A publisher sends an email:
Thought you might like to see this: “Male Pride and Female Prejudice“. And you were onto this trend three years ago . . .
New York Times columnist John Tierney has an interesting op/’ed today on the looming crises of too many edumacated uppity wimmin chasing after a dwindling supply of eligible (edumacated and white collar) males. The “crisis” stems from the fact that nearly 3 women graduate from college for every 2 men who do. Tierney points out that under 35 year old men say in polls that they have no big problem marrying women who make more money than they do. However, women who have gone to the trouble of getting a college degree do not want to marry a guy whose pint-sized paycheck would occasion malicious gossip among her friends.
What the gentleman is referring to is a book proposal entitled “Screwing Themselves: Why no one wants to marry 30-something women” that I sent to him at his request following a rather notorious column I’d written. The review board was quite positive about it, but the Marketing VP – an unmarried 40-something woman – felt very strongly that no one would be interested in reading it. I submitted two more book proposals and actually got paid for one before realizing that there was no way they were actually going to publish my non-fiction.
Which is fine. I can’t complain about getting paid not to write and I prefer writing fiction anyhow. If I was serious about it, I’d start my own publishing company. That or whine about how I’m being oppressed, there seems to be quite a cottage industry going.