Independent on Sunday will no longer review any [Book] marketed to exclude either sex

[Blue_Adept]

An online campaign called Let Books Be Books, which petitions publishers to ditch gender-specific children’s books, has met with mixed success recently. Last week, both Parragon (which sells Disney titles, among others) and Usborne (the Independent Publisher of the Year 2014), agreed that they will no longer publish books specifically titled “for boys” or “for girls”. Unfortunately, Michael O’Mara, which owns Buster Books, pledged to continue segregating young readers according to their gender. Mr O’Mara himself told The Independent that their Boys’ Book covers “things like how to make a bow and arrow and how to play certain sports and you’d get things about style and how to look cool in the girls’ book.” At the same time, he added: “We would never publish a book that demeaned one sex or the other”.

Link

A welcome approach, though there are plenty of issues that you can see hitting when it comes to things like this in the actual retail environment. still, from a review perspective, the push back against publishers is interesting and welcome.

[Ghost Dog]

1. What about the highly sex- and age-group focused magazine market?

Perhaps better to aim to develop a strong 'for girls and boys' market sector.