Sex and Reading: A Look at Who's Reading Whom

I think whether one reads more men authors than women authors depends on the genres one reads. If you read lots of romance/urban fantasy/YA, then you'll read mostly women authors (because most authors in those genres are female.) But if you read fantasy/sci-fi/thrillers then you'll read mostly male authors.

Michelle wrote: "I honestly don't pay any attention to the author's gender when picking out a book but it would be interesting to run the same type of stats on one of my own bookshelves to see how typical I am.

Lo..."

I'm right there with you, Michelle. Don't care who wrote it as long as it was a good book. I have read crap books by both sexes and great ones, too.

This is some interesting data, but the conclusions are a little misleading on a few points. (Don't forget, you can always lie with statistics!) There are actually a number of places where your presentation is misleading, but I'll focus on two examples:

1) You report that in your sample of 40,000 members, women rate 2014 books higher (3.85) than men (3.7), but this is not the same sample you use to determine the average that men and women rate their books (3.94). So, it could be true that in your 40,000 sample, women's average for *all* books is 3.85 and men's average for *all* books is 3.7, meaning that books published in 2014 were no different.

2) You base your claim that "we are still sticking to our own sex" on the breakdown of the most popular books by sex. But this is not the same thing as what men and women read overall. As an extreme example, let's suppose all the men in your sample read 55 books by female authors and 45 by male authors. But let's suppose the 45 books by male authors were all the same books, i.e every single man read those 45 books. Since they all read them, they would be the top 45 books read by men. This would show the exact same statistics you quote: the top 50 books read by men were 45 male authors and 5 female authors. But that does not indicate the breakdown of what men read. In my example, men actually read more women authors - 55% of their reading was by women authors. That is a lot different than what the most popular books imply. You cannot use the most popular books to make claims about men and women's entire reading canon.

Bottom line is you have to compare apples to apples to get meaningful results! Giving us comparable data for these two points would be interesting, particularly the second one. I find it ironic that in a presentation on sex and reading, you never actually give us the percentage of male and female authors we read broken down by sex of the reader!

Another stupid Goodreads poll.

Amazing infographic. Illuminating. Though I don't think that with me it is a conscious decision, the gender of the author. If it is a good book, then damn if i care.

Haha, good one J.K.Rowling! XD

Honestly I barely even note the gender of the author when I pick up a book.

Sometimes it's painfully obvious that the male author has no idea how to write women (and sometimes vice versa!) but that's really the only gendered thing I can think of when it comes to the authors themselves.

But I might go look at my lists now and see how the divide looks...it's an interesting idea :)

Intrigued by your question, I just reviewed the books I'd read this year:

Written by men = 67%
Written by women = 33%

Not a conscious decision, but interesting nevertheless!

I agree, it is interesting, and I hadn't thought about the gender of authors I've read before either. Except for when I've taken a moment to consider what books are influencing my writing style. Albeit then I mainly look to genre, rather than gender...

It's rather hard to interpret the stats, and it's hard to get a picture of what the underlying data could look like.

If I were to guess... well, one possible kind of data set could look like this [THESE STATS ARE COMPLETELY MADE UP BY ME AS AN ATTEMPT TO DIGEST WHAT I'VE SEEN HERE]:

{Shorthand:
..."10m women" = women read these books 10 million times... that could be 2 million women reading 5 books each, or whatever.
}

-Male authors get 10m women and 10m men readers.
-Female authors get 20m women and 5m men readers.

Does that seem to square fairly with the stats we got here? It means:

"Women read 2 times as many new books" (30 mil. women vs 15 mil. men)
"Male authors are read 50% by women" (10 mil. vs 10 mil.)
"Female authors are read 80% by women" (20 mil. vs 5 mil.)

IF this is a fair guess at the structure of the underlying data, then it would also tell us:

-67% of women's reading (of new books) is focused on female authors
-67% of men's reading (...) is focused on male authors
-Female authors, in total, are performing marginally better than men for total readership: (in the example 25m total reads for women vs 20m for men)
-However, if the number of female authors is significantly greater than male authors, then the average individual female author can still have a worse performance in sales than the average male. Whereas, if more men are being published than women, then they are the ones suffering on an individual level.
-Both male and female readers prefer to read books authored by someone of their own gender, but the significance arises from the fact that women are the majority of readers!
-"Success" in publishing depends on appealing to female readers (since they're the majority of readers), but that is especially true for female authors. I.e., a female author's male readership, on average, is a very small part of the measure of her success.

------------------------------
So.... is this a fair assessment of the stats, or did I bungle it?

E.T.A. I revised my stats and interpretation after catching my own error! Gotta check it again!

OK, sorry. I'm fumbling about while trying to figure this. Anyway, the stats can't be interpreted to absolutely correspond with my guesswork, but at least it seems that the statistics are compatible with men and women being equally open-minded/close-minded with regards to books by authors of the opposite gender.

If that's so, it surprises me. But the stats given above also surprised me in the discovery that women show such a strong preference for female authors among their favorite new books. I hadn't expected that.

I do not like statistics that are based on gender. Especially since I know how to calculate them. There's a saying about satistics that is very true: don't trust any statistic you didn't fake yourself.

Lola wrote: "Fascinating Infographic. I'm surprised that of the 50 most read books published in 2014, for each gender, only 5 of the fifty crossed gender bounds.

It would be interesting to see be reading prefe..."

I agree, Lola. I noticed that of the books written by women that men were reading, there were a lot of sci fi...and I would guess that you're also right in that a lot of guys probably read more how-tos and non-fiction than fiction.
Why bother with this? Marketing, people, it's all about marketing.....

Niklas wrote: "Instead of "Men are 2x as likely to write a 500+ page book in 2014", should't we say "Men are 2x as likely to write a 500+ page book and have it published in 2014"?"

Also a good point. We're having the usual disagreement in my Spanish-language book club right now; of late, the population of the club, which reads literature (not pop fiction) written in Spanish, has been less 50/50, and leaned more toward women (and over 50 at that). So, there's been "push" to read women authors-which we've done before. But the issue is, outside of Spain, a lot of really strong female authors don't get published. So if you're looking for the famous female authors from Latin America, many fall into the "sentimental" trend, or have great works, but they're out of print. Some don't want to sacrifice quality just to say we're reading women, and others don't care about the quality (these are the ones who weren't there when we read women authors before). So, yes, this plays a large role.

All I know is that I rarely read books written by women, not because they are women but because the tone and content of their book usually do not interest me, based on decades of experience. Which is interesting because one of my first favourite authors was Andre Norton, and as someone mentioned above, P.N. Elrod is also a writer I like.

My preferred reading is military SF like David Drake and stuff like Warhammer 40K, and though I have tried military SF books written by women, they never seem to hit the right notes with me. This if course does not imply that any book written by a man has to be good. There are loads of rubbish out there written by men.

Even books co-written by a man and a woman often contain content which I find uninteresting despite the fact that the male author was one of those I normally like. If I were to guess, I would say that 90% of my books are by men. On the other hand, there a some female Erotica writers such as Aran Ashe who appeal to me very much.

So possibly the genre and subject preference play a great part in the resulting sexual mix that ends up on someone's bookshelf.

Elizabeth, great timely useful survey. Thanks to GR for this!

I read more non-fiction than fiction - and more classics (by m & f authors) than the recent romantic genres which ofcourse are dominantly female-authored. The reason is simply that you learn more about the world and get exposed to better way of expression and writing by reading books by masters. And the masters are both men and women - whether in fiction or non-fiction.

Yes, there is a discrepancy between male-authored work and female-work and the audience they cater to but there are books that have cross-over appeal no matter what: I would like to believe that
Hillary Cinton's Hard Choices would be equally important for both men and women readers because of the impact of foreign policy decision-making on key event leading to deaths of Americans:


Divergent series has action in it so it will appeal to men:


And women will always gravitate towards loss, pain, gender, romantic ideal in books as apparent in Ian McEwan's Atonement:

or his latest The Children Act:


Or adoption gone wrong of All the Light We Cannot See:


So in a way, there is no great mystery when it comes to the reading choices of men and women. The important fact to overcome is that the reviewing business takes books by men more seriously!

Love this post. Thanks GR and Elizabeth!

From Noorilhuda author of The Governess


It's time we put our face out there along with the neck!

Since I read mostly in romance genre, which is predominantly female authors, I definitely read more by women. But doesn't mean I don't read male authors too, though interestingly, I think I read more mystery/thriller by male authors...

I never pay attention whether it's a man or a woman when I'm picking books. But looking back at the books I've recently read, most are woman. Interesting stats. :)

Very very poor statistical analysis.

Loved the article because of the infographic, but I have to admit if the title of the article was "Gender and Reading" I wouldn't have bothered clicking it. hahaha

But really... I don't pay attention to the author's gender when choosing which book to read. As long as I think it's interesting and worth reading then I would read it.

Wow I really don't pay attention on gender. I read what caught me. If the book has interesting cover and anotation I read it. Well I must say that my favourite books are mostly written by men.
Drakula (Bram Stoker)
Odysseya (Homer)
Rosemary's Baby (Ira Levin)
The Time Machine (Wells)
The Space Odyssey (A.C.C)
The Sphere (Michael Crichton)
The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
Discworld books (Terry Pratchett)
Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman)
and more...
But this is a quite interesting info.

Out of interest I looked at my last 100 books and realised that 80% of authors were male and only 20% female.

This was not a conscious decision by me, but all of my favourite authors tend to be male. Perhaps that is owing to the fact that I like classics and it was much harder for a woman to be published in the past.

I am also yet to find a woman who can write a good contemporary horror. Any recommendations?

It depends on what genre of books one is reading, considering that the majority of classics authors are men, but I do strongly believe that what genre we read is greatly influenced by our gender. I have observed that it is much easier for a women to pick up a book written by a man, even if it might have a noticeably masculine cover. While on the other hand it is much more socially unacceptable for man to read a novel with a girly cover. In my humble opinion I think it comes down to the difference in attitudes towards these two genders that present males as something admirable, which everyone should be proud of being or being associated with, while on the other hand displaying females as weaker, something one should not be proud of being associated with. Only by reading diversely can we banish the stereotypes that tell us what kind of people read which books.

Jacinta wrote: "How about some analysis on whether we prefer authors from our own country? For example I generally prefer to read a British or Australian author over an American author which may be a reflection o..."

I agree - I would like to see some stats on this!

BlaiddDrwg wrote: "When I'm finding a new book to read I never think about the author actually. There are loads of books when I don't even remember the author's name (oops). If I like the story - I like it, if not - ..."

Same here :)

interesting.. hmm..
i don't actually pay attention to the author's gender when picking books to read,
but i do prefer a female main character to the other

maybe female authors (though not all of them) tend to write a story about a girl ?

Would have been interesting and more meaningful, I think, to do the analysis by genre.

OOh nice, I like Stats. For myself; I have read 18 books (so far) in 2014. 11 written by men and 7 written by a female writer. I don't pay attention to whom writes the book. But I think there are more male writers than female en this can reflect on te books I have read.

Aelene wrote: "i don't actually pay attention to the author's gender when picking books to read,
but i do prefer a female main character to the other

maybe female authors (though not all of them) tend to write a story about a girl?"

That's really a significant point. Most folks here are saying they don't pay attention to the author's gender, but that does not mean that there will be no correspondence between author's gender and reader's gender... stats show that there is a correspondence. We would certainly expect this to be the case IF there is a particular kind of book that women like, as distinct from what men like. It doesn't even have to be as obvious as genre, or the protagonist's gender. It could be anything. Because, if a female writer tends to write the kinds of books that women read, that correspondence will come about even if the author's gender is concealed, unknown, or disguised by a pseudonym.

The same would hold for national cultures... anything cultural. If one culture prefers family dramas while another prefers crime dramas, then we would expect the authors of those cultures to reflect the cultural preferences, and this in turn attracts readers who share that preference.

I.e., saying "I don't pay attention to gender" does not mean one is not indirectly influenced by factors related to gender.

Interesting stats.
Would like to remind the author that sex is not gender, and that what is between a person's legs might not "match" the gender society assigned to them at birth.

GENDER is affecting our reading choices. How interesting!

Levi wrote: "The interpretation of "In the first year of publication men's books have a 50/50 audience, women's books have an 80/20 audience" is NOT "everyone likes their own gender more," it's "women read boo by both men and women; men don't read books by women."

This. And it's a well-established fact, too.

Yoana wrote: "... "women read boo by both men and women; men don't read books by women."

This.

I think it's a good illustration of the prejudice female authors encounter, and of men's bias against women in literature."

I'm sorry to have to disagree with this. If you see my earlier comment, then you'll see that it's certainly possible for men to prefer male authors and women to prefer female authors in EXACTLY the same proportion, and still end up with the statistics reported in the original post.

That is, because women read more (at least in terms of new books), then that alone can completely account for the 80%/20% readership of books by female authors and 50%/50% readership of books by male authors. Women read more + prefer woman authors = 80%/20%.

I tend to read books by women because most of the time the main character is also female. That makes it way easier to relate to the character and I tend to enjoy those books more!

I think that confusing sex and gender and using them interchangeably throughout this article says a lot about the likely veracity of the claims being made.

while women tend to create a more realistic female character in their plots, one doesn't really check the gender of the author, personally, o don't read books with a female lead because i cant relate to them, and that is my quirk, so i check the gender of the "hero", not the author.

Nice chart,i personally go for the author's writing ability instead of sex,but this was a fun research.

Is it just me, or does it seem like as far as marketing goes, that books are marketed more to women?
Sometimes I get the impression that in the general media, that reading for pleasure is viewed as more of feminine pursuit, as if leisure reading is not a "manly" thing to do. I've noticed that a lot of the little posters or slogans that promote reading either depict a woman or children with their nose in a book. In fact, I cannot think of a single image that promotes reading featuring an adult male.

Kidgreg wrote: "Is it just me, or does it seem like as far as marketing goes, that books are marketed more to women?
Sometimes I get the impression that in the general media, that reading for pleasure is viewed a..."

As far as i'm concerned,sexism goes both ways. Men suffer from it often too,as a simple act such as reading is a lot of times entitled to only women. This behavior also discourages new male readers.

I don't care who it's buy. If it's a book I like I won't complain.

Interesting. To me it doesn't matter if the book was written by a male or a female. When picking out a book to read I never look to see who the author is beforehand. What matters to me is the contents of the book. There are books written by both genders that are really good and really bad. If I like the book though I will generally look for more titles written by that author.

I love reading books on both sexes :) Thanks for the infographic :) it gives me an information that I could share to everyone :)

Saurabh wrote: "You could have used the title as "Gender and Reading" instead of "Sex and Reading"
Or are you in hunt of eyeballs?"

You are correct. It's disappointing when a site that promotes reading and literacy cannot get a simple headline right. Pandering to prurient interest is no excuse.

Ahsan wrote: "I do like sex."

But not really as a spectator sport!

Oops. I have a lot more books written by female authors than by male authors on my shelf. But I think I have a couple of excuses for that:

1.) I read a lot of YA fiction and chick-lit. Both genres are ones which are typically dominated by female authors (and female readers).
2.) I prefer books from female POV over male ones- It's easier for me to identify with them. Let's face it, women have a better idea what it' like to be female than men do.

So, I'm not entirely surprised that I'm reading a lot of books by authors of my own gender. To be honest, I've never even considered choosing a book based on the gender of the author but now maybe I should (just for a little more variety)...

The Inquisitor wrote: "Kidgreg wrote: "Is it just me, or does it seem like as far as marketing goes, that books are marketed more to women?
Sometimes I get the impression that in the general media, that reading for plea..."
I will say that publishers really need to consider the genre of the book when deciding on an cover illustration. Lucky for me 95% of all my reading is on Kindle now, but some of the covers they've put on books, I'd be embarrassed for anyone to see me reading, and I don't embarrass easily.

good books are good books and it is not make sense who the outher is or what the book talk about

This should really be titled "Gender and Reading" but still some nice info.

I just took a look at the 100 books I've read so far this year. Out of 100 books, only 18 were written by men. That really surprised me!

There was a time where I was pretty skeptical as to whether I would like a book by a woman author, but then I was reading mostly what was called "Men's Adventure" anyway. Plus I think I had just by chance read a few books by woman authors whose style I just didn't care for. But eventually my reading choices broadened somewhat, and I read JV Jones' books, which I really did enjoy.
However for the longest time I did make the claim that I could tell a woman's writing from a man's -not saying one was better than the other, just different. Now I'm not so sure about how accurate I would be.

A good book is all that matters. The gender of the author shouldn't come into play.