"The absence made me nearly speechless." said poet and creative writing professor Cate Marvin, co-founder of new US literary organisation Women in Letters and Literary Arts (WILLA). WILLA has gathered more than 5,500 members since it launched in August with the aim of bringing "increased attention to women's literary accomplishments and [questioning] the American literary establishment's historical slow-footedness in recognising and rewarding women writers' achievements".

The group pointed to new books published this year by Lorrie Moore, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, Rita Dove, Heather McHugh and Alicia Ostriker. "It continues to surprise me that literary editors are so comfortable with their bias toward male writing, despite the great and obvious contributions that women authors make to our contemporary literary culture," said Marvin.

Announcing the list, novelist and journalist Louisa Ermelino said that PW "wanted [it] to reflect what we thought were the top 10 books of the year with no other consideration". "We ignored gender and genre and who had the buzz. We gave fair chance to the 'big' books of the year, but made them stand on their own two feet," she said, adding that "it disturbed us when we were done that our list was all male".

Poet Erin Belieu, WILLA's other co-founder and director of the creative writing programme at Florida State University, said that "when PW's editors tell us they're not worried about 'political correctness', that's code for 'your concerns as a feminist aren't legitimate'". "They know they're being blatantly sexist, but it looks like they feel good about that," said Belieu. "I, on the other hand, have heard from a whole lot of people -- writers and readers -- who don't feel good about it at all."

The sale of the group is part of RBI's strategy to divest most of its trade magazines in the U.S. Last year, Reed Elsevier, parent company of RBI, tried to sell all of RBI but dropped the sale when it couldn't get the price it wanted in a depressed market for media properties. In a related announcement, Tad Smith, CEO of RBI US, has resigned. John Poulin has been named acting CEO and he will head the sales process.

"I think these people are rock stars, I always did," Sara Nelson said. "I think they're cool. I'm much more interested in hearing about what’s going on in Sonny Mehta's head than I am in George Clooney's."

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"There's so much written about how publishers don't know what they're doing," Ms. Nelson said. "But how do you know what to do? You're making a bet on who's gonna like something a year and a half from now. That's without even getting into the economy or anything -- just, 'What's the mood of a number of people going to be a year and a half from now?' If you thought too much about that, you'd shoot yourself."

People in the book business don't tend to go to such extremes, she said, as most of them can't give up the rush they get when they discover a new work and put it out into the world.

"That's the thing about the book business," she said. "You know, things are terrible, but there are not a lot of highs -- legal highs! -- that match that feeling when someone reads a book that they fall in love with. I mean, it is like falling in love -- it's like the world becomes a beautiful place. I really think that that's what happens. And if you happened to fall in love with something, you thought it was a great week, even though 70,000 people lost their jobs."

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"To me, it's like the most fabulous thing, to hang around with a bunch of editors," she said. "It was a big part of my job. ... I loved that part of my job. I will miss that part, though I'm hoping to have a new place to put my column or blog soon, and I hope I will do a fair amount of hanging around when I do that."