I was that woman who was told by a mainstream editor that hard SF by women doesn't sell. I don't know if I was the one Linda referred to, because sadly it wouldn't surprise me if there was more than one case. I have since decided to self-publish everything, even if I've sold to Analog and could well have gotten deals from large genre publishers seeing the types of responses I was getting at the time. Instead, I withdrew everything from consideration, found my own editors and self-published.
I'm doing reasonably OK. Not great, but OK.
Yet when I look at the science fiction category at retailers especially in space-based SF, which is what I write, the only women in there are the authors of accidentally mis-categorised with man-boobs on the cover. It's a sad, sad world. The bias comes from both sides, and to be honest, not a day goes by that I wonder what would happen if I were to simple take my name off the cover and replace it by a male name.
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