Spend enough time online, and you’ll notice the phenomenon of recurring zombie memes that pop up from time to time. The claim that men hate reading books has been making the rounds again, leading to fretting, and in some quarters, feting, about the book insdustry’s alienation of male readers.
Figures cited as proof of dismal male readership fall as low as 20 percent. Yet, when we dig into the origins of this figure, a different picture emerges—one clouded by skewed data and missing context. Let’s clear up the record.
The 20 percent statistic stems from Nielsen BookScan data, which overwhelmingly represents sales in brick-and-mortar bookstores while downplaying other sales channels. In today’s market, dominated by Amazon, this skewing makes Nielsen’s data unreliable. Moreover, a survey conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts found that 33 percent of male respondents had read a novel in the past year. While low, that percentage is significantly higher than 20. And given the survey sample a government agency would choose, along with the sorts of people most likely to answer a government survey, there’s reason to believe that even the NEA report is a low ball estimate.
Do men hate reading? That’s what oldpub would have us believe. Let’s dig into why they’re wrong.
Nielsen BookScan’s methods of tracking brick and mortar sales may have worked in 2010. But since the Kindle revolution, BookScan is increasingly outdated in a world where physical bookstore sales account for a shrinking slice of the overall market. Instead of capturing a full snapshot of book-buying behavior, Nielsen’s data places undue emphasis on sales from a minority of booksellers; pretty much just Barnes and Noble at this point.
And with Amazon responsible for more than half of all book sales in the United States—and an even larger share of eBooks—the focus on physical retail outlets overlooks a massive portion of the market, especially when it comes to genres with high male readership in digital and indie sectors like science fiction and thrillers.
So Nielsen’s numbers offer a skewed perspective that underestimates the number of male readers. By excluding large swaths of digital and newpub works from consideration, the BookScan data creates the impression that men are largely uninterested in books—a flawed assumption that falls apart under scrutiny.
Say what you will about the kind of art they fund, the NEA’s survey of reading habits offers a more balanced perspective. The main reason is that the NEA did an actual reader survey not limited by sales channels. It also mined data from libraries, online platforms, and other non-traditional outlets. These numbers provide a fuller picture which counters the narrative that men have all but abandoned reading. Instead, they suggest that male readers are just accessing books differently, favoring digital options and indie works over oldpub dead tree versions.
But if men are still reading in large numbers, why does Nielsen’s data underreport them? For a likely answer, look at the composition and sales strategies of the Big Five publishing houses. For years, oldpub has disproportionately focused on recruiting female editors, acquiring female authors, and marketing to female audiences. This bias has left genres with traditionally male readerships underserved.
Related: Women Sci Fi Writers: The Pulps vs the Social Pulpit
The net effect? Men, rather than abandoning reading, are increasingly looking to newpub authors and small presses that cater to their interests.
Now, newpub is tough to quantify because Amazon closely guards its sales data, especially for self-published authors. Since Amazon controls such a large market share, the exclusion of these sales from oldpub-centric datasets like Nielsen’s makes the 20 percent statistic even less reliable.
There is still a robust male readership in the US—it’s just no longer centered around the publishers and channels that dominated in bygone decades. The rise of digital indie publishing means that male readers can still find books that entertain them, even if those books rarely make it to the bestseller lists measured by Nielsen BookScan.
So no, men do not hate reading. But as oldpub continues to rely on flawed statistics, they continue alienating a large portion of readers, who take their business elsewhere.
Dark fantasy minus the grim plus heroes you can relate to battling vs overwhelming odds
Men hate reading feminized, lackluster lumber mill output, i.e. OldPub. Of course that translates to “if you hate our stuff then you hate all books.”
Tracks. The guys I interact with particularly have stacks of old books and new Indie books lined up to read, and adding new ones all the time. Time is too short to waste on Big Five gruel.
It’s amazing how many smart people take the “Women are the majority of readers” canard at face value. Several times over the years, some of the savviest men I know have urged me to start catering to female readers, citing that zombie meme. To a man, they’ve all been voracious readers of the exact kind of fiction that oldpub has disowned and newpub embraces. That’s Gell-Mann amnesia for you.
It’s almost like they took “don’t read books by people who hate you” to heart!
On the other hand, Larry Correia bought a mountain and David Weber’s main issue right now is the aftermath of a hurricane.
Prayers for David.
This is part of why “go woke go broke” doesn’t play out in reality. Once you are woke for long enough you get to pretend that wokeness is the baseline. So initially you may have to apologize for your new stuff pushing out the traditional audience. But if you do it long enough, you can pretend that the traditional audience never existed in the first place, and the fact that they do not like your particular brand of woke content means that they don’t like content in general.
You can play the same game outside of just woke stuff. Sick of super hero movies? This will be taken as a sign that you don’t like movies in general. Don’t like how AAA games have removed gameplay in exchange for nickel and dime monetization features that force you to be online even in single player games? This will be taken as a sign that you do not like video games in general.
Yes, but oldpub has thus far avoided going broke for the same reason the Big Two comics publishers have: sugar daddy megacorps ultimately underwritten by the same infinitely brrrrr-ing money printer.
Men’s reading habits are affected by a number of things:
– reading is a passtime luxury and men tend to have less free time than women
– men would rather pass their time in other ways because reading is seen as a feminine activity
– related; the mass market is dominated by books catering to women and queers
– If a man does read, it’s typically on “hard” topics like business, finance, self help, health, and relationships. Fiction has no place in the minds of these ‘practical’ minded men
– the rest of us dont care ,we read as we please because we enjoy it to some greater or lesser degree
You also have to define what number would qualify men ‘hating’ to read. 20% and 33% are low numbers. My subjective opinion sees either number as “don’t like to”. Something like 5% would qualify “hating” to read in my eyes.