On a positive note, when I first stumbled on 'booktube' a few years ago it was pretty hard to find male voices discussing the type of books I was interested in. But now there are many excellent male booktubers covering a broad spectrum of literature - it's been great to see. Maybe that will help encourage publishers to broaden their output.
Yes, that would be a good thing. Trouble is, at least in the UK, Publishers are fixated on TikTok, which is of course short attention span format and dominated by young female 'influencers' who are influential but ultimately have very little to say other than preaching to the YA converted. But we'll keep cracking on!
Well put in the pre amble there Steve. I also think it still shocks people new to the trade or outside of it that books are actually marketed at men and women specifically. It never fails to make me laugh how surprised people are by this. To re-assert your point about publishing in general, all anyone needs to do is look at most "summer reading" frontlists to know how lopsided the playing field is. Obviously just turning on the news shows us that the world in general is very much NOT aimed at women and their basic rights as human beings, this can make this type of discussion hard, but it is an important discussion to have nonetheless. Bravo mate.
Yes, things are so polarised now that people too readily assumed because there is a general trend that it is similarly skewed in all areas of culture. Not so! See you soon!
Here's a contemporary contextual quotation I'd urge those who doubt any of my statements here, from 'Circus of Dreams' by John Walsh (a book about British Literary Culture in the 80s) that refers to the situation now (Walsh spent decades in publishing, journalism and publicity in the book world): "There is also a problem with modern author acceptibility. In the 1980s, female authors seemed to have a harder time getting published than men; the first appearance of the Best of Young British Novelists promotion counted only six women in the twenty writers. Today, new male writers struggle to be signed up. A search of 'The Bookseller' (the key journal of the trade) news archive for 2020 revealed that, of the seventy-seven debut novels that featured in the news pages, only 7 were by men.". That's 24% females in the early 80s measure to 9% males in the 2020 measure. There are other similar statistics that would support the implications of this.
The Demon was the first Selby book I read, as a happy accident. I'd gone to look for Last Exit to Brooklyn at the library sometime in the 90s. They didn't have it, but they had The Demon so I borrowed that. I found it such a strong novel that I was surprised I'd never seen any references to it. I've seen articles about how most fiction readers currently are women, but I wonder if that's just looking at contemporary novels. I read a lot of fiction, but barely anything first published after the 20th century, as there's very little that's published now that looks interesting to me. When "men's fiction" is discussed online (such as in groups about men's adventure or hardboiled novels) most of the books are pre-1990s.
Yes, 'The Demon' is ridiculously obscure given Selby's profile - but I put that down to readers being too canonical, thinking 'Right, I've done "Last Exit", now let's move on'. You see the same phenomenon with Highsmith's Ripley books - the first sells like hot cakes, but hardly anyone reads the sequels (the second and third of which are better than their illustrious predecessor to me). Your point about women and contemporary fiction is exactly mine - I'm talking about now, not then: one of the reasons why many men are not reading much contemporary material is (1) as you say, there are so often better old books - but in any time there is always lots of dross which doesn't survive- and (2) the great stuff that is out there doesn't get promoted or marketed in the right way: too many females in publishing can mean that some of them fail to recognise what will really appeal to literate male readers, so it doesn't get promoted. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy (check Chuck Litka's comment below and my response) that of course the fiction market for contemporary books will remain hugely feminised if books with more of a male appeal are not publicised. What sells books is publicity, no matter how good or bad they are, as there is so much published that huge numbers of people feel they need the guidance of reviews and where a book is placed in a bookshop (is at at the front on a display in huge quantities, or is it a single copy spine on in a section?), so if females in publishing are unable to step outside the box of the popular (i.e. contemporary light or cod-literary fiction by women aimed at women), we get a steady move toward a more female-centric industry. Generalisations, of course, but not insignificant. Thanks for your comments!
I'm appalled ( but not surprised) at how you were treated. The show was obviously more about agenda then books. I think we're brave to go on the show and behaved like a man , a gentleman in every sense of the word. Total respect Steve. Don't know about publishing but an overview of entertainment, gaming etc shows the tide is turning again " the message"
Excellent piece. And I look forward to hearing more on this important issue. There is a case for saying that men do read just as much as women. It is just that their reading matter of choice is more likely to be old books sourced second-hand where statistics are impossible to quantify. My observation is that women are more heavily influenced by involvement in book clubs and reading circles which promotes the reading of new fiction. Why this should be so is a topic in itself. But surely the febrile over-reactive socio-political climate we all now find ourselves in cannot be ignored. And consequently any man who reads for pleasure will likely find more to his taste in the attitudes and certainties inculcated by old fiction than in a 21st century diatribe that holds the follies and supposed privileges of his gender culpable for the problems appertaining to.......any issue that you can think of.
Hi Richard, sincere apologies for taking so long to reply. In researching '100 BFM' I encountered research undertaken by major media companies that confirmed men who read actually read more than women and more widely across a larger range of platforms. I would argue that there are more truly 'serious' male readers than there are 'serious' female readers.Your observation re book groups is entirely borne out by my decades of experience in the industry. Also, an excessive focus on 'new literary fiction' doesn't always make for 'good reading' either - it's analagous to just listening to whatever is in the music charts then moving on as hits fall from favour. All the stats show that men read more non-fiction than women as a generalised rule. Non-fiction readers are also more likely to read conceptual fiction such as SF & Modernism.
Look forward to more literary novel reviews. There has always been a crossover between science fiction and literary fiction. Brian Aldiss, J G Ballard, Aldous Huxley George Orwell H G Wells maybe Martin Amis and Ian McEwan. I read a wide range of fiction, but am drawn to the weird and stranger subject matter. But on the subject of men's books I can also devour the stereotypical men's writers like Douglas Reeman or Dick Francis or Frederick Forsyth or John LeCarre.
Hey Richard, thanks. There is already some mainstream/literary fiction on the channel and there will be more, as my tastes in genre fiction are tempered for quality by my general reading. I have always preferred Literary SF, probably because it was my entry point (Wells, Wyndham, Doyle). The pre-pulp existence of the Scientific Romance in the UK ensured this for me. Check the backlist and watch this space...
Thanks for subscribing. Yep, BFM is still in print (or at least print on demand maybe), I'm certainly proud of it as a guide to some stuff that doesn't see much action.
Off topic but I have always wondered if The Last Exit to Brooklyn was in any way an inspiration to Zelazny in Roadmarks. Sorry (but not surprised) that you had such a harrowing time in that interview.
Well, Roger was clearly a well read guy, so who knows? The interview wasn't so much harrowing as irritating and typical of the injustice you'd expect. However, the producer had the recording edited in my favour and the first printing sold out in 3 days, so it just shows people like to think for themselves. Cheers!
I never got on with Selby. That long rape/murder in Last Exit put me right off and I never finished it. Just for fun, I've put together my top 20 books for men. I haven't read your book (yet!) so I wonder how much crossover there will be. I suspect that mine will be less "cutting edge" than yours. I have come to prefer a conventional well-turned sentence as I get older. Some of my choices edge towards fantasy, but no straight SF. Here goes. Robertson Davies, Christopher Fowler, Patrick O'Brian, George MacDonald Frazer, Gerald Kersh, Jack Trevor Story, David Mitchell, Howard Waldrop, John Crowley, Edmund Crispin, Rex Stout, Joe R Lansdale, Kim Newman, Alan Furst, Philip Kerr, Graham Joyce, William Boyd, Peter Straub, John Le Carre, Len Deighton. Any of those on your list?
That's an interesting list. Quite a few of my favourite authors get a mention, so I'll definitely keep an eye out for the ones on it that are new to me.
Well, my 'list' - inasmuch as my list books aren't list books but doorways and in this case I wanted to highlight books I felt deserved wider attention, virtually none of these have entries in my book (and in the '100 Must Reads' series, we decided to NOT include the same book in any two volumes -once it was in one, it was out of the running. Also, it includes non-fiction and is pretty much (like the SF volume) historically and thematically based, so I was picking subjects and themes before picking authors, except where I had a strong urge to include some more subjective choices of under-appreciated books. Now, it would be different by at least 30% I'd say. I've read almost all of the authors you select and sold books by all of them, of course. When one puts together a book that aims to cover a broad swathe of themes/subjects, this is uppermost in mind before actual writers. If my books were my 'Best/Favourite' selections, the 'list' element of their composition would be a lot more prevalent and relevant. You have some great names there and I've actually hosted a few of them for bookshop events over the years...
Great story. I agree with you about the feminization of the book world; I feel increasingly marginalized. When culture can't even come to an agreement on what constitutes a woman... well, you know. The Demon sounds like an interesting read and I will seek it out. Try to stay cool.
Well yes, the Identity Politics struggle is ultimatelythe while Orwell thing: "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows". It's a great shame when these issues can hardly be discussed anymore without the shouters drowning out the rational. Do try 'The Demon', it's incredibly powerful.
Perhaps the statistics I've seen -- women account for 80% of fiction sales in the US, Canada, and the UK might explain why there are so many books aimed at women. Perhaps the fact that so many of the books are aimed at women might explain why only 20% of the sales are to men. Still, publishing is a business, so who can blame publishers for selling to the people who are buying?
Well, you have to ask why so many fiction sales are to women. Is it because publishing is now overly-staffed by women who do not know how to market fiction to men (that for me is a key question)? Also, was it always this way? Almost certainly not. Thirdly, why do women as a rule read less non-fiction (and I'm excluding manuals from this caveat)? Publishing is a business - and of course I've worked in bookselling for decades and rely on sales- so it would serve publishers better at the bottom lime if they knew how to market and sell to men and women. Why just focus on 50% of the human race when you could focus on 100%? That's the challenge.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal I'd say that publishing is a risk aversion business -- they sell books to the half of the population that buys them. If the world of publishing is dominated by women, and from the list of agents I recently looked into, that certainly seems to be the case, perhaps it is because women like books & reading, more than men do. Nor can one overlook the importance of book clubs, that are also dominated by women. I suspect that men find all the books they need regardless of the publishers' focus. Your point, I believe, is that if they published more books aimed at men, or men & women, more men would buy and read books. Maybe, but publishers -- female or male -- have little incentive to take the chance as long as they can sell books to avid female readers. And really, publishers make most of their money from bestsellers, books that appeal to both men and women. In short, guess I don't see much of a problem with the way things stand now.
@@chucklitka2503 - No, it's not about what's being published, it's about prominence and marketing (see my comments to Evening Reader's post above). As I've already said, if they can't see an incentive to sell to a wider market, they're not really being very entrepreneurial, they're just playing safe (which yes, businesses have to do to a degree). But why let grass grow under your feet when your competitors could steal a march on you? As I've made clear, I see the reality on the ground every day and have done for nearly forty years - I speak to more readers in a month than most writers and publishers will in a lifetime. Book Clubs are generally female-dominated and they are usually joined by people who 'want to read more' but they usually end up as being groups who read the same bestsellers people are reading anyway (again, I've run several, so I know, plus I talk to people running their own on a regular basis). What I have done personally is popularise certain books and authors hugely in the city where I work (to both men and women), authors who don't have - or in one case didn't have (he's now a national bestseller) - much of a national profile. The response to these authors shows that there are failures in marketing/placement of books. This is, of course, the true art of bookselling: instead of simply being a middleman who presents what the mass media is publicising, you pick up a cause and run with it. It would be complacent and unethical of me to be satisfied with a status quo that actually leaves large numbers of readers unsatisfied. Finally, I think you're making an assumption about bestsellers - in fiction, there are vast numbers of bestsellers which are predominantly bought and read by women, but far fewer exclusively read by men. This alone proves the commercial imbalance it's not about inclusion, it's about a business opportunity to sell more books that would actually please more readers.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal It has been an interesting discussion across all the comments. You are certainly far more knowledgeable about the trade than I am, and you are no doubt right about their marketing efforts being directed to the half of the population that buys most of the fiction -- simply because they do play it safe. They have multi-national corporate masters to answer to who don't look beyond the next quarter or two. Hate to be cynical, but we may have to wait a while for men to have their moment in publishing.
@@chucklitka2503 -I think you've made many good points, Chuck. Publishers are risk averse, which is understandable because they so often operate on a 'throw mud against the wall' basis i.e. too many titles being published and too little marketing. They do pay it safe, most of them. Personally, I think everyone who works in publishing should, at some point, work in a bookshop. Quite a few do as a way into the industry, but few of them moving into publishing are veterans (though I know some notable exceptions) and some just want to get away from the 'hands dirty' side of the industry so they can work with books but not with readers, which is often more challenging! Thanks again for your comments, hope you keep enjoying the channel!
How can you have book for men and not include First Blood by David Morrell? If that is not book for men, I don't know what is. Of course, maybe it was included in some other book. If that is the case I apologise in advance.
..because it either is or was intended to feature in another book in the Good Reading Guides series: part of our project was to not repeat content, so this meant that we were able to cover a wider range of titles over the whole series, which ran to something like ten books.
Well, that could be a factor. In my school, I have to say that female English teachers and librarians were enormously encouraging toe me (as were the smaller number of male English teachers who tutored me - one, to be exact!). I think those were different times, though. The myth that 'boys don't like to read' is largely created by some women who seem fixated on the idea that if you don't read fiction, you're not reading. In my experience, men are (and this is of course a generalisation) more likely to read a wider range of non-fiction as well as fiction from an early age (I know I did). In my research for '100 Must Read Books For Men', the only surveys I could find revealed that as a rule, men actually read more than women and across a wider range of platforms- books, magazines, newspapers etc. Ultimately, it is individuals who count rather than genders. But more needs to be done in making the world recognise that an imbalance of gender in publishing circles leads to an inability to publish and market fiction to men.
How about starting an SF magazine for all those gifted writers who cannot be bothered to wait 15 years or more to get published by a rabidly depressing pompous publishing world?
'The Demon' you mean? Yep, up to a point- but I think it's a good bit more serious than your summation implies. Its ferocity is really quite something.
On a positive note, when I first stumbled on 'booktube' a few years ago it was pretty hard to find male voices discussing the type of books I was interested in.
But now there are many excellent male booktubers covering a broad spectrum of literature - it's been great to see.
Maybe that will help encourage publishers to broaden their output.
Yes, that would be a good thing. Trouble is, at least in the UK, Publishers are fixated on TikTok, which is of course short attention span format and dominated by young female 'influencers' who are influential but ultimately have very little to say other than preaching to the YA converted. But we'll keep cracking on!
Well put in the pre amble there Steve. I also think it still shocks people new to the trade or outside of it that books are actually marketed at men and women specifically. It never fails to make me laugh how surprised people are by this. To re-assert your point about publishing in general, all anyone needs to do is look at most "summer reading" frontlists to know how lopsided the playing field is. Obviously just turning on the news shows us that the world in general is very much NOT aimed at women and their basic rights as human beings, this can make this type of discussion hard, but it is an important discussion to have nonetheless. Bravo mate.
Yes, things are so polarised now that people too readily assumed because there is a general trend that it is similarly skewed in all areas of culture. Not so! See you soon!
Here's a contemporary contextual quotation I'd urge those who doubt any of my statements here, from 'Circus of Dreams' by John Walsh (a book about British Literary Culture in the 80s) that refers to the situation now (Walsh spent decades in publishing, journalism and publicity in the book world): "There is also a problem with modern author acceptibility. In the 1980s, female authors seemed to have a harder time getting published than men; the first appearance of the Best of Young British Novelists promotion counted only six women in the twenty writers. Today, new male writers struggle to be signed up. A search of 'The Bookseller' (the key journal of the trade) news archive for 2020 revealed that, of the seventy-seven debut novels that featured in the news pages, only 7 were by men.". That's 24% females in the early 80s measure to 9% males in the 2020 measure. There are other similar statistics that would support the implications of this.
The Demon was the first Selby book I read, as a happy accident. I'd gone to look for Last Exit to Brooklyn at the library sometime in the 90s. They didn't have it, but they had The Demon so I borrowed that. I found it such a strong novel that I was surprised I'd never seen any references to it.
I've seen articles about how most fiction readers currently are women, but I wonder if that's just looking at contemporary novels. I read a lot of fiction, but barely anything first published after the 20th century, as there's very little that's published now that looks interesting to me. When "men's fiction" is discussed online (such as in groups about men's adventure or hardboiled novels) most of the books are pre-1990s.
Yes, 'The Demon' is ridiculously obscure given Selby's profile - but I put that down to readers being too canonical, thinking 'Right, I've done "Last Exit", now let's move on'. You see the same phenomenon with Highsmith's Ripley books - the first sells like hot cakes, but hardly anyone reads the sequels (the second and third of which are better than their illustrious predecessor to me). Your point about women and contemporary fiction is exactly mine - I'm talking about now, not then: one of the reasons why many men are not reading much contemporary material is (1) as you say, there are so often better old books - but in any time there is always lots of dross which doesn't survive- and (2) the great stuff that is out there doesn't get promoted or marketed in the right way: too many females in publishing can mean that some of them fail to recognise what will really appeal to literate male readers, so it doesn't get promoted. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy (check Chuck Litka's comment below and my response) that of course the fiction market for contemporary books will remain hugely feminised if books with more of a male appeal are not publicised. What sells books is publicity, no matter how good or bad they are, as there is so much published that huge numbers of people feel they need the guidance of reviews and where a book is placed in a bookshop (is at at the front on a display in huge quantities, or is it a single copy spine on in a section?), so if females in publishing are unable to step outside the box of the popular (i.e. contemporary light or cod-literary fiction by women aimed at women), we get a steady move toward a more female-centric industry. Generalisations, of course, but not insignificant. Thanks for your comments!
I'm appalled ( but not surprised) at how you were treated. The show was obviously more about agenda then books. I think we're brave to go on the show and behaved like a man , a gentleman in every sense of the word. Total respect Steve.
Don't know about publishing but an overview of entertainment, gaming etc shows the tide is turning again " the message"
Excellent piece. And I look forward to hearing more on this important issue.
There is a case for saying that men do read just as much as women. It is just that their reading matter of choice is more likely to be old books sourced second-hand where statistics are impossible to quantify. My observation is that women are more heavily influenced by involvement in book clubs and reading circles which promotes the reading of new fiction.
Why this should be so is a topic in itself. But surely the febrile over-reactive socio-political climate we all now find ourselves in cannot be ignored. And consequently any man who reads for pleasure will likely find more to his taste in the attitudes and certainties inculcated by old fiction than in a 21st century diatribe that holds the follies and supposed privileges of his gender culpable for the problems appertaining to.......any issue that you can think of.
Hi Richard, sincere apologies for taking so long to reply. In researching '100 BFM' I encountered research undertaken by major media companies that confirmed men who read actually read more than women and more widely across a larger range of platforms. I would argue that there are more truly 'serious' male readers than there are 'serious' female readers.Your observation re book groups is entirely borne out by my decades of experience in the industry. Also, an excessive focus on 'new literary fiction' doesn't always make for 'good reading' either - it's analagous to just listening to whatever is in the music charts then moving on as hits fall from favour. All the stats show that men read more non-fiction than women as a generalised rule. Non-fiction readers are also more likely to read conceptual fiction such as SF & Modernism.
Look forward to more literary novel reviews. There has always been a crossover between science fiction and literary fiction. Brian Aldiss, J G Ballard, Aldous Huxley George Orwell H G Wells maybe Martin Amis and Ian McEwan. I read a wide range of fiction, but am drawn to the weird and stranger subject matter. But on the subject of men's books I can also devour the stereotypical men's writers like Douglas Reeman or Dick Francis or Frederick Forsyth or John LeCarre.
Hey Richard, thanks. There is already some mainstream/literary fiction on the channel and there will be more, as my tastes in genre fiction are tempered for quality by my general reading. I have always preferred Literary SF, probably because it was my entry point (Wells, Wyndham, Doyle). The pre-pulp existence of the Scientific Romance in the UK ensured this for me. Check the backlist and watch this space...
Happy new subscriber here. Fascinating book, I’ll look it up.
Thanks for subscribing. Yep, BFM is still in print (or at least print on demand maybe), I'm certainly proud of it as a guide to some stuff that doesn't see much action.
Off topic but I have always wondered if The Last Exit to Brooklyn was in any way an inspiration to Zelazny in Roadmarks. Sorry (but not surprised) that you had such a harrowing time in that interview.
Well, Roger was clearly a well read guy, so who knows? The interview wasn't so much harrowing as irritating and typical of the injustice you'd expect. However, the producer had the recording edited in my favour and the first printing sold out in 3 days, so it just shows people like to think for themselves. Cheers!
I never got on with Selby. That long rape/murder in Last Exit put me right off and I never finished it. Just for fun, I've put together my top 20 books for men. I haven't read your book (yet!) so I wonder how much crossover there will be. I suspect that mine will be less "cutting edge" than yours. I have come to prefer a conventional well-turned sentence as I get older. Some of my choices edge towards fantasy, but no straight SF. Here goes. Robertson Davies, Christopher Fowler, Patrick O'Brian, George MacDonald Frazer, Gerald Kersh, Jack Trevor Story, David Mitchell, Howard Waldrop, John Crowley, Edmund Crispin, Rex Stout, Joe R Lansdale, Kim Newman, Alan Furst, Philip Kerr, Graham Joyce, William Boyd, Peter Straub, John Le Carre, Len Deighton. Any of those on your list?
That's an interesting list. Quite a few of my favourite authors get a mention, so I'll definitely keep an eye out for the ones on it that are new to me.
Well, my 'list' - inasmuch as my list books aren't list books but doorways and in this case I wanted to highlight books I felt deserved wider attention, virtually none of these have entries in my book (and in the '100 Must Reads' series, we decided to NOT include the same book in any two volumes -once it was in one, it was out of the running. Also, it includes non-fiction and is pretty much (like the SF volume) historically and thematically based, so I was picking subjects and themes before picking authors, except where I had a strong urge to include some more subjective choices of under-appreciated books. Now, it would be different by at least 30% I'd say. I've read almost all of the authors you select and sold books by all of them, of course. When one puts together a book that aims to cover a broad swathe of themes/subjects, this is uppermost in mind before actual writers. If my books were my 'Best/Favourite' selections, the 'list' element of their composition would be a lot more prevalent and relevant. You have some great names there and I've actually hosted a few of them for bookshop events over the years...
Great story. I agree with you about the feminization of the book world; I feel increasingly marginalized. When culture can't even come to an agreement on what constitutes a woman... well, you know. The Demon sounds like an interesting read and I will seek it out. Try to stay cool.
I tried to get published via various agents for 6 months and yes, most of them are arrogant myopic women with little to no imagination!
Well yes, the Identity Politics struggle is ultimatelythe while Orwell thing: "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows". It's a great shame when these issues can hardly be discussed anymore without the shouters drowning out the rational. Do try 'The Demon', it's incredibly powerful.
Perhaps the statistics I've seen -- women account for 80% of fiction sales in the US, Canada, and the UK might explain why there are so many books aimed at women. Perhaps the fact that so many of the books are aimed at women might explain why only 20% of the sales are to men. Still, publishing is a business, so who can blame publishers for selling to the people who are buying?
Well, you have to ask why so many fiction sales are to women. Is it because publishing is now overly-staffed by women who do not know how to market fiction to men (that for me is a key question)? Also, was it always this way? Almost certainly not. Thirdly, why do women as a rule read less non-fiction (and I'm excluding manuals from this caveat)? Publishing is a business - and of course I've worked in bookselling for decades and rely on sales- so it would serve publishers better at the bottom lime if they knew how to market and sell to men and women. Why just focus on 50% of the human race when you could focus on 100%? That's the challenge.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal I'd say that publishing is a risk aversion business -- they sell books to the half of the population that buys them. If the world of publishing is dominated by women, and from the list of agents I recently looked into, that certainly seems to be the case, perhaps it is because women like books & reading, more than men do. Nor can one overlook the importance of book clubs, that are also dominated by women. I suspect that men find all the books they need regardless of the publishers' focus. Your point, I believe, is that if they published more books aimed at men, or men & women, more men would buy and read books. Maybe, but publishers -- female or male -- have little incentive to take the chance as long as they can sell books to avid female readers. And really, publishers make most of their money from bestsellers, books that appeal to both men and women. In short, guess I don't see much of a problem with the way things stand now.
@@chucklitka2503 - No, it's not about what's being published, it's about prominence and marketing (see my comments to Evening Reader's post above). As I've already said, if they can't see an incentive to sell to a wider market, they're not really being very entrepreneurial, they're just playing safe (which yes, businesses have to do to a degree). But why let grass grow under your feet when your competitors could steal a march on you? As I've made clear, I see the reality on the ground every day and have done for nearly forty years - I speak to more readers in a month than most writers and publishers will in a lifetime. Book Clubs are generally female-dominated and they are usually joined by people who 'want to read more' but they usually end up as being groups who read the same bestsellers people are reading anyway (again, I've run several, so I know, plus I talk to people running their own on a regular basis). What I have done personally is popularise certain books and authors hugely in the city where I work (to both men and women), authors who don't have - or in one case didn't have (he's now a national bestseller) - much of a national profile. The response to these authors shows that there are failures in marketing/placement of books. This is, of course, the true art of bookselling: instead of simply being a middleman who presents what the mass media is publicising, you pick up a cause and run with it. It would be complacent and unethical of me to be satisfied with a status quo that actually leaves large numbers of readers unsatisfied. Finally, I think you're making an assumption about bestsellers - in fiction, there are vast numbers of bestsellers which are predominantly bought and read by women, but far fewer exclusively read by men. This alone proves the commercial imbalance it's not about inclusion, it's about a business opportunity to sell more books that would actually please more readers.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal It has been an interesting discussion across all the comments. You are certainly far more knowledgeable about the trade than I am, and you are no doubt right about their marketing efforts being directed to the half of the population that buys most of the fiction -- simply because they do play it safe. They have multi-national corporate masters to answer to who don't look beyond the next quarter or two. Hate to be cynical, but we may have to wait a while for men to have their moment in publishing.
@@chucklitka2503 -I think you've made many good points, Chuck. Publishers are risk averse, which is understandable because they so often operate on a 'throw mud against the wall' basis i.e. too many titles being published and too little marketing. They do pay it safe, most of them. Personally, I think everyone who works in publishing should, at some point, work in a bookshop. Quite a few do as a way into the industry, but few of them moving into publishing are veterans (though I know some notable exceptions) and some just want to get away from the 'hands dirty' side of the industry so they can work with books but not with readers, which is often more challenging! Thanks again for your comments, hope you keep enjoying the channel!
How can you have book for men and not include First Blood by David Morrell?
If that is not book for men, I don't know what is.
Of course, maybe it was included in some other book.
If that is the case I apologise in advance.
..because it either is or was intended to feature in another book in the Good Reading Guides series: part of our project was to not repeat content, so this meant that we were able to cover a wider range of titles over the whole series, which ran to something like ten books.
I wonder if boys tend not to grow up to be readers because so many of the gatekeepers they encounter in schools and libraries are women.
Well, that could be a factor. In my school, I have to say that female English teachers and librarians were enormously encouraging toe me (as were the smaller number of male English teachers who tutored me - one, to be exact!). I think those were different times, though. The myth that 'boys don't like to read' is largely created by some women who seem fixated on the idea that if you don't read fiction, you're not reading. In my experience, men are (and this is of course a generalisation) more likely to read a wider range of non-fiction as well as fiction from an early age (I know I did). In my research for '100 Must Read Books For Men', the only surveys I could find revealed that as a rule, men actually read more than women and across a wider range of platforms- books, magazines, newspapers etc. Ultimately, it is individuals who count rather than genders. But more needs to be done in making the world recognise that an imbalance of gender in publishing circles leads to an inability to publish and market fiction to men.
How about starting an SF magazine for all those gifted writers who cannot be bothered to wait 15 years or more to get published by a rabidly depressing pompous publishing world?
That requires capital beyond my means, or I'd have done it decades ago, sadly,
it's the dirty story of a dirty man, and his clinging wife doesn't understand...
'The Demon' you mean? Yep, up to a point- but I think it's a good bit more serious than your summation implies. Its ferocity is really quite something.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal i agree. i was just throwing off a fun beatles reference.