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Sex and Reading: A Look at Who's Reading Whom
What do men and women want when it comes to books? Are they reading their own gender? And what do they think of books written by the opposite sex?
This year the #readwomen movement inspired us to take a closer look at where readers fall along gender lines. There's a lot of well-documented press about the fact that women's books tend to have "girly" covers instead of gender-neutral ones, and the VIDA count shows us that traditional book reviewers are predominantly male and books being reviewed in "top tier" publications are mostly by men.
Together with the stats team, engineers, and designers, we looked at a sample size of 40,000 active members on the site, 20,000 men and 20,000 women, to determine what they were reading and what they were liking.
So, enjoy this infographic! Let the debate begin. And as the year draws to a close, what's your 2014 reading list breakdown look like? Mostly men? Mostly women? About even? Take a look. You may be surprised.
Coming soon: For our next infographic, we'll take a genre-specific look at reading books—along gender lines. First up, literary fiction!
This year the #readwomen movement inspired us to take a closer look at where readers fall along gender lines. There's a lot of well-documented press about the fact that women's books tend to have "girly" covers instead of gender-neutral ones, and the VIDA count shows us that traditional book reviewers are predominantly male and books being reviewed in "top tier" publications are mostly by men.
Together with the stats team, engineers, and designers, we looked at a sample size of 40,000 active members on the site, 20,000 men and 20,000 women, to determine what they were reading and what they were liking.
So, enjoy this infographic! Let the debate begin. And as the year draws to a close, what's your 2014 reading list breakdown look like? Mostly men? Mostly women? About even? Take a look. You may be surprised.
Coming soon: For our next infographic, we'll take a genre-specific look at reading books—along gender lines. First up, literary fiction!
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I think in general both genders what the same thing from the books they read.1) an interesting story
2) interesting well rounded characters
3) a consistent plot
Interesting. Sounds like a good argument for having book ratings split by age and gender!
I think sometimes authors can get into the head of their own gender better. I mean JK Rowling's Ron is a well written believable boy. But could she get into a boy's thoughts as deeply as Stephen King does in the Stand by Me story for instance.
To be honest, I don't even care which sex wrote the book. To me, it doesn't matter at all.
While it doesn't consciously matter to me if a book is written by a male or a female, I have found that certain books seem to be more aggressively male than others (Saul Bellow for example) and that sometimes makes it more difficult for me to get into (not that it necessarily stops me but it can affect me. However, for most books, this does not seem to be an issue and my reading is divided fairly evenly.
Daniel wrote: "Echoing everyone else's comments, I don't care if a man or woman writes the book so long as it's good! Although the genres I read most (Fantasy and SciFi) tend to be written by more male authors th..."Quite a lot of fantasy female writers for decades. You just need to stop by and think. ;)
I'm stumped at how anyone even knows how many male and how many female members are on goodreads. That's not a readily available demographic, nor are members required to specify their gender or even give actual first names.
I read a good mix of both male and female writers but I might be a little more biased toward the female writers.
From what I understand, it was the wife of JK Rowling's lawyer who outed her as Robert Galbraith. jK Rowling was livid when it happened. The book jacket now says that Robert Galbraith is JK Rowling.
Vickie wrote: "I will read just about anything by just about anyone, except romance titles. Have never been interested in the "Heaving Bosoms" genre, as we used to call it at the library at which I worked. I have..."That was a Twilight Zone episode starring Burgess Meredith.
Out of curiosity, I've often wanted a filter that would allow me to see the average rating by gender. I read voraciously of both genders (and some of my favorite authors are female) but I'll frequently come across a high-rated book that I just don't care for. Looking at the ratings I'm struck by how often the general trend for certain books is females liking them, males disliking, or vice versa. There's nothing wrong with it, but it can't be denied that certain books or genres appeal more to one gender than another, in general, part of me would very much like to see those statistics.
According to my own Currently Reading list, I have books by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1), Kylie Logan (2), Jim Butcher (1), Ellis Peters (1), Steve Perry (1), Louis L'Amour (1), Joanne Fluke (1) and Jean M. Auel (1) so I have 5 women and 3 men on my list with Ellis Peters being Edith Pargeter's alias.https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
I'm a bit of a niche reader. I read books with a female MC written by a female author 99% of which are fiction. When it comes to reading material I'm a feminist.
7 books, 3 by women (1 with a pussycat writing partner) and the other four by men. Although the audio book by Jim Butcher is narrated by a woman.https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
It would be interesting to see be reading prefe..."
I agree Lola. For me, this infographic is almost meaningless without a genre breakdown. What is it about books written by each gender that appeals more to readers of that gender? When people read the opposite gender, is there a genre trend? A subject trend? Which genres have the broadest appeal? Which genre has the largest disparity? Which have a parity?
So many questions for me really.