A fascinating new study by online publishing platform FicShelf reveals that among self-published authors, a niche that has been booming in recent years, the proportion of self-published bestsellers written by women is almost twice as large as in traditional publishing.
Self-published author Alison Morton said: “There’s definitely a gender disparity among traditionally-published authors. More women buy, write and read books in numerical terms, but more ‘weight’ and status is given by publishers to books by male authors. With self-publishing, it’s the effort by the individual that counts, irrespective of gender.”
In total, FicShelf looked at 227 bestselling self-published titles, a mix of fiction and non-fiction. When it focused on novels, the results were even more skewed: of 134 fiction titles, 109, or 81%, were by women, 11 were by men, and 14 were unknown.
“The scale of the discrepancy shows that women writers aren’t being treated equally in traditional publishing,” said the author Roz Morris. “We’re usually pigeonholed into obviously feminine genres such as chick-lit and romance, but not generally allowed to be complex artistes, to write the unusual books that break new ground. These figures show a huge vote of confidence for the writer in charge of their artistic destiny – and indicate that the literary world should take more notice of what women writers are publishing.”