Don't forget that the big publishing houses also use, "Buyback," so if any author is struggling they can buy huge numbers of that title back to boost that book onto the best seller list.
"I have no interest in navigating through displays of Ta-Nehisi Coates and the 1619 Project, woke outbursts, apologetics for Hamas, calls for destroying America and sexual fetish celebrations." Great!
"...while the classics are great, a literate society produces new works or it dies." Hm. How much do we need new works? Most of my reading is thousands of years old. Maybe that's where young men are drawing their inspiration. This happened half a millennium ago in Europe, and they called it a Renaissance. Not a renovation, but a rediscovery of classics.
A lot of men want to do. They want achievement, rather than talk (read) about how something feels.
Perhaps this is why they are more drawn to online gaming and playing golf, or fixing property, rather than sitting (idly) with a book.
I think, in our materialistic and profit-driven society, it is hard to reach men with the written word (unless it comes in the form of a manual on how to achieve a specific goal).
“What is the return of investment in reading a book?”
Women are more inwardly oriented, towards their feelings. Men are more outwardly oriented, towards action and results.
Women simply make up the most accessible target group for literature.
To get men to read more, I believe we have to actively install it into male culture.
The data shows men read more non-fiction and women read more fiction.
My experience is that men either read incredibly dense or serious books or don't read. Sometimes there are men who read stuff like spy novels for entertainment, the way women read mystery or romance, but I do find, generally, men lean towards more serious content whether it's fiction or non-fiction. You look at what's out there in mainstream shops, and it's a bunch of millennial speak lol-so-relatable slop that you can't take seriously. I would love to see the publishing industry cater more to men again. I'd love to see the next Tom Clancy come out.
Terrifying. Men deserve better, men deserve fiction too.
I would like to announce that I am giving men better representation in my books not because I care about diversity but because my character happen to be like 50/50 split. I care about men and I understand what they want. I might be a woman but I can write something that I hope appeals to both audiences lol
mmm. the problem with the thesis here is that it implies women cannot write literature.
if the publishers won't take it? then make it anyway. that's what I'm doing.
and I'm a woman and I hardly ever read modern publications anyway. My favorite authors are Chesterton and Brian Jacques and I've also read Weir and Asimov.
I think the writer meant that men are much better at writing literature for men than women. A female writer will often always use a female protagonist and use female POVs. That could be great writing, but does it appeal to the reading men and their literary needs?
well to imply that "men are writing less literature for men, ergo literature is dying" is still to imply that literature is men's literature and women cannot write literature.
if it does not appeal to the reading men, too bad. we all have our own tastes. if men want to read more books about men, then they can write them. I myself have several books with several male POVs as well as largely female-centric books. I don't choose characters based on a gender divide: I choose their gender based on the psychology necessary for that role, because men and women do have different psychology.
My second observation was that men can do exactly what I'm doing. Write. Make the thing. Publish. Who cares what trad is doing? We are the readership and we can determine what the literary future becomes. Every single one of us.
Men can complain that men aren't writing. Men may not complain that I, a 20yo daycare teacher's assistant, am publishing my 12th book next month. There is a difference.
As a man, reading stories with female protagonists makes very little difference to me (and given the severe lack of female protagonists written by male authors over the last few centuries, I don’t think the current trend is all that troubling). What’s more troubling is that serious literature now has a vast discrepancy between female and male authors and stories. Male stories have been relegated to genre fare and “unserious” literature aimed mostly to entertain. Equitable inclusion doesn’t look like this, and it’s very much been a back and forth devolution whereby publishing gradually became more female and slowly pushed men out of literary spaces, causing fewer books about men to be published, and thus reducing the number of male readers (along with many other causes). This of course doesn’t make up for men not reading literature with female characters - and the data supports this.
Interestingly enough, it seems men have been relegated to writing only in genre fiction - uncannily similar to how female authors were once relegated to only being able to write in specific genres (dare I say “chick lit” anyone?)
While I find the industry’s obsession with woke topics and identity politics absurd, and an absolute overcorrection, it’s also not surprising. The pendulum will certainly swing back in the other direction, as it usually does. Unfortunate for male writers who had nothing to do with their predecessors’ behavior - but to be fair, we aren’t exactly doing much to help ourselves either. Women have earned the spotlight for now. We should shoulder that burden and continue writing. There should be a space for both male and female authors, yes. But men should also not close themselves off from female oriented literature either. And vice versa.
I read constantly. Always have. I studiously avoid female authors as they all seem to write the same thing. Mainly I read mysteries, history biography. Haven’t read a new fiction or best seller in years.
There are plenty of great 20th century women mystery authors - Christie, PD James, Patricia Highsmith, Ruth Rendell, to name just a few. Rendell especially wrote some great psychological thrillers, sometimes from the POV of the killer rather than the detective.
I’ll give you those four especially pd James one of my all time favorites. Most new ones write the same plot over and over with too many words spent on ridiculous tear jerker side stories
"Wokeness treats the disappearance of men in publishing as a triumph of diversity."
When something disappears, it is hard to call that an expression of diversity.
There is currently a trend toward reducing active aggression.
Men are more actively aggressive than women.
At the same time, passive aggression (i.e., aggression in response to someone else's) is tolerated.
The result is that men become victims of preemptive "defensive" aggression.
They are accused of intolerance and oppression.
And this implies that it is justifiable to treat them the same way.
And so it is done.
P.S. Stanisław Lem, *Return from the Stars*. It describes the cultural degradation of a society that has rid itself of aggression.
Don't forget that the big publishing houses also use, "Buyback," so if any author is struggling they can buy huge numbers of that title back to boost that book onto the best seller list.
"I have no interest in navigating through displays of Ta-Nehisi Coates and the 1619 Project, woke outbursts, apologetics for Hamas, calls for destroying America and sexual fetish celebrations." Great!
"...while the classics are great, a literate society produces new works or it dies." Hm. How much do we need new works? Most of my reading is thousands of years old. Maybe that's where young men are drawing their inspiration. This happened half a millennium ago in Europe, and they called it a Renaissance. Not a renovation, but a rediscovery of classics.
Here's a fun book written for men by a man (me :-)):
https://www.amazon.com/Al-Wonderland-Cultured-Meeting-Relating-ebook/dp/B08SC1CP5S/ref=sr_1_1
Notice that it's on Amazon Kindle. No need to go the old-line publishing route.
Men went from book consumption to anime obsession where they can all dream of being OP hot guys with a harem of women hanging all over them. 😅
A lot of men want to do. They want achievement, rather than talk (read) about how something feels.
Perhaps this is why they are more drawn to online gaming and playing golf, or fixing property, rather than sitting (idly) with a book.
I think, in our materialistic and profit-driven society, it is hard to reach men with the written word (unless it comes in the form of a manual on how to achieve a specific goal).
“What is the return of investment in reading a book?”
Women are more inwardly oriented, towards their feelings. Men are more outwardly oriented, towards action and results.
Women simply make up the most accessible target group for literature.
To get men to read more, I believe we have to actively install it into male culture.
The data shows men read more non-fiction and women read more fiction.
My experience is that men either read incredibly dense or serious books or don't read. Sometimes there are men who read stuff like spy novels for entertainment, the way women read mystery or romance, but I do find, generally, men lean towards more serious content whether it's fiction or non-fiction. You look at what's out there in mainstream shops, and it's a bunch of millennial speak lol-so-relatable slop that you can't take seriously. I would love to see the publishing industry cater more to men again. I'd love to see the next Tom Clancy come out.
Terrifying. Men deserve better, men deserve fiction too.
I would like to announce that I am giving men better representation in my books not because I care about diversity but because my character happen to be like 50/50 split. I care about men and I understand what they want. I might be a woman but I can write something that I hope appeals to both audiences lol
mmm. the problem with the thesis here is that it implies women cannot write literature.
if the publishers won't take it? then make it anyway. that's what I'm doing.
and I'm a woman and I hardly ever read modern publications anyway. My favorite authors are Chesterton and Brian Jacques and I've also read Weir and Asimov.
I think the writer meant that men are much better at writing literature for men than women. A female writer will often always use a female protagonist and use female POVs. That could be great writing, but does it appeal to the reading men and their literary needs?
well to imply that "men are writing less literature for men, ergo literature is dying" is still to imply that literature is men's literature and women cannot write literature.
if it does not appeal to the reading men, too bad. we all have our own tastes. if men want to read more books about men, then they can write them. I myself have several books with several male POVs as well as largely female-centric books. I don't choose characters based on a gender divide: I choose their gender based on the psychology necessary for that role, because men and women do have different psychology.
My second observation was that men can do exactly what I'm doing. Write. Make the thing. Publish. Who cares what trad is doing? We are the readership and we can determine what the literary future becomes. Every single one of us.
Men can complain that men aren't writing. Men may not complain that I, a 20yo daycare teacher's assistant, am publishing my 12th book next month. There is a difference.
Congratulations on your new book! That's an awesome milestone 💎
Lol thank you. I'm publishing monthly though until 2028, so it doesn't feel that epic to me, but haha!
As a man, reading stories with female protagonists makes very little difference to me (and given the severe lack of female protagonists written by male authors over the last few centuries, I don’t think the current trend is all that troubling). What’s more troubling is that serious literature now has a vast discrepancy between female and male authors and stories. Male stories have been relegated to genre fare and “unserious” literature aimed mostly to entertain. Equitable inclusion doesn’t look like this, and it’s very much been a back and forth devolution whereby publishing gradually became more female and slowly pushed men out of literary spaces, causing fewer books about men to be published, and thus reducing the number of male readers (along with many other causes). This of course doesn’t make up for men not reading literature with female characters - and the data supports this.
Interestingly enough, it seems men have been relegated to writing only in genre fiction - uncannily similar to how female authors were once relegated to only being able to write in specific genres (dare I say “chick lit” anyone?)
While I find the industry’s obsession with woke topics and identity politics absurd, and an absolute overcorrection, it’s also not surprising. The pendulum will certainly swing back in the other direction, as it usually does. Unfortunate for male writers who had nothing to do with their predecessors’ behavior - but to be fair, we aren’t exactly doing much to help ourselves either. Women have earned the spotlight for now. We should shoulder that burden and continue writing. There should be a space for both male and female authors, yes. But men should also not close themselves off from female oriented literature either. And vice versa.
I read constantly. Always have. I studiously avoid female authors as they all seem to write the same thing. Mainly I read mysteries, history biography. Haven’t read a new fiction or best seller in years.
There are plenty of great 20th century women mystery authors - Christie, PD James, Patricia Highsmith, Ruth Rendell, to name just a few. Rendell especially wrote some great psychological thrillers, sometimes from the POV of the killer rather than the detective.
I’ll give you those four especially pd James one of my all time favorites. Most new ones write the same plot over and over with too many words spent on ridiculous tear jerker side stories