Twelfth Planet Press Numbers

[girliejones]

Numbers for Shiny Submissions:

2008
129 Submissions
64 Female
61 Male
4 Unknown

Of these, we bought 5 by female writers and 1 by a male writer and as of this date, 9 remain unprocessed.

2007
198 Submissions
94 Female
94 Male
10 unknown

Of these, we bought 7 by female writers and 2 by male (in this case same author)

In 2007, the editors of

Comments

[nyssa_p]

"one of these was not in line with submission guidelines" Hehe, while I'm on the outside, I'll never get sick of hearing of these sorts of people. It's too funny!

Of course if I were in your position as an editor, it might lose it's amusingness.

[girliejones]

Actually, being able to reject a piece for being outside the guidelines is the easiest slushing of all. I'm more likely to remember the name and relating it to being someone who can't read, follow instruction or so arrogant that they think the guidelines don't apply to them ... but yeah, its a reply, paste form rejection and hit send for me. I can reject in 10 secs flat these days.

[brendanpodger]

I am sure the editors of the magazines that are suspected of male bias also say "we only bought the stories that we thought were the best in the slushpile and never considered gender at any point." They will then say "It is just that men are writing the stories we think will appeal to our target audience".

The whole problem with this debate is it's subjectivity. Until you find someone that admits to making a Mens pile and a Womens pile on the desk, reads the Mens pile first, and only looks for stories from the Womens pile if the issue can't be filled by Mens pile content, you really aren't going to be able to really prove gender bias.

[girliejones]

That's the point though - that's why I said that - that we thought these were the best in the slushpile. I was being kinda sardonic, or something.

[girliejones]

The whole problem with this debate is it's subjectivity. Until you find someone that admits to making a Mens pile and a Womens pile on the desk, reads the Mens pile first, and only looks for stories from the Womens pile if the issue can't be filled by Mens pile content, you really aren't going to be able to really prove gender bias

It's actually not. And I suggest maybe you read through a lot of the comments in the other posts. I don't for one second think that people make male and female piles and discredit one. I think that simplifies the whole discussion down into something that is not what we are talking about. What we are talking about issomething quite else from that, and that, to me, is what makes the discussion interesting.

[bluetyson]

Sure, all stats are of interest.

[girliejones]

Might have to wait till we finalise New Ceres Nights first.

[bluetyson]

Sure.

Is there going to be an electronic version of that?

[girliejones]

Hmmm not sure yet. Very possibly.

[cassiphone]

The most interesting thing here to me is actually that the female to male ratio of subs is so balanced! You'd be hard pressed to find many publishers that get that kind of mix. But yes, YA is a female-dominant genre.

We DID consider gender, I remember. One of us asked the question early on - is it going to cause any ructions or bad feeling or whatever if we publish an all female issue? And I seem to recall that we thought about it and then said - eh, three stories per issue, people can just live with it.

But yes, it wasn't an issue in selecting the stories - luckily it didn't have to be.

[girliejones]

Yeah I was quite surprised by the ratios. I thought I was going to find more men submit and we buy more female.

[cassiphone]

This is entirely subjective, but my general recollection from slush days is that male authors are more likely to submit stories outside the remit or guidelines of the magazine. It could be just anecdotal evidence, but if you wanted to keep an extra column on that GJ it would be a fascinating statistic in itself.

I also pretty much recall that men are more likely to write incredibly arrogant cover letters, but that probably doesn't need a whole column...

[girliejones]

pretty sure that mostly we put "not YA" in the comment column if thats the reason we are rejecting it... could have a quick look.