What's driving the gender gap in our reading habits?

Sydney Morning Herald

06-08-2025

Won't somebody think of the young male novelist? Men, it is said, aren't writing novels any more. Or if they are, they aren't getting published. Or if they are getting published, their books aren't selling, getting noticed or winning prizes.
One of the first to lament this apparent decline was American writer Jacob Savage. Armed with a battery of statistics, he claimed in Compact magazine that after 2014 'the doors shut' for male Millennials in the US: 'The literary pipeline for white men was effectively shut down … Diversity preferences may explain their absence from prize lists, but they can't account for why they've so completely failed to capture the zeitgeist.' He claims there's a lost generation of literary men who may not know how to say something genuinely interesting and new.
Things got so dire in the mind of British novelist Jude Cook that he decided to set up an independent publishing house, Conduit Books, focussing on literary fiction and memoirs by men: 'overlooked narratives' on 'fatherhood, masculinity, working class male experiences, sex, relationships, and negotiating the 21st century as a man'. Conduit has already cut off open submissions, no doubt besieged with manuscripts. We will see its first titles next year.
But is there really a decline and if so, what might have caused it? One reason is that we're still correcting for a very long period when men dominated literary culture. Indeed, that was why the Stella Prize and the Davitt Prize in Australia, the Women's Prize for Fiction in the UK and the Carol Shields Prize in Canada were set up, and I don't yet see any good evidence that they can shut up shop because their work is done.
Maybe the perception of decline is because most agents and commissioning editors these days are women. Or maybe, as Savage says, male writers are floundering in their attempts to capture the zeitgeist. But perhaps the simplest explanation is that fewer men and more women are reading fiction.
About 80 per cent of fiction sales are to women, who are also the most avid readers. Naturally, they want to read about issues that matter to them. Their reading ranges from literary to popular fiction, with the huge sales of female writers such as Colleen Hoover and the romantasy authors almost entirely driven by women.
They are also keen to talk about books, in person and online, and recommend them to friends. No wonder publishers are looking out for more of the same.
But why are fewer men reading? Are they discouraged because reading fiction seems to be a solitary pursuit that their peer group doesn't favour? Joseph Bernstein investigated the phenomenon for The New York Times and reckoned that to boost readership, 'it might be a matter of men approaching their reading lives a little more like women do – getting recommendations online from celebrities and influencers, browsing together, forming book clubs'.