Why do so many women write fantasy novels?
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But OP was speaking specifically about fantasy books, and not specifying only bestsellers.
My guess, with no data to back it up, is that both men and women enjoy writing fantasy and science fiction, and many of them are good at it.
But writing science fiction often requires a science background, and historically there are many more men than women who have that. It is certainly becoming more balanced, but the difference is still there.
So women, who generally don't have as scientific a background, turn to fantasy where they can create their own worlds.
There’s also the fact that a lot of that fantasy is going to essentially be elf/vampire/etc smut. The fantasy-romance genre is surprisingly huge, but many of the books are just labeled as straight fantasy (and just happen to have really graphic sex scenes). Further confounding the issue, male writers will use female/androgynous pen names when writing smut, because female author names have been proven to boost smut sales; Women prefer reading smut if they believe it was written by a woman.
So yeah, if you’ve been sucked into the fantasy-romance algorithm, I could 100% believe that the vast majority of fantasy books being shown are written by women, (or at least have traditionally female names on the covers.)
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I don't have a problem with women writing fantasy books. I just wish the fantasy market wasn't glutted with 'romantasy' novels. I really, really dislike those.
I'm not exactly opposed to romantasy as a concept. I like that it has brought a lot of women to fantasy genre as readers and authors. Also, maybe this would lead to more interesting takes on romance and sexuality in fantasy literature, because, suffice to say, that could use some improvements.
But I'm kinda worried about the current situation where romantasy is basically just the marketing hype thing. The Popular Thing Right Now. A lot of the stuff doesn't get written because the authors like to enrich fantasy literature, it gets written because they realised can make money off of the TikTok crowd.
...I mean, I guess it's not a new problem, the same thing happened with horror when Twilight was big.
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There’s also the fact that a lot of that fantasy is going to essentially be elf/vampire/etc smut. The fantasy-romance genre is surprisingly huge, but many of the books are just labeled as straight fantasy (and just happen to have really graphic sex scenes). Further confounding the issue, male writers will use female/androgynous pen names when writing smut, because female author names have been proven to boost smut sales; Women prefer reading smut if they believe it was written by a woman.
So yeah, if you’ve been sucked into the fantasy-romance algorithm, I could 100% believe that the vast majority of fantasy books being shown are written by women, (or at least have traditionally female names on the covers.)
Following on what you said, it's also true that for a long time it was difficult for women to get published in the science fiction genre. Many of them relied on male pseudonyms (i.e. Andre Norton, James Tiptree Jr.).
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I was going through “fantasy books” on amazon and was surprised to see that most of them are written by women, and the ratio is not even close. I was kind of expecting the opposite.
Does anyone know why this might be the case?
It's called Romantasy, and it is not the same.
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I was going through “fantasy books” on amazon and was surprised to see that most of them are written by women, and the ratio is not even close. I was kind of expecting the opposite.
Does anyone know why this might be the case?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]its romantasy, usually its white in shining armor type of thing, a guy usually hot comes and "saves" the woman from poverty or whatever situation they are, and the guys are in professions that are "attractive to the readers"(eg fireman, policeman,,,etc), alot of them are some what heavy sexualized books too. usually targeting white female audiences, and yes its from a prospective of a white man/woman. i assume thats whats you meant? unless your talking about other genre, scifi and other fantasy have different audiences, spy type novels(cladestine operations) are usually only men.
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Youre better off asking why women overall are more likely to read. It follows that more women would be authors. And it gets even worse if you're looking at book club participation where women are much more likely to participate ime as the frequent only man at book clubs.
For your fantasy book authors, you probably were expecting the opposite because society historically pushed male authors to the forefront and you can still see this today where many people will list their top fantasy books and not a single woman author can be found. This is either inadvertent or intentional sexism.
Youre better off asking why women overall are more likely to read.
I think people above a certain age won't believe me, but I swear when I was growing up (born in 2001,) being smart and having hobbies associated with smartness was made out to be unmasculine. I don't even know how that happened, but from a young age we all thought of reading as a women's hobby. I think there weren't many male characters in children's media of that era that were smart and not made out to be uncool, but I might be misremembering.
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I suspect your algorithm has offered you a biased sampling.
As of the 2010’s, 79% of Fantasy/Sci-Fi genres bestselling books were written by men.
Source, also contains other interesting author demographics.
If you put add SciFi into the bag and remove a huge part of the books, keeping only the bestsellers, no wonder the statistics are so different.
I'd say that it's you who has skewed the comparison here.
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If you put add SciFi into the bag and remove a huge part of the books, keeping only the bestsellers, no wonder the statistics are so different.
I'd say that it's you who has skewed the comparison here.
Yeah, because it's generally one genre, with fantasy > romantic fantasy > horny fairy romantic fantasy > horny polyamorous fairy romantic fantasy becoming increasingly niche sub-genres.
And I do think comparing "best-sellers" versus open Amazon search is important to point out. "Best-sellers" are generally going to be released through a publishing house with the resources and recognition that comes with it. An Amazon search might kick up a lot of self-published books, especially if OPs algorithm is sending them that way. And one very sensible explanation why women would be over-represented among self-published fantasy books... because historically men got more of the "best sellers" / publishing house backed.
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Yeah, because it's generally one genre, with fantasy > romantic fantasy > horny fairy romantic fantasy > horny polyamorous fairy romantic fantasy becoming increasingly niche sub-genres.
And I do think comparing "best-sellers" versus open Amazon search is important to point out. "Best-sellers" are generally going to be released through a publishing house with the resources and recognition that comes with it. An Amazon search might kick up a lot of self-published books, especially if OPs algorithm is sending them that way. And one very sensible explanation why women would be over-represented among self-published fantasy books... because historically men got more of the "best sellers" / publishing house backed.
You mentioned tons of fantasy subgenres, but the one I was singling out is sci-fi, which is not something classical fantasy fans are usually fans of.
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You mentioned tons of fantasy subgenres, but the one I was singling out is sci-fi, which is not something classical fantasy fans are usually fans of.
I'm saying the industry generally bundles them together as the top level genre. So awards and funding is first considered at the sci-fi/fantasy combined level.
Again, the point was to note the difference between the major genre level where the money and awards are (sci-fi/fantasy, dominated by men) versus the possibility that OP is seeing a sample influenced by The Algorithm (potentially niche sub-genres, potentially more self-published books).
Not trying to make some political comment here, just pointing out some reasons OP might be seeing demographics they didn't expect.
