Follow up to yesterday's conversation

[rolanni]

This has gotten too long and complex for a Facebook post, so I'm bringing the discussion over here where it can be seen.

The Question, posed by Gareth Griffiths is:
Has anyone figured out the readership ratio for SF? I've commented on the writer side before - probably 60:40 on my shelves in favour of women but I wonder if there may be a hidden bias that more men prefer books written by men regardless of genre. There may be a unconscious reinforcement of society where there is still a lot of male bias in many places that gets reflected in books by men that other men unconsciously find more natural and attractive.
Is there a correlation between readership and authors' sex.

My response:
Let me see if I can remember this correctly. . .

I've been on a couple panels about this (Toni Weisskopf was in the audience for at least one, and might be able to help me out, if she's not on a plane by now), which is that, since the inception of female editors (who naturally buy books that appeal to them as females (because what other criterion does an editor have available to them, save their gender?)) and stories featuring female protagonists (this being a different thing, note, than female writers, and also whacks the men who are writing female leads), Boys Have Stopped Reading. That's reading anything -- because there are Girl Cooties everywhere and there are no role models in fiction for boys anymore.

Now, this thesis bothers me profoundly. Reading is one of the great joys of my life, and I don't want to be the reason that this joy is somehow withheld from anyone else. Jeebus, what a terrible, terrible thing, to be stuck in a world where there was nothing for me to read.

In fact, as we've said many times in many different venues, the reason that Steve and I decided to write the sort of science fiction that we do was to open the genre, and make it easier and more enjoyable for girls to play, too.

Note, "easier, and more enjoyable." I read male POV scifi forever, growing up, because, mostly, that's what there was. And I kept reading it, despite the proliferation of Boy Cooties, because I was fascinated by the form, by the so-called sensawonda, occasionally the protagonists, but, let's face it, characterization was Pretty Basic, back in the day. You wanted mysteries, for characterization, and romances, for heart -- and I read those, too.

I'm told girls are more empathic than boys -- that's part of our job, see? -- and there were a lot of girls in my position, who loved scifi, and science -- the children of the Moon Walk, that's us, and Science Can Do Anything --  and who also wanted to buckle some swash and bend some time their own selves.

And some of those girls, when they grew up? They became writers. And some of them became science fiction writers; and they naturally enough wrote what they wanted to read.  To be fair, I don't think that a one of us thought we'd be excluding any readers; we thought, if we thought about it at all, that we would be expanding the field and including more readers.

The idea that we're somehow excluding male readers simply by existing. . .is starting, frankly, to bother me less, the more I read comments in discussions about how girls can't write SF, Epic Fantasy, Thrillers, Pick Your Favorite Genre.  But, I still find it in me to feel sorry for those little boys, who somehow can't make a connection with a female protagonist, and I wonder why is that?

Are men that much less empathic, naturally, that they can't relate to a character of a different gender?  Is not honor, honor, no matter the gender of the hero?  Does adventure and derring-do not speed the heart, despite the gender of the hero?  Are there not, in fact, more similarities than differences between bold, honorable, and great-hearted persons?

So -- how do we fix this, for those readers of all genders who are coming up?  How do we not exclude readers, while expanding the field?  Clearly trying to shout people down on the internet is not working.  Is there anything else?

Comments

98% to 2%

[bookmobiler.livejournal.com]

I'm probably not typical as a reader. I don't pay that much attention to the identity of most authors. I tend to categorize them as find more by this author, avoid this author and re-read this book.
Gender, race, religious or political beliefs don't concern me unless they really intrude into the story. In which case the criteria already mentioned come into play.
I like stories that have a point, not stories that insist on making points.
98 per cent still count as respectable authors. The rest should have stuck to their day jobs.

[herefox.livejournal.com]

I may have a slightly different perspective than the boys you're discussing since I'm a gay male but I find that what appeals to me about books is the characterization and depth in stories that is sometimes identified with female authors. I have a very hard time getting through old school types of Sci-Fi because this is lacking and a cool story often isn't enough to keep me hooked (to be fair, many of the ground breaking stories of their time have been done again in one form or another so I may have already read older 'cool' stories in a more modern take. I have this problem with reading Tolkien for instance)

I think, and I could be wrong, that someone who's got the love of reading is going to read no matter who's writing the books. I can't, personally, imagine not reading a book due to the sex, race, or most other factors (occasionally maybe religion or political views but that's only if the author is heavy handed and pushy about forcing those views on my through the prose...which is typically the only way I would know the author had these views anyway)

That being said, I have heard of people rage quitting their hobbies due to involvement of people they don't approve of and maybe that is happening and I'm just not seeing it when it comes to speculative fiction. Obviously some people are seeing it or it wouldn't keep coming up!

[djonn]

Has anyone figured out the readership ratio for SF?

In a word, no. Not that I know of, at least.

Three reasons:

(1) First you have to define "SF" -- always a sticky problem -- and in this case, you have to define it in a way that's both meaningful to the audience and usefully measurable by market-research tools. There are lots of stats and statistical claims for subsets of the SFnal continuum, but very little in the way of credible data for the field as a whole.

(2) I'm not certain what's meant by "readership ratio" here, either. If the question is "what proportion of SF readers are male vs. female", relative to the set of "all things SF" that's one thing. But the secondary question, "is there a correlation between readership and authors' sex?" is a different animal entirely, with a much-different set of variables attached to it. -- that's a whole separate discussion. (The short answer to that second question is "sometimes yes, but with lots of genre-specific qualifiers". It's...complicated.)

(3) Of all media consumption, readership of text-based material is the most difficult to measure and monitor. Note especially that sales and readership are two different things.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Djonn, may I take your response over to this topic on sharonleewriter.com? There is someone specifically wishing a look at the studies the publishing industry must have performed, and I don't think she reads here.

[djonn]

Please do.

I also ran into a mirror-image of this discussion over on tor.com recently (from Liz Bourke), but posting that link via my phone is a bit beyond my geek skills.

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

Just because boy-children are throwing a tantrum doesn't mean that writers must, for example, have a male pen name for the times they buckle swash. I think they should learn to live with it.

Sorry mates.

[spacecowboy528.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure why or even how this subject keeps getting brought up for the simple reason I'm a very atypical reader. Very rarely do I notice the name of a books' author unless it is by one of my favorites. The cover art? Naturally. The title? Of course. But the name of the author? I've been embarrassed at book stores not remembering who a book was by as I looked for a sequel or more by the same author. My only two criteria on whether or not I will read a book are:
1. Is it interesting? and 2. Is the author insulting my intelligence?. I've even read a couple of interesting in the concept, but uninteresting as written books simply because the author cared enough not to insult our intelligence as they wrote them they just failed at writing a good story.

[ironore.livejournal.com]

Huh, I'm a guy and some of my favorite Sci-Fi authors are women. Lois McMaster Bujold, Sharon Lee (of course), Tanya Huff, Elizabeth Moon and probably a couple others I'm not remembering.

girl cooties

[mark leigh (from livejournal.com)]

I have been a fan since 1960 and female authors tended to attract my attention more because they seldom wrote hack stories um maybe some did I never saw anything but quality writing from women. and soft squishy girly? five sisters and growing up on a poverty level dairy farm- those girls are no fainting floozies. Dare I say it Strong Competent women are a lot more interesting than the proverbial maiden in peril.

[gerald heaton (from livejournal.com)]

Follow up to yesterday's comments

MILITARY SF
Male authors (preferably military veterans) I don't say that women don't write for this genre, just can't think of any.

ALL other Sf, fantasy/paranormal who cares

Oh, and to clear things up, I am slightly older than you and Steve, male, and have been reading SF/fantasy since 1955.

My current tablet has more than 2200 Nook books and 350 Kindle books only 5 of which are NOT sf/fantasy. These are just the "keepers"

This includes about 30 "police procedurals" by Nora Roberts (writing as J D Robb)

[thewol.livejournal.com]

I'm female and a couple of years older than you, to categorize myself. I read a lot of Andre Norton growing up, but mostly books by male authors (or authors with "male" names) because that was all I could find. Zelazny was a favorite at one point. Then I read C.J.Cherryh's Morgaine books which blew my mind and knocked my socks off. She, and present company, are among the few writers I will buy simply because their names are on the cover. Now, 2/3rds of my "keepers" are by female authors. I'm heavy into characterization. If a book doesn't have well-drawn characters, I don't have the time to bother with it. Also I'm into good world building (both reasons why I like Cherryh's books, and yours). Also very high on my list is facility with the language, and the ability to write well.

Growing up, I was bothered by a lack of female SF protagonists, without actually being aware until I was much older that that was what was bothering me, which was why the Morgaine books pegged out my WOW! meter so. McCafferty was high on my list, too, but not as high as Cherryh, Tannith Lee, and Ursula LeGuin, although some of LeGuin's books tend to be a little grim for my tastes. If a book has interesting, well-written stories happening to interesting people, I'm usually going to like them. An author has to capably answer the question: Who is this person and why should I care that these things are happening to them? to make a book worth my time.

I've gone back and reread some of the books that I thought were great when I read them as a young adult (Zelazny's Amber books, and Moorcock's Elric books, for example), and found I had no patience for them now and had trouble finishing them now that I'm older, and more spoiled for choice. I'm more into SciFi stuff rather than the Tolkien-esque type D&D fantasies, which I find are an uphill climb, but I'll read "magical" books like Wynn Jones, Wrede, some of Sharon Shinn's things. I'm not much of a swash buckler either. I found Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate hilarious, as well as the Tuesday Next books.

My criteria, as I mentioned, has less to do with categories and everything to do with the author's ability to engage me. I can usually tell fairly quickly whether I'm going to like a book by at least the first couple of pages. If I'm still reading by chapter 2, I'll likely finish the book.

[stitchwhich.livejournal.com]

For the record, I cut my teeth on E. E. "Doc" Smith, Heinlein & Asimov exc., and was introduced to your Liadan stories by two men whose wives did not read SciFi. They even all of the chapbooks in print. We swapped Darkover and Pern books, too, but still my point is that I believe your stories do appeal to men, too. Except the ones busy pounding their chest hair, maybe.