Reading ... a new survey reveals how closely readers tend to prefer books by members of their own gender. Source: Supplied
IT may be the 21st century, but it seems women still prefer to read books by female authors, and men favour books written by — you guessed it — other men.
In a survey that included 40,000 of its most active readers, titled: Sex and Reading: A Look at Who’s Reading Whom,social reading website Goodreads surveyed 20,000 male readers and 20,000 female readers in order to gauge their reading habits.
What the website discovered was a little surprising: out of the 50 books published in 2014 that were most read by women, 45 were written by women, and five by men (technically four — Goodreads counted Robert Galbraith — a.k.a JK Rowling — as “male”).
On the flip side, out of the 50 books published this year that were most read by men, 45 were written by male authors, and only five by women.
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Pseudonymous ... British author J K Rowling also writes books as Robert Galbraith. Picture: Andrew Montgomery Source: Supplied
What’s in a name? ... the cover for the Australian edition of the novel The Cuckoo’s Calling. Picture: Supplied Source: News Limited
A further breakdown of the statistics showed that in the first year of publication, women made up an overwhelming majority — 80 per cent — of a female author’s audience, and only 50 per cent of a male author’s fanbase.
On the Goodreads website, editor-in-chief Elizabeth Khuri Chandler wrote that “the #readwomen movement inspired us to take a closer look at what where readers fall along gender lines”.
The #readewoman movement began this year as a response to the ongoing dominance of male writers in the literary world.
Survey: Readers Prefer Books Written by Authors of Their Own Gender Despite a social media campaign to #readwomen http://t.co/vQCiYXZxL1
— DanTkachenko (@JustDan_please) December 1, 2014 Ms Chandler told The Guardian that, for the most part, “people are saying that they don’t set out to read a male author or a female author — it’s all about the book”.
“But when they look at their reading lists, some of them are realising that maybe they might want to deliberately explore some different authors,” she said.
Women were more open minded when it came to reading new books, the data showed, with twice the amount of women reading books published in 2014 than men. Both genders, however, read roughly the same amount of books once all publishing years were considered.
“It seems that our group of active male readers read books from a broader range of publishing dates than our group of active female readers. The female readers had more of a preference for the books published in 2014.”
Unintentionally sexist ... Goodreads editor-in-chief, Elizabeth Khuri Chandler, says that while people “don’t set out to read a male author or a female author”, they usually end up reading books written by authors of their own gender. Picture: Supplied. Source: ThinkStock
Ms Chandler said Goodreads focused on their most active readers — of both genders — which showed men gravitating towards male authored books, which could explain why female authors have a long tradition of writing under a male name.
In addition to J.K Rowling, author Louisa May Alcott — who wrote Little Women — spent much of her early career writing under the pseudonym “A.M. Barnard”. Then there is Nora Roberts, a highly successful novelist, who decided to venture into detective novels under the name “J.D Robb”, as well as Mary Ann Evans, better known by her alias “George Eliot”, who wrote the literary classic Middlemarch.
Author Louisa May Alcott, famous for book Little Women. Source: News Limited
Author and literary academic Dr Beth Driscoll told News Corp Australia that male authors continued to be awarded more prestigious, traditional literary prizes, as well as having the advantage of being reviewed more often than women by “authoritative sources such as newspapers, journals etc”.
“And this is how they get talked about more by both men and women,” she said.
Interestingly, the Goodreads survey also showed that when rating books, both men and women rated books written my female authors higher than their male counterparts.
“On average, women rated books by women 4 out of 5, and books by men a 3.8 out of 5”, the website said.
And: “surprise! Men like women authors more, too … on average, men rated books by women 3.9 out of 5, and books by men 3.8 out of 5”.
Male authors continue to receive more prestigious, traditional literary prices, as well as having the advantage of being reviewed more often than women by authoritative sources such as newspapers an literary journals. Source: ThinkStock
Dr Beth Driscoll said Goodreads was a good example of literary culture’s migration to the digital sphere, and the democratisation of book reviewing.
“One of the striking aspects of Goodreads is that it’s not just mainstream books — they discuss a lot of genre books, too, which gives you an insight into a broad cross-section of the book industry and reading culture,” she said.
Dr Driscoll said that because Goodreads was a “non-traditional literary gatekeeper”, it was able to tap into reader behaviours by using different criteria to that of traditional book reviews — “so looking at enjoyment and what people have learnt from a book”.
“Maybe along with that, there is a greater prominence for female authors to have a say — most readers were women, so these are the voices we’re hearing now”.
