A noteworthy & positive SF&F promotions email from Waterstones!

This is splendid! A loyalty cardholder’s email has landed in my inbox, centered on SF & Fantasy. It flags up Robin Hobb’s forthcoming appearance at Loncon3 and offers a chance to win a drink with Joe Abercrombie, as well as highlighting the upcoming Gollancz Festival at Waterstones, Piccadilly.

It also promotes a good range of books – and each selection of new, recent, reviewed and established favourites features two male and two female authors.

Specifically – Terry Brooks, Erika Johansen, Deborah Harkness and Brent Weeks. Then Tom Holt, Scott Lynch, Sherrilyn Kenyon and Elizabeth May. Followed by Octavia Butler, Robin Hobb, Max Barry and Mitch Benn. Favourites are Terry Pratchett, Trudi Canavan, Neil Gaiman and Liani Taylor.

(If you discount Tolkien who is the the fifth ‘favourite’ and honestly, I’m not going to get bent out of shape about that because, well, Tolkien. Similarly, the top ten best-sellers are all male-authored but when that list includes five individual titles by GRRM and two by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, that’s hardly a surprise).

No, I’m not patting myself on the back and taking any sort of credit. Various voices besides mine have been making the case for equality of visibility, both publicly and more privately.

No, I’m not leaning back and thinking phew, our work here is done. If we do another bookshop survey in six months time or so, and see marked improvement there, then it’ll be time to raise a celebratory glass.

For the time being though, this is most assuredly a positive development.

Author: Juliet

Juliet E McKenna is a British fantasy author living in the Cotswolds, UK. Loving history, myth and other worlds since she first learned to read, she has written fifteen epic fantasy novels so far. Her debut, The Thief’s Gamble, began The Tales of Einarinn in 1999, followed by The Aldabreshin Compass sequence, The Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution, and The Hadrumal Crisis trilogy. The Green Man’s Heir was her first modern fantasy inspired by British folklore in 2018, and The Green Man’s Quarry in 2023 is the sixth title in this ongoing series. Her 2023 novel The Cleaving is a female-centred retelling of the story of King Arthur, while her shorter stories include forays into dark fantasy, steampunk and science fiction. She promotes SF&Fantasy by reviewing, by blogging on book trade issues, attending conventions and teaching creative writing. She has served as a judge for major genre awards. As J M Alvey, she has written historical murder mysteries set in ancient Greece.

3 thoughts on “A noteworthy & positive SF&F promotions email from Waterstones!

  1. Very positive, but the move towards any real parity was always going to be made with baby steps.

    Personally, I wish they would play Tolkien down a bit; simply because I don’t actually think his influence over the genre has been very good and that in many ways its proved to be a touch stifling. I grant you though, that that’s debate for another day.

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