Craft Chat Books men want to read?

[Sarit]

I was listening to this and found it fascinating. Esp in light that my SFF is 'for men' lol...and I do take the time to explain some theories and concepts which might put off women. But really what it made me think about is the claim, and @AgentPete can maybe confirm or not: Most books in the pub biz are bought by women. Men 'don't buy books' by traditional publishers. Is this trend correct? if I query an agent/pub if they think this is not for women are they more likely to reject it?

 

[Jake E]

I am a man and I haven't bought a book published after 2020.*
I'm not going to say the books available from trad are bad. They are probably very good, but they don't appeal to me at all.
The last book I bought, was The Furthest Station by Ben Aronovich (2017), and I'm currently reading Children of Dune.
I can't speak for other men, but for me personally, I want action and adventure, not romance. Romance does not interest me in the slightest, but when I go to W H Smith or Waterstones, that's all there is.


*I did buy Wind and Truth for my wife for Christmas.

 

[Sarit]

I am a man and I haven't bought a book published after 2020.*
I'm not going to say the books available from trad are bad. They are probably very good, but they don't appeal to me at all.
The last book I bought, was The Furthest Station by Ben Aronovich (2017), and I'm currently reading Children of Dune.
I can't speak for other men, but for me personally, I want action and adventure, not romance. Romance does not interest me in the slightest, but when I go to W H Smith or Waterstones, that's all there is.


*I did buy Wind and Truth for my wife for Christmas.

That's exactly what the video says. And the guys says he finds the books he likes (action, adventure, war) in indie publishing cause trad is all romance...

 

[Jake E]

That's exactly what the video says. And the guys says he finds the books he likes (action, adventure, war) in indie publishing cause trad is all romance...

I'll watch the video after work, but it sounds like he's bang on.
I'm not angry about it - i don't understand the men that are - but I do hope it balances itself out in the coming years.

 

[BrianY]

Whatever happened to Zane Grey? How about Dick Francis? Mickey Spillane?

We've discussed this before - books aimed at regular guys were once a mainstay of commercial publishing. I myself would buy one (for a buck) and it would get me through a long bus ride or bad storm. Of course, my favorites had photographers as their main characters.

How many other whole genres have vanished?

 

[Jake E]

I think a lot of it is due to the rise of video games. Men, or rather I, don't read as much as I used to because I can get a good story from a game.

 

[Jake E]

God of War, The Last of Us, Final Fantasy *insert number* have all got amazing stories.

 

[Sarit]

I think a lot of it is due to the rise of video games. Men, or rather I, don't read as much as I used to because I can get a good story from a game.

That's what they say in the vid. That trad pub believe men don't ready b/s they play video games. But I think maybe it's the opposite--they play vid games because there is nothing to read?

 

[Jake E]

That's what they say in the vid. That trad pub believe men don't ready b/s they play video games. But I think maybe it's the opposite--they play vid games because there is nothing to read?

It's very 'chicken and egg'.

 

[Aethalope]

Perhaps a lot of guys have demonetised their reading with free online fiction, like LitRPG and isekai. I have several older teen students who both read and write voraciously, mostly isekai fanfiction about their favourite games (genshin, honkai, etc.). They'll happily read 100,000 words works in one go, but show them an actual physical book and they faint.

 

[Sarit]

Another trend that Sanderson has capitalised on is leather bound limited edition books which cost a fortune but really give a cool book experience. Faced with illegal downloads etc. this offers--mostly men--a USP to read/buy the actual book. It's very popular too in RPGs.

 

[AgentPete]

the claim, and @AgentPete can maybe confirm or not: Most books in the pub biz are bought by women. Men 'don't buy books' by traditional publishers. Is this trend correct?

As they say, it’s complicated.

Do men buy books? Yes – of course – but probably not as many nor as frequently as females. However, that’s such a gaping generalization as to be mostly worthless.

And frankly, I don’t even trust much of the research in this area. Publishing and market research are not easy bedfellows.

There’s an awful lot of uninformed speculation / outright gender bias going on, too, which complicates things.

One thing I would say is that reading stats from young people, especially young males, look pretty dire. They are tomorrow’s potential book buyers, and we’re largely ignoring them at the moment.

And, one more thing… if you commission books on the assumption that it’s mostly females who are going to buy them… then you’ve got yourself a nice, self-fulfilling prophecy…

 

[Pamela Jo]

This is why I think moving into audiobooks as a self-publishing move is new wave. Anyone who can do this with quality is going to be ahead of the trend and the zeitgeist.
As a follow on to the above podcast I'm putting this here.


He is spot on in his analysis of what self publishers want. And dont shoot the messengers- he is not wrong on the zeitgeist shift. Whether it was a bit of market manipulation is a discussion.
But listen to the chat GPT predictions here....

 

[Pamela Jo]

I certainly see this guy comes from a conservative religious background, not evangelical necessarily, but it is his filter. On the other hand it is a filter, that does not interfere with his rational look at the data out there. If you want to argue with him you have to do it without your own bias. It's like the blind guys trying to understand the elephant in the middle of the room. Whether you have the trunk or the tail does affect your personal understanding, but if you can have a classical argument about what you face, you can figure it out from all the different perspectives. Ex. the above diagram is attributed to "anthropologists" instead of saying "some who are considered biased" If this is your understanding of events then you will alter your behavior in keeping with that understanding. The above is avery clear diagram as to why so many young men voted Trump and those who got them that info won the election. I could wish that more young men thought about Greece 3 or 4 times DAY -INSTEAD of Rome. I suspect because the Greeks were conquered by Rome-they are considered female. Trump's line that he prefers winners to those who were made POWS.

 

[Pamela Jo]

Another interesting discussion on publishing and marketing that just discusses what works.

 

[Pamela Jo]

And here is a discussion that is really about how religious book publishers are a growing niche. And here the religious bias is pretty clear.

 

[Sarit]

Another interesting discussion on publishing and marketing that just discusses what works.

I watched this as well, but I can tell you that for myself I did not start out wanting to write a series, just that my story is Shogun length novel that is too long by today's standards. So what to do? Make it into a series.... But in general I agree with him and would prefer to publish a Shogun novel than to chop it up.

 

[MattScho]

Okay, listening to this, and the guest is spouting the same bullshit stat that the boys in Adolescence are using, the 80-20 nonsense. It's based on interpretations and mistatements of studies referenced by the guest on this show (that 80 percent of women reproduce and only 20 percent of men do. That is not what studies actually say.
"By age 40, 85% of women had had a birth, and 76% of men had fathered a child." That's from an NHstats study for the CDC. It's a modern study, but matches the numbers going back as far as the stats.
Men do like info dumps, but the info should be correct, and this is a horrible bit of nonsense that must be stopped. The global population didn't climb from 300 million in 1 A.D. to 8.2 billion today because 20 percent of the male population, or 10 percent of the total population, had kids.
Sorry, end rant.

The video is interesting, and makes a good argument for those writing fiction to appeal to men to consider independent and self publishing.

 

[Pamela Jo]

I watched this as well, but I can tell you that for myself I did not start out wanting to write a series, just that my story is Shogun length novel that is too long by today's standards. So what to do? Make it into a series.... But in general I agree with him and would prefer to publish a Shogun novel than to chop it up.

My take away from the video is that you have to decide if you are writing for your self or for readers. If you want readers then you write what is easiest to market to them and for them to read. You look at the statistics to decide how to target your readers..
In fact in several of his videos he contradicts what he meant by info dump in the 'what men want to read' video. Male or female-readers dont like info that takes them out of an immersive experience. If you are a good enough writer to incorporate information into the story seamlessly then frankly gender doesn't come into it. In fact you can argue that the romantasy authors are giving as much info as Lee Reacher, it's just not info that people into hard sci fi or like more actionwantt to know.

 

[Pamela Jo]

Okay, listening to this, and the guest is spouting the same bullshit stat that the boys in Adolescence are using, the 80-20 nonsense. It's based on interpretations and mistatements of studies referenced by the guest on this show (that 80 percent of women reproduce and only 20 percent of men do. That is not what studies actually say.
"By age 40, 85% of women had had a birth, and 76% of men had fathered a child." That's from an NHstats study for the CDC. It's a modern study, but matches the numbers going back as far as the stats.
Men do like info dumps, but the info should be correct, and this is a horrible bit of nonsense that must be stopped. The global population didn't climb from 300 million in 1 A.D. to 8.2 billion today because 20 percent of the male population, or 10 percent of the total population, had kids.
Sorry, end rant.

The video is interesting, and makes a good argument for those writing fiction to appeal to men to consider independent and self publishing.

I'd love to have your and Jake's take on self-publishing in this video, esp re Amazon and KDP.

 

[wrightstuff]

I was listening to this and found it fascinating. Esp in light that my SFF is 'for men' lol...and I do take the time to explain some theories and concepts which might put off women. But really what it made me think about is the claim, and @AgentPete can maybe confirm or not: Most books in the pub biz are bought by women. Men 'don't buy books' by traditional publishers. Is this trend correct? if I query an agent/pub if they think this is not for women are they more likely to reject it?

I'm interested in this one - I'm seeing a lot of videos about this in my YouTube feed, with conflicting claims, but mostly that books targeted at men are are hard to sell to publishers.

 

[Pamela Jo]

I'm interested in this one - I'm seeing a lot of videos about this in my YouTube feed, with conflicting claims, but mostly that books targeted at men are are hard to sell to publishers.

The given being expressed that books with action etc... are "masculine" is troubling to me. If you accept that def. you are telling a lot of women that they are weepy, dragon huggers and they can fuck off as readers. Or that they are actually autistic - ie "male-brained." FFS. Now I'm not only a TERF, I'm a male wo the advantage of peeing standing up.

The above conservative religious bias accepts a view of femininity that is inaccurate and full of pre-judgement. Here's where our opinions overlap. The publishing world is so risk adverse that they take only what seems a "no-brainer." Their statistics show them that young women on tick tock are spending the most money on books.

They also show that young men are spending even MORE on gaming - where the big money is. Books are just gleaning what is left over. If publishers thought they could go for the big bucks they would, but fighting to get men away from gaming would require more marketing skills and money resources than they have. As is pointed out by Novel Marketing elsewhere.

It would be nice to think that it's those girls going thru the slushpile ignoring you who are to blame, but it's probably going to be market forces if you look at it logically. The people telling those girls what to chose are mostly males making CEO bean counter decisions.

Write something that makes Britain feel good about itself and more clever than the Americans as Ian Fleming did post WW2 and make it as readable and engaging and I'm betting you're in a bidding war before you can say Jorden Peterson, over 10 million copies and counting.

The Novel Marketing guy is spot on when he goes through how few books are actually sold by the big publishers. His predictions for publishing in 2025 are actually more interesting than his conservative Christian views on zeitgeist. (Have a look at that "hard man vs weak man" chart and tell me that thinking is not behind the current destruction of American democracy. As the anthropologists whose opinions he touts "prove", weak men have taken over and strong men must rescue the world. Or strong Man?)

I genuinely wish that the men who think about ancient Rome 3 or 4 times a day thought about classical Greece instead. If so they would recognise it is sophism that weakened Athenian democracy. It's why Aristotle invented his system of logic to counter it.

If you think your actiony,' info dumping' story has what it takes. Submit it here. This foundation is dedicated to encouraging and publishing just those kinds of books. Prize | Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation

As is brought up in other Novel Marketing videos, Christian publishers are also looking for these "masculine" stories. Why not submit there? However as the NC Pastor featured in the video on trad vs self found out, once published by even a niche publisher you face financial realities that may make you turn to self-publishing.

 

[anaximander]

With the exception of Kindle stats being excluded from sales statistics I think this video presented sweeping generalizations about men and women and what they prefer.

The above conservative religious bias accepts a view of femininity that is inaccurate and full of pre-judgement.

I stopped watching when they claimed that in an egalitarian society women gravitated towards nursing and men towards engineering. Of course, referring to Jordan Peterson's writings should've raised a red flag for me.

 

[Hannah F]

Maybe the guys are reading with a torch under the bed-covers because all this social media stuff ingrains in them that it's a freaky thing for "strong" men to do. And why, anyways, are they stereotyping the "strong" man? Maybe it's not that we should keep up with the zeitgeist but that the zeitgeist needs to change.

 

[Hannah F]

With the exception of Kindle stats being excluded from sales statistics I think this video presented sweeping generalizations about men and women and what they prefer.


I stopped watching when they claimed that in an egalitarian society women gravitated towards nursing and men towards engineering. Of course, referring to Jordan Peterson's writings should've raised a red flag for me.

Absolutely!

 

[AgentPete]

With the exception of Kindle stats being excluded from sales statistics I think this video presented sweeping generalizations about men and women and what they prefer.


I stopped watching when they claimed that in an egalitarian society women gravitated towards nursing and men towards engineering. Of course, referring to Jordan Peterson's writings should've raised a red flag for me.

I haven't watched any of the videos, it's v difficult to do so if I'm out and about (waiting for a lunch date at the moment). It would be v helpful to have a precis of the points being made in future, pls.

As @anaximander says, if that's really what the video is saying, these guys are simply revealing their own biases / prejudices.

Working a YouTube channel is hard! You have to provoke to get the views and revenue. Take all this kind of "advice" with a large dose of sodium.

 

[wrightstuff]

The given being expressed that books with action etc... are "masculine" is troubling to me. If you accept that def. you are telling a lot of women that they are weepy, dragon huggers and they can fuck off as readers. Or that they are actually autistic - ie "male-brained." FFS. Now I'm not only a TERF, I'm a male wo the advantage of peeing standing up.

The above conservative religious bias accepts a view of femininity that is inaccurate and full of pre-judgement. Here's where our opinions overlap. The publishing world is so risk adverse that they take only what seems a "no-brainer." Their statistics show them that young women on tick tock are spending the most money on books.

They also show that young men are spending even MORE on gaming - where the big money is. Books are just gleaning what is left over. If publishers thought they could go for the big bucks they would, but fighting to get men away from gaming would require more marketing skills and money resources than they have. As is pointed out by Novel Marketing elsewhere.

It would be nice to think that it's those girls going thru the slushpile ignoring you who are to blame, but it's probably going to be market forces if you look at it logically. The people telling those girls what to chose are mostly males making CEO bean counter decisions.

Write something that makes Britain feel good about itself and more clever than the Americans as Ian Fleming did post WW2 and make it as readable and engaging and I'm betting you're in a bidding war before you can say Jorden Peterson, over 10 million copies and counting.

The Novel Marketing guy is spot on when he goes through how few books are actually sold by the big publishers. His predictions for publishing in 2025 are actually more interesting than his conservative Christian views on zeitgeist. (Have a look at that "hard man vs weak man" chart and tell me that thinking is not behind the current destruction of American democracy. As the anthropologists whose opinions he touts "prove", weak men have taken over and strong men must rescue the world. Or strong Man?)

I genuinely wish that the men who think about ancient Rome 3 or 4 times a day thought about classical Greece instead. If so they would recognise it is sophism that weakened Athenian democracy. It's why Aristotle invented his system of logic to counter it.

If you think your actiony,' info dumping' story has what it takes. Submit it here. This foundation is dedicated to encouraging and publishing just those kinds of books. Prize | Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation

As is brought up in other Novel Marketing videos, Christian publishers are also looking for these "masculine" stories. Why not submit there? However as the NC Pastor featured in the video on trad vs self found out, once published by even a niche publisher you face financial realities that may make you turn to self-publishing.

Thanks for the summary...I'm now scared to watch that particular video. There are half a dozen cans of worms there I'd rather not know about.