Friday, April 12, 2013

Do Women Make Better Writers, Editors, Publishers, and Readers of Novels?

Here's what Alexandra Pringle, chief editor, Bloomsbury has to say about fiction for women by women. Hell, she is right. Mostly novels are written, edited, published, and read by women. Come to think of it why didn't I notice it before, though I had a premonition about it. Most editors I know are women, and when I walk into a book store mostly it is women who crowd around the fiction shelves and men, if at all, the management and self-development books. (I used to think, misguidedly, that a man can change his life with a book, just as if Rome can be built in a day! Hehe!) And majority of the men in publishing are beat salesmen who go from store to store.

That opens a Pandora's box of doubts in this humble hack's mind. Are women more sensitive, concerned, emotionally intelligent, compassionate, or, what? Are they better at understanding the human condition than their better halves. A novel is after all an intelligent work and requires some empathy and maturity to understand it. Which a man lacks? Oh no! Might just be true. Ask your husband/boyfriend to name a novel he has read and ask him to name the protagonist. Just try this out. 

John is @johnwriter on Twitter and John.Matthew on Facebook. He blogs here. His Youtube Channel Page. His novel Mr. Bandookwala, M.B.A., Harvard.

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