Why do so many women write fantasy novels?
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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.
