Gender Discrimination in Indie vs Traditional Publishing

A new study by a sociologist and mathematician finds pricing discrimination when analyzing two million titles published in North America between 2002 and 2012

Inspired by the VIDA counts—which look at the male-female ratio of writers published by prominent magazines and literary journals—Dana Beth Weinberg and Adam Kapelner of Queens College-CUNY decided to compare levels of gender discrimination in traditional book publishing versus self-publishing. Their research surfaced two key findings.

One: Traditional publishers set book prices for authors with identifiably female names 9 percent lower than titles by authors with male names. This difference was found even after accounting for the fact that publishers put out more romance titles by women and place less value on that genre than male-dominated thriller or science fiction and fantasy genres.

Two: While indie authors largely replicate the patterns of gender discrimination seen in traditional publishing, there is greater equality. Weinberg says that the discrimination is less, but perhaps because of unconscious biases, it still exists. In terms of a pricing gap, titles by female indie authors are priced 7 percent lower than titles by male authors.

While not a focus of the study, another interesting finding emerged when Weinberg and Kapelner dug into the data provided by Bowker. Weinberg and Kapelner used book metadata for their study, and they found that significant numbers of books were missing retail price in the metadata. They write, “Compared to 2002, the odds of having missing data increase every year, with the biggest increases starting in 2009 as more digital titles hit the market. Surprisingly, with the exception of audiobook publishers, Big 5 publishers’ titles are the most likely to have missing data, with university publishers and indie authors the least.” (Emphasis ours.)

We asked publishing metadata expert Laura Dawson what might be driving such behavior. She told us, “Because Amazon essentially owns the ebook market, publishers don’t absolutely have to send their ebook metadata to Bowker anymore. It’s a lower priority than making sure the book gets listed on Amazon. … The Big 5 publishers are much more likely to have direct relationships with retailers, doing an end run around aggregators like Bowker.”

Curious to see what pricing differences might exist at this single moment in time between male and female authors, we checked the retail price for hardcover novels currently on the New York Times bestseller list. We found six male authors (including James Patterson and Charles Frazier) with prices ranging from $26.99 to $28.00. We found nine female authors (including Mary Higgins Clark and Meg Wolitzer) with prices ranging from $26.95 to $28.99.

• Average hardcover novel price for male author: $27.49
• Average hardcover novel price for female author: $27.54

The lowest priced novel on the bestseller list is An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (an African-American female novelist): $26.95.

Bottom line: While providing remarkable food for thought, there are some limitations in the study. First, researchers worked with Bowker data (or books with ISBNs), which leaves out a significant swath of published titles from indie authors who don’t use ISBNs. Also, the study only goes through 2012, just around the time that many indie authors were getting started—and the landscape has of course changed in the last six years. Read the full study here.