Are men no longer writing mainstream fiiction as much as in the past?

[mirafrida]

Interestingly, there was a NY Times op-ed on this topic, with regard to "literary fiction" just a few days ago.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/07/opinion/men-fiction-novels.html

A couple of snippets relevant to the various points made above:

Novels are increasingly written by women and read by women. In 2004, about half the authors on the New York Times fiction best-seller list were women and about half men; this year, the list looks to be more than three-quarters women. According to multiple reports, women readers now account for about 80 percent of fiction sales.

In 2022 the novelist Joyce Carol Oates wrote on Twitter that “a friend who is a literary agent told me that he cannot even get editors to read first novels by young white male writers, no matter how good.”

 

[Bramblethorn]

Interesting. If there's one genre that I think of as male dominated (apart from westerns), it's sci fi and fantasy. With the clear exception of Ursula Le Guin.

It's shifted a lot over the years, though it depends how you count it. I think Tolkien and Martin still account for a large chunk of fantasy sales, but from the "what's new" section women are pretty prominent these days.

The Hugo Awards are kind of like the Oscars for SFF. I'm not suggesting they're a perfect gauge of tastes over the years; the voting process is kinda wonky, there have been a couple of vote-rigging scandals, and last year in particular was a fiasco. But they're probably okay for taking the temperature of things.

Looking at the "Best Novel" category, over the 1980s the nominations ran about 83% male/17% female. But for the last ten years (2015-2024) it's been something like 34% male/64% female/2% non-binary.

The growth in female authors isn't just about fantasy-romance either. Looking at some of those recent nominees/winners:

• Martha Wells: The Murderbot Diaries, a series about a corporate security robot gone rogue. Zero romance - Murderbot is emphatically asexual, dislikes being touched, and generally misanthropic, though it does end up forming a few friendships with humans and others. Witch King has some "by the way they were lovers" along the way but it's not a strong element of the story.
• Ursula Vernon: does write a fantasy romance series, but the one she has in that list is more "dark fairy tale" - I think there's a romance in there but again, not the main focus.
• Ann Leckie: space opera.
• Tamsyn Muir: space necromancy in a grim dark future populated largely by New Zealanders. There are things in there which can be taken as parallels to romance, in a rather dark and fucked-up kind of way, but it's much heavier on gory death and body horror than on sex/romance.
• Cat Valente: what if Douglas Adams wrote the Eurovision Song Contest but in space? Love is a big theme but romantic love less so.
• Ryka Aoki: violin teacher who has a deal to deliver the souls of her students to Hell takes on her last pupil. There is a romance side arc in this one but it's not the main theme of the book.

I haven't read all those books and there might be some that would count as "romance", but I don't think it'd be more than a small percentage of those nominees/winners.

 

[HordHolm]

How has celebrity publishing changed this? E.g. Jennifer Anniston has just had a kids' book published. Not exactly literary fiction, of course (unless you're three), but it does seem that people with profile are occupying the space. And this obviously pushes out anyone trying to submit something first time, as the celebs have the name recognition, and thus the pulling power that publishers crave.

 

[WhiteTailDarkTip]

There are dozens and dozens of new fantasy and sci-fi books coming out every month. Most of them are not very good, to put it mildly.

Oh, you got that right. There is the occasional diamond in the rough but there's a terrible lot of garbage

 

[StillStunned]

There are dozens and dozens of new fantasy and sci-fi books coming out every month. Most of them are not very good, to put it mildly.

Oh, you got that right. There is the occasional diamond in the rough but there's a terrible lot of garbage

I was just discussing yesterday with a fellow writer that the same seems to be true of the SF&F category here on Lit. Even compared with a year ago, the daily New Stories list is saturated, and you'll be luck if your story stays there for three days.

I suppose I ought to hold up my hand here, having published five stories in that category in the past three months. But it's getting very hard to get noticed. So much so that I put my most recent story in E&V instead.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I was just discussing yesterday with a fellow writer that the same seems to be true of the SF&F category here on Lit. Even compared with a year ago, the daily New Stories list is saturated, and you'll be luck if your story stays there for three days.

I suppose I ought to hold up my hand here, having published five stories in that category in the past three months. But it's getting very hard to get noticed. So much so that I put my most recent story in E&V instead.

I've been saying that for a while now. There are too many stories being published every day and many good stories aren't being given the proper chance to reach the readership. In some categories, I've seen more than twenty, even close to thirty stories being published on a single day. Good luck with your story being found there. I even voiced some possible solutions but yeah, no one really cares.
It's good to see that someone else recognizes the problem.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

If I had to guess I'd say only 10% of the authors unknown to me are men. Is that true?? Or just an accident of the moment?

It would depend heavily on how many of the male authors were already known to you. There's been a big shift in the last 15 years to get more women authors published (and more women on TV in panel shows and the like), starting from a very low base in some areas. I notice it in non-fiction sciencey/politics stuff - it used to be rare to see a female author, and now they probably make up at least a third. It's very rare to see a panel show (usually host plus 4 or 6 comics) without at least one of three guests being a woman, now, often two. Though regular members and hosts are more likely male, still.

There's a lot of women in SF at the moment, but plenty of men around too. Crime has always had plenty of women and seems the same. Romance and chick-lit authors have female names, but I'm told many are men with pen names. 'Classic' fiction? Still seems to be mostly male, with women's works more likely to be deemed 'genre' fic, but I think 'mainstream' fiction is just not as widely bought and read as most genres.

Apparently women buy and read way more books than men, so it wouldn't be surprising if publishers follow that money - the question is what are men reading now? Blogs and podcasts? Magazines? And how do publishers cash in on that?

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Even compared with a year ago, the daily New Stories list is saturated, and you'll be luck if your story stays there for three days.

Not just SFF, though I'm not sure what you mean by staying on the New list - the yellow New label stays 7 days and if you click on 'More New (category) stories', all of them appear - just there will be a lot of them before yours, after the first day.

I posted in BDSM last week and my story didn't fit on the first screen of results. It still has the New label, but there's now 98 stories ahead of it in the listing. The vast majority of which are very short, and are just tellings of a scene, often a physically-impossible fantasy one. Other categories seem to also be getting overwhelmed over the last year.

 

[StillStunned]

Not just SFF, though I'm not sure what you mean by staying on the New list - the yellow New label stays 7 days and if you click on 'More New (category) stories', all of them appear - just there will be a lot of them before yours, after the first day.

Where do you see a "More New [category]" button? I just see the, what, twenty-five most recent stories, then "Random", then "Hall of Fame" (both of which have a "More" button).

The good news is that E&V is still a good place. My new story was third out of four stories published yesterday, with two more added today. The oldest "New" story is from 7 Dec.

 

[MajorRewrite]

On the current New York Times fiction bestseller list there are 9 male and 6 female authors.

 

[Areala-chan]

Something else I've noticed becoming a big problem in the past 10 years is the James Patterson effect. Patterson is a branding juggernaut, and his publishers have long known that slapping his name on something, with or without a co-writer, is the pathway towards easy sales. The result has been an explosion and proliferation of Patterson into areas far outside his traditional a-new-chapter-every-two-pages thrillers written for adults. Patterson is not only now found in teen fiction, young adult fiction, science fiction and fantasy, and children's chapter books, but also in non-fiction areas on topics as diverse as true crime, medicine, politics, military, history, sports, and biography.

I have no evidence to back this up, but if new white male authors are having trouble getting published these days, it may partially be because they're having to increasingly compete with the three dozen books James Patterson puts his name on every single year.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Where do you see a "More New [category]" button? I just see the, what, twenty-five most recent stories, then "Random", then "Hall of Fame" (both of which have a "More" button)
The good news is that E&V is still a good place. My new story was third out of four stories published yesterday, with two more added today. The oldest "New" story is from 7 Dec.

Could be because I'm viewing on mobile? There's over 100 stories when you click on More New BDSM Sex Stories, back to 5 Dec.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Something else I've noticed becoming a big problem in the past 10 years is the James Patterson effect. Patterson is a branding juggernaut, and his publishers have long known that slapping his name on something, with or without a co-writer, is the pathway towards easy sales. The result has been an explosion and proliferation of Patterson into areas far outside his traditional a-new-chapter-every-two-pages thrillers written for adults. Patterson is not only now found in teen fiction, young adult fiction, science fiction and fantasy, and children's chapter books, but also in non-fiction areas on topics as diverse as true crime, medicine, politics, military, history, sports, and biography.

I have no evidence to back this up, but if new white male authors are having trouble getting published these days, it may partially be because they're having to increasingly compete with the three dozen books James Patterson puts his name on every single year.

That's certainly part of the issue.

I do think as Indy publishing becomes more mainstream it will matter less and less.
I know at one point if you were self publishing it was regarded as a sign that your work wasn't any good. That stigma seems to be dying out, and going independent is a viable (admittedly challenging) pathway.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Just looked at Waterstones bestselling paperbacks of the year. About 60% female, Lee Child and Richard Osman having 3 entries each. Interestingly, of the ten names I had to look up to see if they were male or female (Japanese or Korean), every one of them was female. And apparently Danielle Steele is still going. Though like Virginia Andrews, I suspect she's a consortium of ghost writers of varied sexes, nowadays.

 

[AG31]

As Chloe pointed out in her post, women (and specifically female romance readers) are far and away the largest driver behind physical book sales within the traditional publishing sphere: the average woman reads more, and she reads more regularly, than the average guy. So with that in mind, it would be foolish for the market to focus the bulk of its attention on anyone but the bulk of their readers.

I've decided, some time ago, that I'm a rare bird on many fronts, but now I'm wondering if this is another one. How many of you women here on AH prefer male fiction writers (mainstream - not Lit), all things being equal? I know I do, but I'm not sure why. I reach for the male author in the new books section of the library.

 

[AG31]

Now, if we could just get the garment industry to do the same with pockets in our pants...

Hear, hear!!!!!!!

 

[AG31]

I've been saying that for a while now. There are too many stories being published every day and many good stories aren't being given the proper chance to reach the readership.

Ever since AI became an issue, I've taken the position that even mediocre writers need to be given an outlet in a place like Literotica, where the motivation to read or write is not always literary excellence. But the more I see of the burden that electronic submissions are putting on publishing companies, the more I'm willing to jettison the poor writers in favor of quality.

 

[AG31]

Something else I've noticed becoming a big problem in the past 10 years is the James Patterson effect. Patterson is a branding juggernaut, and his publishers have long known that slapping his name on something, with or without a co-writer, is the pathway towards easy sales.

Good point. It's why I stopped reading Patterson over a decade ago (James, not Richard North). I first noticed the phenomenon with Wilbur Smith. The drop in quality was astonishing.

 

[AG31]

Who knew this thread would get so active!! I debated for a week or two about whether it was even worth taking up space in AH.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Good point. It's why I stopped reading Patterson over a decade ago (James, not Richard North). I first noticed the phenomenon with Wilbur Smith. The drop in quality was astonishing.

Not my quote.

 

[AG31]

Not my quote.

Apologies to @Areala-chan.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

If you peruse a website such as querytracker.com and look at what agents and publishers are seeking, it is predominantly authors from marginalized or under-represented segments of society. (Give it a few years and male authors might be considered one of those)

There is also a push for more D.E.I where characters and story arcs are concerned

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Both the funny and scary thing is that it's not unimaginable anymore that one day, all art will be done according to PC quotas.
Well, my stories at least should profit from that.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I don't think women writers being a large percentage of published authors is all that new a thing. George Eliot AKA Mary Ann Evans. Poets Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell were Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Brontë, Cotton Mather Mills was Elizabeth Gaskell, Zeb-un-Nissa The Imperial Princess of the Mughal Empire, wrote under the male name "Makhfi," which translates to "The Hidden One." Even J.K. Rowling (J.K. being generic sort of short cut hid who she was. Even so, Rowling used the nom de plume Robert Galbraith to write crime fiction without hype or expectation. Ann Petry was the first African American woman to sell over 1 million copies, publishing under the name Arnold Petri back in 1946.

The story Little Women was originally published under the name A M Barnard, AKA Louise May Alcott. Writer George Sand's real name was Amandine Lucie Aurore Dupin. Nora Roberts also writes under the pseudonym J.D. Robb. Then we have Mary Bright, known as George Egerton. Fatemeh Farahani, known as Shahein Farahani. Julia Constance Fletcher, known as George Fleming. Ann Rule published her stories under the names Arthur Stone, Chris Hansen, and Andy Stack.

There are more, but you get the picture. Nowadays, the reverse is also true.

 

[Naughtylit81]

Look up the term "Male and pale is stale" and you will get your answer.

For the last approximate 10 years male, particularly white male, creators have been specifically shut out of many parts of the entertainment industry. Not 100% of course, established creators have managed to stay in and a few new creators of course do make it. As a whole though this has become a major part of the business strategy across all sectors of entertainment.