Women now dominate the book business. Why there and not other creative industries?
Ever since she was a little girl, Jessie Gaynor has had a passion for books. Whether classic literature or YA fiction, she spent her youth devouring novels. She wouldn't just read them. She would reread them, sometimes the same book over and over again.
"My mom used to say that my rereading of books worried her because she thought I wasn't expanding my horizons enough," Gaynor says. "And, later, in retrospect, she decided that what I was doing was learning the language of the books."
In the sixth grade, Gaynor read Angela's Ashes. She loved the book so much, she actually looked up the author in the phone book and called him to talk about it. She got his answering machine and didn't talk to him, but she self-mockingly tells the story as an early example of her literary enthusiasm.
Gaynor carried this enthusiasm for books into adulthood. She's now a Senior Editor at Literary Hub, an online publication that focuses on literary fiction and nonfiction. And, just recently, she's become an author herself.
This June, publishing powerhouse Penguin Random House is set to publish Gaynor's first novel, . It's a dark comedy that centers on a struggling publicist named Jane Dorner who, in a desperate effort to save her job, tries to land a lucrative client: an enchanting wellness guru. "Jane decides that she will try to aggressively monetize
