the rest of them.
When I first heard about Jude Cook's new male-author-orientated imprint, I thought, you know what? I get it. As an author whose career could politely be referred to as 'nascent', I spend a fair amount of time looking at opportunities, residencies, prizes, grants etc. And as a white, 'cis-het' male author in his 50s, I scan through a lot of emails from writing mailing lists I subscribe to, glossing over paragraphs every time I see criteria flagged up such as 'female', 'LGBTQ+', 'under 25', 'authors of colour', meaning that the prize or grant referenced is not for me. It's easy sometimes to think, 'Where's my opportunity?'
Then, of course, I step away from my inbox and back into the real world, where for all the genuine progress that's been made in terms of equality and diversity, realistically I still hold all the cards. For me personally, maybe I'm not sitting on top of the pile, but that's not really how these things are measured, is it. For sure, when I walk into a bookshop and take a cursory scan along the shelves, the one demographic that doesn't strike me as being under-represented is old white fellas.
Let's be clear; Conduit Books is going to be focused on male authors – there's not the slightest suggestion that that translates as white, 'cis-het', older, male authors. Indeed, Cook's been quite clear that their ideal launch title will be from an author under 35 (I say again, where's my opportunity?). Male authors includes male authors of colour, it includes LGBTQ+ males, so within that brief it can still cater for marginalised voices and I hope, and am sure, they will.
But really? Really?? Is Cook so certain that the pendulum has swung so far in recent years that it's now men who need the leg up? My problem with this is that it caters to the exact argument we're seeing enacted in the US at the moment. It's the belief that, unless we're giving everyone that helping hand, that focused opportunity, we're being unfair. We can't give something to this group without taking it away from others. We all know, however, that if you give everyone the same leg up, you're not creating parity, you're preserving the status quo. The only way to argue otherwise is to deny privilege exists. Which is exactly how one of the most racist countries on the planet is currently justifying undoing all the work undertaken to create genuine equality, by pretending white men don't have a sackful of privilege the moment they pop out of the womb.
And I absolutely accept that if I'd been born a hundred years ago, I'd have had a much better chance of scrabbling to the top of the pile than I do now, just for being me. That's not, though, a golden age I want to go back to. That was a state of extreme injustice and, unlike Cook, I don't believe for a moment the pendulum has swung so far that I'm now some marginalised minority. Even if the evidence of my own writing career might suggest otherwise.
I'm also slightly sceptical of Cook's assertion that the response to his announcement has been 'overwhelmingly positive, especially from female authors and women who work in publishing'. Not least of all he also offers, as evidence for his claim that men aren't being commissioned, industry data that 78 per cent of editorial roles are held by women. I can't see how women in publishing can be both the biggest supporters of his new imprint, and also the biggest obstacle to men being published in the first place. That simply doesn't add up. If it's women who want more male authors and women who hold the keys then what, women aren't smart enough to realise they can do something about it?
Most significantly, I can't see why a male author would want to be part of a self-proclaimed male-centric imprint. Even if I secretly agreed with him and was cheering him on from the sidelines, I wouldn't go near the opportunity myself. After all, I'm cynical enough to be aware that the optics around the whole enterprise stink. Giving Cook the benefit of the doubt, which I genuinely do, his good intentions don't alter the fact that the idea of aligning myself in 2025 with an all-male anything makes me itchy as all heck. Honestly, if I wanted to sell Nigel Farage a book, I'd just open a bookshop in… well, not Clacton, somewhere he actually was, but you see what I'm getting at…
James Kinsley lives in Norfolk. His debut novella, the mental health-themed 'Playtime's Over', was published by Propolis in 2021, and was followed by the fantasy western 'Greyskin' (Deixis Press, 2023). 'Parallels', a psychological science fiction novel, will be published by Deixis Press this month.
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