What's with male fiction writers?

[LAS14]

Last edited Sun Dec 22, 2024, 08:24 PM - Edit history (2)

I saw a discussion elsewhere about the decreasing number of male fiction writers. The theories ranged from women dominating publishing to men adopting female pen names. The other day I conducted an eyeballing, guestimating, some counting review of the recent (last 18 months or so) fiction books at our library, and my results were that only 10% or so were by men. Admittedly I could be off by a lot, but no way was it 50% men.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Theories?

Edit: The "statistic" I cited represents a drastic change over the years/decades. I'm female, but , all things being equal, I gravitate to male authors. I'm finding fewer and fewer to choose from at the library.

[msongs]

1. maybe most readers of fiction are women? nt

[mucholderthandirt]

23. Most readers are, indeed, female. Multiple studies and polls have shown this.

[DeepWinter]

2. I don't think

I've really read fiction since my 30s. More into non-fiction subjects.

[EarnestPutz]

3. I was going to post something about women in general being more creative and having better imaginations, and then.....

......go on to elaborate about women being better disciplined and task oriented, how they possess, utilize and appreciate better language skills and then conclude by opining that these differences were genetic in nature, the result of millions of years of evolution. But I thought that this discussion might prove to be really interesting without my two cents worth of provocation, so never mind.

[anciano]

9. Great post ...

that is creative!

[EarnestPutz]

10. Thank you. Given the subject, I felt that I had to put in some effort. :)

[ananda]

4. So men aren't reading these days?

I'm sure Magats aren't.

[bucolic_frolic]

5. fewer men with degrees.

novelist not a macho occupation despite King, Patterson, Baldacci, etc.

men prefer stock trading to writing. it's what they do with their time.

women have slender fingers making it easier for them to type. Voice to text never really caught on.

women multitask better. They can cook, clean, mind the kids, write, and watch TV all at the same time. Men wind up writing 5-7 am because they have to go to work to support the cooking, cleaning, child-rearing, and TV.

It take months, maybe 4000 hours to write a book. Men don't have the spare time.

[mainer]

14. excuse me, MEN don't have the spare time?

Women are the ones with almost no spare time.
I wrote my first novel while raising two babies and working as a medical doctor. There WAS no spare time.

[RockRaven]

6. Does your library have a separate science fiction / fantasy section?

If so, I wonder what the distribution is over there...

As others have noted, it may be that women read more than men these days and there is some reflection of that in authorship as well.

I think most readers would be surprised how little the average American reads, and how many Americans haven't read a single full book this year, this decade, or since high school.

[mainer]

13. I'm betting it's more 50/50 M/F in SF and fantasy

However, a lot more women are dominating fantasy now, with the new sub-genre of "Romantasy" which is fantasy plus romance.
Of course, there are many purists who will go bonkers if you call that fantasy, as they consider it a bastardization of the genre.

In hard SF, it's probably 70/30 M/F

[mucholderthandirt]

24. The funny thing about SF? Of any type? Most readers are female, and these days, most writers as well.

Back in the "good ol' days", there were quite a few women writing SF, but most used male or gender-neutral pen names, because men, and young boys, wouldn't stand for a woman writing "their" books.

I was young when I found out Andre Norton was a woman. I shouted and laughed, and uttered "you go, girl!". It showed me that women could indeed write books, even if they had to use male-sounding names to get published. Another was James Tiptree, Jr.

The times, they are a' changin'. And thank the Universe for it. If women can hang on, we can keep our progress and make more.

[AZSkiffyGeek]

31. CJ Cherryh and Julian May are two more

Bsaically, if you see initials or a gender-neutral sci-fi author's name, they're probably a woman.

[AZSkiffyGeek]

30. Hard sci-fi is probably closer to 90/10

But space opera has more women. I can't think of many men who are consistent best-sellers in sci-fi/fantasy right now - John Scalzi and Brandon Sanderson for sure, but ever since the far right tried to game the Hugo awards with a bunch of right-wing military sci-fi hacks about 10 years ago, the Hugo voters have responded overwhelmingly with nominations of women, POC and LGBT writers. And as minorities started winning awards and getting attention, the publishers have noticed that is what the reading public wants.

[LAS14]

18. What a good suggestion!!!

Yes, they do. Next time I go I'll conduct a similar survey. Will report back here.

[Retrograde]

28. If you look at the nominees for the Hugo awards

science fiction's top honors - for the past decade they're overwhelmingly female. Now this may be a reflection of who nominates them, but it's been a trend for some time. Some are good, some I don't think are worth the electrons they're written with (and I say this as a some-time Hugo voter). Most of the nominees I've read are more fantasy than hard science fiction, which I think goes along with the dominance of women writing fantasy these days. There's also been a rise in the number of non-Western writers in recent years: I don't know how the demographics break down among them.

[Aristus]

33. I'm not surprised. I read more than just about anyone I know.

I’ll find myself in conversations with people who are ignorant about the simplest, most basic subjects. Ignorance that could easily be dispelled by a little reading now and then. I find myself wishing I could be shocked or surprised by this, but I’m not.

I’ve stopped wondering what planet these blockheads are from. I’ve started to wonder what planet I’m from. And how did I get stranded on this rock populated by apes who wear clothes, and make vaguely communicative noises with their snouts.

Even the most sparsely-stocked library contains more collected knowledge than any single person could learn in a lifetime. But so few people access these invaluable treasures, and don’t even care.

[lame54]

7. Are you counting journalists?

[LAS14]

34. I don't understand the question. I was surveying fiction books. nt

[Jilly_in_VA]

8. Men are writing

plenty of sci-fi and thrillers as well as mysteries. It may be more e-books than hard copy though.

Side note: the baby brother of my (unlamented) first husband has written a number of sci-fi novels. I've read a few. They aren't really my cuppa, but they're not bad. Per his author site, he wrote them at the instigation of his daughter.

[Sympthsical]

11. Men favor non-fiction, women favor fiction

It's a known divide. Something like 80% of novels are purchased by women.

The only fiction genre men predominate to a degree is sci-fi, and that's been changing over the past decade with greater participation and recognition of women authors.

Considering those interests, I can see publishing tending to favor fiction more on account that people interested in non-fiction content have the entire Internet at their disposal. I did read once that women read 50% more books per year than men. However, men read more non-fiction material online.

There's not a lot of money to be made when your target audience is perfectly content vanishing down a wikipedia hole for several hours rather than buy a book. I am super guilty of this. I can read astronomy-related content online for hours. I was a voracious fiction reader when young, but that dropped off a cliff once I could look things up online.

Mix in that publishing is predominated by women who promote mostly other women, and it gets a bit circular. The market is women, so they promote women authors, so men become less interested, so the market is more geared toward women, etc. etc.

It's been a thing for a while.

[mainer]

12. The majority of fiction readers are women

so if you're a guy writing novels aimed at other guys, yes, you're going to have a tougher time finding your market.

It's not any institutional bias against male writers; it's simply that the market decrees who's a bestseller and who's not.
If men want to sell novels, they have to write novels that appeal to the majority of the readership, including women. Or they'll somehow have to snag 100% of male readers ( a la Tom Clancy).

[Iris]

15. Their parents pitch a bitch if they want to major in the humanities?

[eppur_se_muova]

17. Also that. nt

[LudwigPastorius]

16. This is a result of which genre is dominating the fiction market.

Romance novels are booming. And, two authors make up 80% of total unit sales: Collen Hoover and Emily Henry.

https://wordsrated.com/romance-novel-sales-statistics/

[mucholderthandirt]

25. LOL Just not true overall. And don't forget, self publishing has over-taken romance from trad pub.

And, two authors make up 80% of total unit sales: Collen Hoover and Emily Henry.

There's a lot going on in publishing these days. It's not all about romance, and it's not all about traditional publishing.

[LAS14]

19. To those of you who have observed...

... that more women read fiction than men, the "statistic" I cited represents a drastic change over the years/decades. I'm female, but , all things being equal, I gravitate to male authors. I'm finding fewer and fewer to choose from at the library.

I'm going to edit my OP with this.

[milestogo]

20. I'm female, I read a lot, and I almost never read fiction.

[MineralMan]

21. Well, in the mid 70s, it didnt take me long to figure out that

making a living writing fiction was going to be a lot harder than making a living writing non-fiction. I wrote and published both when I started writing for a living, but dropped fiction pretty quickly. No money there, or not much. With non-fiction, informative, writing, I could get paid well by a wide range of magazine publishers. Soon, I narrowed down my subject matter to meet the market with the most demand and the fewest writers.

Fiction simply did not pay off for me. So, I stopped writing it after seeing a few things published for very little payment. Purely a practical decision, really.

[mucholderthandirt]

22. I don't believe this is a valid observation.

Writing has typically been male, and almost completely cis white males. I believe we're just seeing an equalization of the field being more open to females, POC, a varied gender scale. Especially since self publishing has made is possible to bypass the traditional publishing path, which tended to self-regulate to exclude most of those "other" writers.

Also, more women are working in publishing as editors, agents and other roles than they ever could have hoped for, which is another hot spot. Women are leaving men out, choosing other women, minorities and so on, and it's just not fair, some men claim.

This has been a topic in the writing world for a long time. Mostly it seems to be started by male writers who believe people of less value are being allowed to publish books, pushing them out. But, readers are not a finite resource. More are being born everyday, and markets are opening up (thanks mostly to smart phones being more widely available at a lower cost) that we never dreamed of reaching.

I'm on the front line of self publishing, though I also follow some trad pub stuff. I see this kind of attitude almost daily, on both paths. It seems to follow along with the increasing vocal protests of incel men, and the MAGA movement. It's not safe anywhere, unless you are a cis white male, especially claiming to be Christian. Everyone is out to get them, and my guess is the turnout for Trump is the signal for them to become even worse.

[Mike 03]

29. Who is on your radar these days in terms of great fiction writers?

I'd love some recommendations, especially anyone who is writing about politics and global warming.

Do you have any inside info about whether Delillo is finished writing? (Sorry, I couldn't resist asking). Some voices that have been really important to me have fallen silent, and part of me is really hoping that they have something to say. I wish John Irving hadn't retired, and I wish Cormac McCarthy hadn't died.

By the way, when I was actively writing, all of my agents were women. To call them powerful and impressive would be an understatement. They were fearless and brilliant. (I probably didn't deserve them.)

[AZSkiffyGeek]

32. There are some great sci-fi writers tackling global warming

The biggest is probably Kim Stanley Robinson, but I'm not sure how much he hits on the bestseller lists. Another is Paolo Bacigalupi, who wrote a couple great (and award-winning) bestsellers a few years ago. I've seen them referred to as "cli-fi" novels, but that label hasn't really been taken too seriously.

[haele]

26. Maybe because men are no longer encouraged to be fully educated?

Because being literate and observant are considered masculine traits in a lesser frequency - only "Elitists" are literate or have the time to explore emotions or complex repercussions to situations and actions (or inactions)?

After all, there's way too much Man stuff that needs to be done, according to Tucker Carlson and the Conservative ilk. Manly Men don't need to write or explore history (or the future), or consider wimpy feelings, their position in life is to just get the job done! And play sports or games afterwards.

Women writers used to be considered " lesser" writers as they weren't typically in social positions to affect life outside their circles. Now that women are expanding out in society and are able to actively like in many fields; as history shows us, once women start to make gains in a particular field where there's a more even playing field (as in, physical strength is not a primary component to it) that field becomes an easy, "weak" job - a "woman's job", like teacher, secretary, or even doctor...

Haele

Haele

[WarGamer]

27. My observation... there has only been ONE huge female crossover author...

Not many men read Danielle Steel...

But one female author wrote SEVEN books and is one of the top authors in history... and her books are probably read 50/50 by boys and girls. (Yes she has authored a total of 22 books but she's known for the seven)

JK Rowlings

(yes I know her politics)