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Notes -
My buddy tried this and ended up publishing his own work. Both sci fi. He went at it from every angle possible - thinks it’s impossible for a white straight guy to be published but you know, he is jaded from the experience.
Excited to read / buy your book - love sci fi
I would agree with your buddy that the publishing world is structurally biased against men but would disagree that it's particularly biased against white men. The main causal mechanism is that the vast majority of newer agents (i.e., the ones actively looking for debut authors) and acquisition editors are women (or gay men), and naturally they're going to prefer books that speak to their interests and experiences. That selects against the kind of content men want to read and right write. However, excluding a few niche ethnicity-specific genres, a white male should have as much success as a pakistani woman if they're both writing romantasy targeted towards white woman... and as little success if they're both writing hard sci-fi targeted towards guys.
(And then there's the knock-on effect that mostly publishing stuff women would be interested in reading makes men less interested in reading and male-targeted books less likely to sell, which makes agents and editors even less likely to pick up that kind of book.)
All that being said, I wouldn't underestimate the potentially of the literary world to change suddenly and violently. There's a small but relevant number of agents on MSWL citing specifically that they want the next Dungeon Crawler Carl, or that authors shouldn't be afraid to submit "boy books" to them. Aethon books also seems to be fairly successful, and I heard the author of the percy jackson series is starting a new imprint to focus on books that appeal to the same audience his does. None of that is going to help me publish my book because I suspect my book is unmarketable in ways completely orthogonal to the anti-male-content bias, but it is heartening to see.
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