A bit more on the gender-bias affair (excerpted from the aforementioned deleted post), because I’ve seen a number of commenters who don’t seem to be aware of this:

A few years back an article (with a subsequent statistical analysis) was written about F&SF‘s submissions to determine if indeed there were fewer women being published.  You can go read the article and/or the analysis, but basically, the data indicated that F&SF received far more submissions from men (so naturally we published more stories by men); however, of the female authored submissions we did receive, we published a higher percentage of those, compared to male submissions.

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Okay, so a brief explanation:

On Thursday night, I made a lengthy post in which I spewed some thoughts about the F&SF gender-bias thing. After posting it, a friend of mine read it, and said that it would probably just make things worse because it sounded defensive. I looked at it again, and thought he was right, so I deleted it. However, a lot of people still saw it, because, as it turns out, when you delete something in Movable Type, it doesn’t necessarily *delete it*. So, Gwenda, and others, that was why when you tried to post a comment to that entry, you couldn’t.

So while I’ve reconsidered wading head-on into the debate, I do want to point out that I have NO PROBLEM AT ALL with the “Story Bomb.” BRING IT ON, I say. I’m looking forward to seeing all the new stories from women writers, and especially from the writers who don’t normally send us stuff, and those who have never sent us stuff before.

If the only goal is to get more women submitting to F&SF, then I think it’s going to be great, and will certainly succeed.

If, on the other hand, anyone expects it to prove or disprove a gender-bias, well, I don’t think it will do anything of the kind. That’s my only reservation about the challenge. All of my other misgivings about this enterprise arose out of all the anti-F&SF sentiment I saw being spewed, so I was mostly reacting to that.

Here’s what Gwenda said in response to my now-deleted post:

Hey JJA — I was trying to post this on the new entry about this, but can’t for some reason. So I’m dropping it here.

Everything you say here is right and legitimate and I can even understand how this effort might ruffle your (and other people’s) feathers. My interest in this is — and I don’t think I’m alone — in seeing more stories by women on the F&SF TOC (and this dream also includes people of color). It’s as a reader, not as a writer. And the make-up of the slush may be the issue, but then the question to the magazine is what can proactively be done to change that ratio and should it? Should the magazine be concerned that so few women are submitting? And actively encourage more of it? As a reader of the magazine, again, I’d hope the answers would be yes.

I wish the same for the other magazines, but I’ll admit to wishing it more for F&SF because it’s the one I like best, the one that most regularly has stories I think are truly excellent. But it does rankle to get a new issue and see no stories by women on the TOC; it creates a disconnect for me. (And for others I’ve talked to.)

And seriously, if there are more good stories than one or two that Gordon loves in the estimated hundred that you get, why can’t you hang onto them an extra month or three and buy them then?

For the record, I agree with everything she says here, except for the ruffling the feathers part. The only thing that ruffled my feathers was the anti-F&SF sentiment, not the idea of the story bomb. I love the idea, for the reasons she outlines above.

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Lately, I’ve noticed a trend in cover letters. A lot of writers seem to be growing discouraged after a few rejections and think that they should give up submitting stories to F&SF, or they think that they’re wasting our time.

And now in the gender debate over on Charlie Finlay’s blog, I see people saying that a lot of the women writers they know have given up sending stories to F&SF completely, because of a perceived gender bias.

The question I’d ask to both of these groups is: how are you ever going to crack a market if you quit submitting stories to it?

I can understand becoming frustrated after being continually rejected, but keep in mind too that F&SF’s response times allow us to evaluate more submissions during any given time frame than most other magazines. So, for example, say you submit a story to F&SF every time you finish one (provided there’s not already one there). You could send us four stories, and theoretically all four could be bounced back in the span of a single month. Whereas if you’d submitted those same four stories to say, Asimov’s, you probably wouldn’t get all four back for four months or more. So I wonder if people perceive F&SF as being harsher than other magazines, or that we inspire this “give up” impulse primarily because we stay on top of our slush.

To the women who say we don’t publish enough women writers, I say that the way to change that certainly isn’t by refusing to send us your stories. How is that going to help? Is it not worth a week of your story’s time to take the chance?

And to the other writers who have become discouraged: sending us stories does not annoy us. Just because what you’ve written thus far hasn’t clicked, the next thing you send in might.

If you don’t even send us your stories, then the only person you can blame for your story not being published in F&SF is yourself.

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Publishers Weekly, the international news magazine of book publishing and bookselling, seeks book reviewers
with expertise in the following categories of fiction:

Historical Romance
Romantic Suspense
African-American Commercial Fiction
Street Lit
Chick Lit
Family sagas

Please send a short e-mail query that states qualifications and any relevant publications. Please paste your resume
at the bottom of the message.

The e-mail address is: pwreviewers@reedbusiness.com

Do not attach anything. Messages with attachments will be deleted.

Via craigslist

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By the way, I’ve taken to moderating the comments because I’m being deluged with spam. So don’t panic if your comment doesn’t appear immediately; I’ll see it right away, then approve it when I get a chance. Eventually, I’ll make a note in the comment area, but it’ll have to wait until I’m feeling more industrious.

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