We’re super excited that our new article on gender inequality and book reviews has just been published at The New Republic. The take away: even as you increase the headcount of women in publishing and reviewing, the stereotypical language used to describe women writers remains unchanged. I.e., better gender representation ≠ less gender bias. We use this insight as a basis to argue for a new way of thinking about, and addressing, gender inequality in the literary world.
I recently did a podcast with the BookNet group in Canada that focuses on the intersection of technology and books. They were interested in our research focusing on prizewinning and bestselling novels. My main emphasis in the discussion was to focus on the way computers can be useful for different kinds of audiences: for publishers to better understand the books they are selecting and marketing; for readers to better understand the books they want to enjoy but also engage with more critically and/or analytically; and for writers who want to use data to create new works that are aligned with existing markets in fresh and novel ways.