{"id":46967,"date":"2025-08-06T04:31:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T04:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/46967\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T04:31:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T04:31:09","slug":"the-gender-gap-in-our-reading-habits-and-whats-driving-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/46967\/","title":{"rendered":"The gender gap in our reading habits and what\u2019s driving it"},"content":{"rendered":"

Won\u2019t somebody think of the young male novelist? Men, it is said, aren\u2019t writing novels any more. Or if they are, they aren\u2019t getting published. Or if they are getting published, their books aren\u2019t selling, getting noticed or winning prizes.<\/p>\n

One of the first to lament this apparent decline was American writer Jacob Savage. Armed with a battery of statistics, he claimed in Compact magazine that after 2014 \u201cthe doors shut\u201d for male Millennials in the US: \u201cThe literary pipeline for white men was effectively shut down \u2026 Diversity preferences may explain their absence from prize lists, but they can\u2019t account for why they\u2019ve so completely failed to capture the zeitgeist.\u201d He claims there\u2019s a lost generation of literary men who may not know how to say something genuinely interesting and new.<\/p>\n

\"Have<\/p>\n

Have male writers really failed to capture the zeitgeist?Credit: Getty Images<\/p>\n

Things got so dire in the mind of British novelist Jude Cook that he decided to set up an independent publishing house, Conduit Books, focussing on literary fiction and memoirs by men: \u201coverlooked narratives\u201d on \u201cfatherhood, masculinity, working class male experiences, sex, relationships, and negotiating the 21st century as a man\u201d. Conduit has already cut off open submissions, no doubt besieged with manuscripts. We will see its first titles next year.<\/p>\n

But is there really a decline and if so, what might have caused it? One reason is that we\u2019re still correcting for a very long period when men dominated literary culture. Indeed, that was why the Stella Prize and the Davitt Prize in Australia, the Women\u2019s Prize for Fiction in the UK and the Carol Shields Prize in Canada were set up, and I don\u2019t yet see any good evidence that they can shut up shop because their work is done.<\/p>\n

Maybe the perception of decline is because most agents and commissioning editors these days are women. Or maybe, as Savage says, male writers are floundering in their attempts to capture the zeitgeist. But perhaps the simplest explanation is that fewer men and more women are reading fiction.<\/p>\n

\"Siang<\/p>\n

Siang Lu won this year\u2019s Miles Franklin Literary Award, the first man to have won in years.Credit: Sitthixay Ditthavong<\/p>\n

About 80 per cent of fiction sales are to women, who are also the most avid readers. Naturally, they want to read about issues that matter to them. Their reading ranges from literary to popular fiction, with the huge sales of female writers such as Colleen Hoover and the romantasy authors almost entirely driven by women.<\/p>\n

They are also keen to talk about books, in person and online, and recommend them to friends. No wonder publishers are looking out for more of the same.<\/p>\n

But why are fewer men reading? Are they discouraged because reading fiction seems to be a solitary pursuit that their peer group doesn\u2019t favour? Joseph Bernstein investigated the phenomenon for The New York Times and reckoned that to boost readership, \u201cit might be a matter of men approaching their reading lives a little more like women do \u2013 getting recommendations online from celebrities and influencers, browsing together, forming book clubs\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Won\u2019t somebody think of the young male novelist? Men, it is said, aren\u2019t writing novels any more. Or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[64,63,457,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-46967","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}