Episode 4: Fewer than 2 in 5 authors published in Scotland are women
And the imbalance is highest in trade non-fiction
Welcome back to the Quine Report newsletter! This is episode 4: publishing.
In a snapshot of publishing in Scotland in 2022, Publishing Scotland notes that “Scotland is home to over 100 active publishers, varying greatly in both size and focus”, made up by “a large number of small independents, all established in the past five decades” as well as “offices of larger conglomerates.” The website continues, stating that Scottish publishers “have an increasingly global outlook, both in exporting their products and in welcoming writing from all over the world”, and that 50% of Scottish publishing companies are run by women. For a list of publishers included in this study, see the Appendix (link goes straight to a document download).
During the period I examined, 2017-2019, several significant events impacted Scottish publishing. For example, independent publisher Freight Books folded, leaving over 80 authors without royalties, with some authors “owed at least four figures” in 2017. Also in 2017, small publisher 404 Ink, which was founded in 2016, published the anthology Nasty Women, and publishers Heather McDaid and Laura Jones-Rivera were dubbed “the ‘nasty women’ shaking up the book industry”. In addition to 404 Ink, several new independent publishers were founded during the period, including Monstrous Regiment (2017, now trading as Leith Books) and Knight Errant Press (2017). So when I’m talking about publishing in Scotland, I’m talking about a landscape that’s always shifting – and these numbers give us a snapshot of whose work is published collectively.
Using Nielsen BookScan data, I analysed trade non-fiction (962 authors or 46.2%), fiction (574 authors or 27.5%), children’s and young adult writing (467 authors or 22.4%), and poetry (81 authors or 3.9%) from Scotland-based publishers in the years 2017-2019.1
Scottish publishers published male authors 50% more than female authors. 1,237 (61.3%) male authors were published, 778 (38.6%) female authors, and 2 (0.1%) non-binary authors. No gender data was available for 67 authors.
Figure 4 Gender of authors by category, 2017-2019
Gender imbalance across Scottish publishing is not distributed equally across publishing categories. As illustrated in Figure 4, trade non-fiction sees the highest gender imbalance, with 640 (69.6%) male authors, 280 (30.4%) female authors and no non-binary authors: male authors writing trade non-fiction were published more than twice as much as female authors.
Fiction publishing also saw a majority of male authors published, with 345 (60.8%) male authors, 222 (39.2%) female authors and no non-binary authors. 22 of the 222 female authors published in 2017-2019 are re-publications of Muriel Spark’s novels (as noted in Episode 1). Without these re-publications, the percentages for fiction would shift to 36.7% female authors and 63.3% male authors, underscoring both the significance of this re-publishing exercise and the overall imbalance of publications.
Children’s and young adult writing saw a majority of female writers, at 200 (44.5%) male authors, 248 (55.2%) female authors, and one non-binary author.
Poetry publishing saw a majority of male authors, at 52 (64.2%) male authors, 28 (34.6%) female authors and one non-binary author.
The Appendix (link goes straight to a document download) includes a breakdown of these figures by all sub-categories used in Nielsen BookScan.
Next week on the Quine Report we’ll take a closer look at book reviews and literary festivals. Thank you for reading.
I’m speaking to Dr Helen Sedgwick (co-chair of Society of Authors in Scotland) about the findings in the Quine Report at an online event next week, on 1st May 1-2pm GMT. Tickets are available here.
These are the categories used in Nielsen BookScan.