What a marvellous article, Matthew, thank you. I'm hopeful that my two little boys will grow up to be readers, and that Horror writers like myself can get some of those male readers back ;) Let's make Horror the new Romance!
This was a great read, and I loved the final anecdote about the boy who read Tangerine. I am curious, though, about why the market has veered so much towards the romance / romantasy / dark romance genre in particular. Is this a gendered thing? What happened to all the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and Artemis Fowl loving demographics?
Based on what I understand: in a world of overall declining sales, romance is what is keeping publishing afloat, right now. There are some big blockbuster books that *aren’t* romance, of course, but only romance has a consistent enough audience that will read a plethora of different books, not just those blockbusters.
By that logic, HP, PJ, AF, all represent those blockbusters, and keep in mind that all three of those series are over a decade old, by now. There hasn’t really been a big a breakout hit for children/YA in the 2020s, since the new younger demographic is not reading enough to fuel it.
Yes, that makes sense. From what I've seen, the romance reader base (especially in the booktok environment) often buy several books from various authors per month. It certainly is an interesting trend.
ing about with my high school English teacher about a few decades ago. And it went down a different path, that is, that there's a negative component in how we teach reading in school that actually turns people off. Because the focus is on the metaphorical rather than the material, it tends to turn away people who think in the latter way.
I was a voracious fiction reader in high school, and I myself really dropped it as well. And it's not because it was "feminine", it was that I started to see all the metaphors and deconstruction that was reflecting what I was experiencing in society more broadly, which was a lot of guilt, shame and self-hate for being male, or things that made me feel that way. I wanted to be a writer at one point, but I internalized that was just entitlement and privilege talking. The whole thing was just too painful.
So I went entirely into non-fiction. Honestly this was about the time blogs were on the rise so political blogs was what I read.
That's what I think it is...I think the metaphorical way of reading fiction is too close to deconstruction combined with the idea that we are simply not welcome.
On a broader comment, I'm someone who thinks the aesthetic differences between metaphor and material makes a huge difference in how we see things and respond to messages.
What a marvellous article, Matthew, thank you. I'm hopeful that my two little boys will grow up to be readers, and that Horror writers like myself can get some of those male readers back ;) Let's make Horror the new Romance!
Thank you, Lee! I have heard that horror does better with male readers than a lot of other genres.
This was a great read, and I loved the final anecdote about the boy who read Tangerine. I am curious, though, about why the market has veered so much towards the romance / romantasy / dark romance genre in particular. Is this a gendered thing? What happened to all the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and Artemis Fowl loving demographics?
Based on what I understand: in a world of overall declining sales, romance is what is keeping publishing afloat, right now. There are some big blockbuster books that *aren’t* romance, of course, but only romance has a consistent enough audience that will read a plethora of different books, not just those blockbusters.
By that logic, HP, PJ, AF, all represent those blockbusters, and keep in mind that all three of those series are over a decade old, by now. There hasn’t really been a big a breakout hit for children/YA in the 2020s, since the new younger demographic is not reading enough to fuel it.
Yes, that makes sense. From what I've seen, the romance reader base (especially in the booktok environment) often buy several books from various authors per month. It certainly is an interesting trend.
This is actually something I remember talk
ing about with my high school English teacher about a few decades ago. And it went down a different path, that is, that there's a negative component in how we teach reading in school that actually turns people off. Because the focus is on the metaphorical rather than the material, it tends to turn away people who think in the latter way.
I was a voracious fiction reader in high school, and I myself really dropped it as well. And it's not because it was "feminine", it was that I started to see all the metaphors and deconstruction that was reflecting what I was experiencing in society more broadly, which was a lot of guilt, shame and self-hate for being male, or things that made me feel that way. I wanted to be a writer at one point, but I internalized that was just entitlement and privilege talking. The whole thing was just too painful.
So I went entirely into non-fiction. Honestly this was about the time blogs were on the rise so political blogs was what I read.
That's what I think it is...I think the metaphorical way of reading fiction is too close to deconstruction combined with the idea that we are simply not welcome.
On a broader comment, I'm someone who thinks the aesthetic differences between metaphor and material makes a huge difference in how we see things and respond to messages.