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Standing in line at a Target, I glanced at the books for sale. Every work of fiction, with the exception of those two elderly stalwarts, James Patterson and Stephen King, came from a female author. While older male writers still have a large presence on bestseller lists and in the book world, newly published male fiction authors have become rarer than blue moons.
This phenomenon reported on in stories like NPR’s “Women Now Dominate the Book Business” and “Women Are Now Publishing More Books Than Men” (which describe it as a sign of progress) helps shed light on another phenomenon that the media has been rubbing its head over in articles like The Atlantic’s “How Gen Z Came to See Books as a Waste of Time” and Psychology Today’s “Why Aren’t College Students Reading?”
There is a generational decline in reading across Gen Z, but it’s also a gender divide. While there’s always been a gender reading gap, by 2018, 44% of girls loved to read, while only 24% of boys did. One study found that adult women were reading 39% more than men did.
Publishers may argue that there is a chicken and egg phenomenon. Men read fewer books and so publishers take fewer books by male authors with male characters that are aimed at male audiences. Readers and editors become almost universally female. And men disappear.
But did men stop reading for some mysterious reasons or because publishers excluded them?
The bestseller lists are now packed with fiction novels whose readership is 81% female. The remaining, mostly older, male fiction authors are following suit by jettisoning male protagonists and writing books aimed at female readers leaving a marketplace with few male characters.
Women and men are different and there’s nothing wrong with a segmented marketplace in which everyone reads what appeals to them, but there is something deeply wrong when male authors and protagonists, along with readers, disappear from the culture.
How did we get here?
78% of staffers and 59% executives in the publishing industry are female. Much like their male counterparts in the past, they order books that suit their tastes. But where male editors in the past understood that they also needed female customers, the publishing industry has all but written off the male sex. And that’s because it isn’t just female: publishing is very woke.
Wokeness treats the disappearance of men in publishing as a triumph of diversity.
It also ensures that the vast majority of books, whatever the sex of the author or the readership, are woke. Diversity, representation and woke messaging now drive much of publishing. And men, who are more likely to be conservative, are no longer reading or buying books.
Diversity surveys celebrate a publishing monoculture composed of woke white women living in Manhattan and Brooklyn, but that monoculture is hollowing out the larger culture of reading. Gen Z is the most affected because it has the least awareness of books that existed in the past and is the most exposed to current publishing trends through pop culture, schools and libraries.
And the numbers show quite clearly that Gen Z boys and men are opting out of today’s books.
You don’t have to be Gen Z to spot the problem. It’s been years since I’ve checked a book out of the library or bought a new copy of one in a chain bookstore. Or even set foot in one. After decades of making bookstores like Strand and Barnes & Noble a second home, I have no interest in navigating through displays of Ta-Nehisi Coates and the 1619 Project, woke outbursts, apologetics for Hamas, calls for destroying America and sexual fetish celebrations.
And the fiction sections have become no better.
The vast majority of books I read today were published before 2006. Gen Z is less likely to have that option. Gen Z boys grow up with educational books that unsubtly scold them for being white men, advance girls as leaders, and humiliate stand-ins for their race and sex at every turn. By the time that they’re ready for YA books, they’ve already checked out and are no longer reading.
But this same woke publishing marketplace does girls no favors. By the time they reach college, they may be ‘reading’ regularly, but the YA safe space materials they’re ‘reading’ leaves them unprepared for serious literature. In college, they demand trigger warnings and can’t cope with books whose purpose is exploring larger philosophical questions or the human experience rather than narcissistically pandering to their manufactured politics, identities and complaints.
And so colleges introduce trigger warnings and replace Shakespeare with Audre Lorde.
A woke publishing industry has trained Gen Z men not to read because of identity politics and Gen Z women have been trained to only read for identity politics. Or as the industry calls it “representation”. Gen Z women arrive in college complaining that too many of the characters in Shakespeare are “white cis men” and they don’t feel represented. Meanwhile their male counterparts are not reading because they actually don’t see representation in today’s market.
And so college students come to college unable to read a book.
Publishing, like every business, worked best when it pursued the market rather than the politics. When politics defines the market, as it invariably does in culture industries, a small wealthy woke demographic controls the market, which caters to its every whim, while alienating everyone else. A small fanatically loyal base with lots of spending money can be profitable in the short run, especially in culture industries, but it hollows out the industry in the long run.
Reading, unlike music, TV and film, is a more difficult habit to start and an easier habit to drop. The competition of constant smartphone browsing, often blamed for a decline in reading books, creates an easy substitute, and so once readers disappear, they may never come back.
I have spoken to plenty of men whose reading has sharply dropped off. Those who read, often tend to read articles, biographies and classics, but rarely any new books and even more rarely new fiction. And while the classics are great, a literate society produces new works or it dies.
Literature is disappearing before our eyes. And though it may not be obvious now, our culture will have good reason to regret its passing.
I was a voracious reader as a child. I read thousands of books, and this was before YA literature. I was reading Dumas, Dickens, Conrad, Twain, etc. Sadly, as I gained more responsibilities, my time for reading dwindled. I haven’t read a book outside of required reading for college or work in 20 years. I still read every day, but mostly articles. I would like to read more, but I am a busy man, and my leisure time includes more active pursuits.
Daniel,
I appreciate the fine writing and clarion call for men to start writing more books.
Thank you, Michael.
A recent headline said that Resident Joe Bite-Me was seen with an anti-Jewish book. That’s believable. But it would be unbelievable if it was said that Joe Bite-Me was seen READING a book of any description. Dementia notwithstanding, Joe Bite-Me is among a vast number of post-literates, people who read nothing beyond a smartphone screen. Indeed, only a post-literate electorate would tolerate the likes of Joe Bite-Me.
I don’t read books by women. Life is too short and women are whiny creatures.
Well, I do like Agatha Christie
Check out Josephine Tey if you haven’t already.
You haven’t read books by Bat Yeor then.
Don’t give up on the gals. Check out Brigitte Gabriel, Oriana Fallaci, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ann Coulter, Melanie Phillips, etc. For fiction, you can’t beat the late Ruth Rendell.
Young men are reading books. They’re reading indie-published works, particularly on fan fiction sites like Archive of Our Own and Royal Road. My son (who I thought was a non-reader) mentioned one day finishing a huge book on Royal Road (which is how I learned about this subculture).
They’re just not reading the multicultural spinach books put out by trad publishing.
I was writing about mainstream publishing. There are alternatives and self-publishing and some are financially profitable, but they’re very much a ghetto.
Daniel,
And some books that will never be published might be literary gems – we may never know, and in some cases, rightly so.
I saw a book at Half Price Books a month ago called The Mom Book with an asterisk after the title and the explanation it was “like the dad book, only smarter”. Typical of the casual misandry in our culture. I walked out and blocked e-mails from HPB, although I know that other booksellers sell other books of the same ilk. I’m sure the Educational Industrial Complex is so permeated with misandry that if it were forced to use texts “appealing to boys” it would chose books written by Alan Alda, Michael Kimmel, “Stupid White Men” by Michael Moore, and biographies of Tampon Timmy Walz and Jazz Jennings.
Most of the books on my reread shelf (for pleasure and solace) were published in the 1970s or earlier. I first noticed incredibly aggravating revisionist histories coming out In the 1980s, on topics where I knew enough to know they were garbage. I have Daniel’s book though on my reread shelf, the new style of history, razor sharp, captivating all the way through 🙂
Glad to hear that
Crystal clear also.
Writing style has changed a lot over the centuries. I’ve read about a dozen books on Sea Power by Mahan (late 1800s) lately, although with lots of brilliant insights on Sea Power, the writing style is somewhat verbose and hard to follow.
my goal was to make it accessible, write it more like a novel and the people who read it liked that
Because it attracts so many women and homosexuals publishing has been known as the “pink ghetto” for decades and most editors have have been (mis)educated at the Ivy League schools.
All the cultural rot comes from the universities, so long as the universities are teaching rot to their students, rot is what you’re going to get in politics, as well as in publishing, and in every other profession.
I would venture to say that the growing number of people who claim they are homosexual, bisexual, or some other wacky sexual, is due to what the universities are teaching about sexuality.
That it is flexible, that it is non-binary, that it’s a spectrum, that there are few completely heterosexual people, and people believe the nonsense.
Most people don’t think or read much and they just absorb the ideas that are fed to them by the intellectuals or they copycat what everybody else is doing.
Hence, all the people we have today with tattoos and piercings, things that were very rare just 30 years ago.
Hence the explosion of people who claim to be transgender or homosexual, or bisexual, or some other deviant sexual. Copycats.
Have you met or talked to most people? Or are you, as usual, speculating? Or are you just wishin’ and hopin’?
“78% of staffers and 59% executives in the publishing industry are female.” “Women Now Dominate the Book Business” and “Women Are Now Publishing More Books Than Men”.
Well, yes, women have been invading men’s “space” for generations. More women attend college and graduate school, nearly all teachers are women, and even the military is being feminized. In only place where the traffic is going the other way is women’s sports being invaded by men (for a change), but they have to give up entirely on their own manhood to do it. Nancy Mace has done her share of complaining about the trans invasion of old time women’s sports but she was the first woman to graduate from the Citadel’s Corps of Cadets program, after much legal wrangling. So she’s done her share of invading.
Golf clubs and other men’s associations have been swarmed by angry feminists, and even cultural traditions like cigars and tattoos have been taken over and feminized. There is nothing left in culture that is distinctively male least of all the traditional role of protector and provider. That went away with the first wave of modern feminism in the 1970s.
Once that was gone nothing else much mattered.
Delighted to see Daniel write about this.
I belong to Amazon Kindle and they have a program called First Reads. Every month you get a new book to download on your Kindle, for free. There are usually about 10 books (year after year, month after month,) to choose from. Nearly all, every month, are “chick victim ” books (my description) that do not interest me at all.
I wrote Amazon and asked if they could send me some male author books, that weren’t, victim books. Books that didn’t read like one long whiny screege.
That was three months ago. They now send selections with one male author.
I have downloaded only one book, since. It was a male author. Historical fiction. I just skipped their drivel. They obviously, have no intention to change their bigoted ways.
Now mine you, these are free books. Books that are offered for free to support and help launch new authors. Guess men don’t get to be supported. Lunacy.
The worse thing for me as a 60 year reader, is I never considered the sex of the author. I cared if the book was something I was interested in reading.
Yes, the largest book seller in the world openly discriminates and knowone calls them out. Until now. Thanks Daniel.
Ah yes, I also see the First Reads and have noticed the same pattern. But Amazon is pretty clear about which customers it wants and which it doesn’t. And what its ideal customer’s worldview is.
Daniel is hardly exaggerating. In fact, if anything he understates the problem. Esp the Identity driven books that should be considered subversive.. Blacks seeking revenge for slavery, women resisting male domination. The future looks grim cuz w/o men and women getting together : no future gens never mind gen z or any other gen. How did this happen? I started seeing all the PC brainwashed mind set cropping out really, thirty years ago and then some, feeling like I was a closet anti- extablishment underground radical or something: this is just the crow coming home to roost in Obama’s pastor, Rev Wright inimitable way. Hopefully, the new administration will make a diffference. The same BTW applies to NY theater which thrives in its own bubble and hardly any space given to global crises which are proliferating. We really need solidarity and don’t have it. – and will never have it under this kind of culture. (maybe we should start learning Chinese is all I can say) God bless America. .
Stephan Morrow
Artistic Director
The Great American Play Series
thegreatamericanplayseries@gmail.com
Yes the theater was nearly a lost cause long ago.
Especially in New York.
Even classical revivals like 1776 and Oklahoma have been hopelessly poisoned.
Thank you for doing what you do
Dead on. Said this years ago. Even in the 90s Tom Clancy started bringing sappy love stories to appeal to women. I stopped reading modern fiction decades ago bc of this.
I recognized in over 50 years ago, in high school or junior high, that I preferred male writers. Not only are boys different than girls, but they write differently. My daughter (PhD in Literacy Education) was shocked when I said that I generally didn’t like female authors. Notable exceptions, Tuchmann, Christie. I couldn’t articulate why, just that it was something I’d noticed along the way.
Except for the occasional cookbook, the majority of the physical books I’ve purchased for the past few years have been from the Library of America, e.g.. established, dead authors. A Ray Bradbury collection from them is currently on my bed table along with part I of a Pulitzer winning Revolutionary War history trilogy (parts II and III are unpublished.). Damon Runyon is on my kindle.
I don’t need the current pap that being published. I will never finish the proven works I’ve yet to read, before I die, even if that’s not for another twenty years.
Men and women are different. And that’s part of what makes us who we are.
Female authors have come a long way since the Bronte sisters had to pose as the Bell brothers and George Eliot was obliged to adopt a male pseudonym. In recent decades males have become distracted by online porn and time-consuming video games while females have continued to read books. Sad but true.
I’ve always wanted to read Tuchman’s book on WWI, but just haven’t gotten to it. A woman, had been in the military too I think, helped Gordon Prange on two or three of his books which I thought were great books: “Miracle At Midway,” “God’s Samurai,” and the book on Pearl Harbor. “At Dawn We Slept” I think it was called. And there’s another female author Id recommend, the late Mary Luke. She wrote on the times of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. I read at least four of her books. I read “A Crown For Elizabeth” twice. I wouldn’t think Luke would have been classified as hyper feminist or remotely close to being woke. I think she died in the ’80’s.
I tried reading Tuchman’s book but couldn’t stand it. I don’t see how a woman can understand a man’s life. Growing up from boyhood having to be ready to fight for one’s life every day, physically tough, always under threat from other boys and other dangers. Then thrown into the meat grinder when one becomes of draft age 🙂
Oh, always put down and belittled by older men, “stop your whining” 🙂
Who needs books one might ask. Thomas Jefferson, one of the most
brilliant and learned men in history – had only his vast collection of
books for information and letter writing for communication. Today,
anything we want to know is at our fingertips. It’s called the internet.
But that is not really enough for what forms us into a people. Awhile
back, I read a little novel called “The Widow’s War” by Sally Gunning.
About a 39 year old wife of a whaler in 1761 Cape Cod, Massachusetts
colony. Her husband drowns at sea and Lyddie becomes the ward of
her nearest adult male relative and is now entitled to only one-third of
her marital property – two-thirds of which now goes to him. Her
subsequent struggle to attain a full right to her life, liberty and her own
idea of happiness is courage exemplified. The story twists and turns
and depicts what life was like in colonial Massachusetts.
For any men who object to my promotion of a gutsy woman while
knowing that whiny, toxic women have maneuvered men out of the
publishing industry – kindly remember we’re not all like that. As to
Mr. Greenfield’s assertion that our culture will come to regret the
passing of literature, I couldn’t agree more.
Yes, this was not sn attack on women but on woke publishing
Thank you for this article. I write a book review column, and one of my chief complaints lately has been “chick-fic,” books by/for women. I just want to find good books, well written, and worth the time I devote to them.
Me too. Sadly that’s not what the big publishers are doing anymore.
There’s too much to read.
Title Correction:
The Disappearance of Males
It fascinated me that coworkers at a Defense Dept. site in south Asia were passing around a copy of “Wild at Heart” (how to raise boys into men).
The guys were family men concerned about the trend of ‘role confusion’ afflicting the West these days.
Wild at Heart is a helpful start considering those little dynamos.
I have no doubt about the factualness of what was put across here in the article, nevertheless I did come upon a recently published book (2023) written by a man. But, yes, I think the author is in his late 50’s, maybe early 60’s. Mark Lee Gardner. I read his book, “The Earth Is All That Lasts.” It’s about the Sioux and Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and their wars. Very good. I have David McCullough’s book, “The Pioneers,” I want to read that; an old white man though. Right now, I’m reading a book written in the late 19th century, I think, by J.J. Ellis. A book on William Tyndale. It’s very good.
This was a great article articulating a seldom talked about front in the Marxist’s ongoing war against all the bonds that hold society together: the church, the Judeo-Christian worldview, the family, masculinity, the male role model, motherhood, childhood, et al.
Boys need books to become men. A part of my identity is wrapped up in the books I’ve read that I hold dear- Crime and Punishment, East of Eden, War and Peace, Life and Fate, A Tale of Two Cities, Lord Jim. Video games will never make you a better person like a book will.
I recently read Mark Helprin’s, Winter’s Tale, and came out of it with the belief that the only reason Helprin hasn’t won the Nobel prize in literature is because he’s a right-wing SWM.
To beat the Marxist onslaught, we must as a people ignite the imaginations of young men, and to do that we must take what’s ours.
A Winter’s Tale is fantastic. And yes men very much need books and they need heroic role models who grapple with compelling problems to become who they are.
Thank you for your reply. I greatly value the work you do at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, it was late in the evening when I wrote this post and I think I should elaborate on what I meant when I said “we must take what is ours”. There is obviously a concerted plot on the part of the left to destroy and “fundamentally transform” our society and way of life. A key aspect of this is what’s been termed the “War on Boys”. The Marxists know that in order to remake society they have to destroy the bond’s that hold that society together. A key aspect of that is marginalizing the protectors and defenders of that society — the men. As men we must take back our primacy in our homes, the work place and society. Your article displayed in microcosm, with literature and books, a domain that we as men must do better with. Storytelling is the avenue with which we can take back society. The left knows this which is why they control the entertainment industry to such a degree. Your article greatly inspired me to live my story better.
Daniel,
I agree. A good title for a good book might be A Father’s Tale. A book about a good and imperfect father trying to teach his imperfect son how to be the best imperfect father, son, and man he can be.
Most of my reading is about current events by conservative writers I like or history by Victor Davis Hanson or Bill OReilly and Jonathan Cain. But I have noticed when I want to read fiction it’s been the classics. Like Louis L’amoure, Twain, Dashell Hamett, Dickens. Been attempting Shakespeare. But nothing of the last 50 years since Stephen King pissed me off. I guess it’s like my aversion to new movies. I’ve been disappointed so often I’m afraid of wasting my time. Since I retired I read much more but it has always been a pure pleasure.. Had a kid come to my door who had no idea what the word”soliciting” as in “no” meant. That is a problem.
Thank you for this article. I’ve often pointed out that the left has traumatized us, stolen so much from us that we don’t even realize it. I grew up in a house of books. Dad browsed book stores in Manhattan and brought home all sorts in his briefcase every day. Mom was an English professor’. Reading books and newspapers was like breathing. You always reached for a book. As a girl, my guilty reading pleasure was science fiction.
It’s years ago now that I noticed Islam was idealized in several new novels I had picked up to read.. That turned me off. Then, I found that the same woke themes I’d noticed in women’s magazines appearing in any new book. The leftism and preachy writing alienated me. Without pondering it, I stopped trying to read new books. I recently ordered a fiction book from Amazon on a whim.. Female theme. The writing was at about 3-4 th grade level. Perhaps written by an early Ai. Unreadable. I wondered if the reading level of adult females in the US had fallen so far. Maybe.
Thanks to Daniel for addressing this topic. And for his very readable and important new book.
mainstream science fiction publishing has long since been taken over by wokeness and that includes Muslim writers and pushing Islam
Janis Ian wouldn’t;be allowed at most conventions today
Agents and publishers also openly solicit and favor manuscripts from indigenous and other BIPOC writers, not because they sell better but to demonstrate their own woke mindset..
I am 72 and was raised to love books. A junior high teacher (yes, a woman) had us read Huckleberry Finn and I will never forget the day she read out what she called one of the greatest passages in American literature in which Huck berates himself for ‘stealing’ Jim, his Aunt’s slave and resolving to turn him in and send him back, but out of deep friendship for Jim he goes against ‘morality’ and ends by saying more or less I guess I am just wicked and evil and will go to hell, but I can’t do it” Another teacher steered me to Owen Wister’s The Virginian (a book I’ve read a dozen times) right when I NEEDED it in my life.
We still had those spinstery women who loved books and were teachers and librarians and were the dealers in what is STILL my drug of choice – truly great fiction.
indeed, those were the days when literature thrived in America
I suspect modern publishers would also hate female writers – writers such as Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane and Ayn Rand.
the Little House on the Praire books are already being canceled in part because of Rose’s involvement
Thank-you Mr. Greenfield, for your thought-provoking essay.
For years now, the majority of my book purchases have intentionally been male authored. I’ve never admitted my preference before now (maybe my family has noticed- but been too kind to make a pc observation), but I’ve wondered about it myself…
The dialog, descriptions, character-motives in contemporary woman-authored books just. do. not. ring. true to me. They seem like some sort of low-end AI psychobabble to my ear; an alien (read non-earth) tongue. I can’t keep with them for long. I’ve come to the belief this is because I’ve always chosen to make my living in dirty/dangerous/difficult male-centric jobs and avocations, and I feel most comfortable there. Though I enjoy the fiction of Claire North, she’s the exception. I stay away from the things my wife and daughters choose to read, and don’t much talk to them about Thomas Sowell, Jack Carr, Ben MacIntyre, etc.
We write in a certain way because we speak a certain way…. In our usual way of talking, in which we do not listen to ourselves while we speak, our writing is the result of our unaddressed, involuntary participation in Disembodied Language (DL). Thus, it is due to our DL, that men have ‘disappeared’ from the literature. This is the inevitable consequence of our sensitivity-denying common way of interacting, which has to be stopped completely, if we want to be able to have natural, intelligent, effortless Embodied Language (EL), in which all speakers listen to themselves while they speak. EL is the language of inclusivity, but DL is the language of exclusivity.
Also, I should add that EL is the language of reality, responsibility, courage, humility and genuine self-knowledge.
Great article Mr Greenfield!
Here’s my take on the situation……..the Leftist commie Dems are taking us (and our children) backwards on purpose!! They’re taking us back to the dark ages again where people can’t read OR write! Is cursive taught in schools anymore? NO! Math isn’t taught, reading isn’t taught either! The only thing being taught is subtle communism! The elites want us back in feudalism and slavery! Look at Agenda 21….you’ll own nothing and be happy! How, exactly, does that work??!! Or…..they want us all dead except a select few!
Why don’t you respond to me Daniel Greenfield? You and I should be talking with each other to explore together the many implications of the difference between Disembodied Language (DL) and Embodied Language (EL). My Skype name is limbicease. I hope to hear from you.
I like to read. There is so much crap on TV.
I was a poor reader until after High School when I some how discovered Louis Lamour.
He started me reading. Today, 60 years later, my favorite author is CJ Box.
I will not read novels by female authors. Not worth my valued reading time.
Old fuddy=duddy? Maybe.