It's not just the lack of male perspectives, but some of the published men I've read in recent sci-fi have a loser mentality. In one, the spaceship's people gave up on settling the planet, and traveled back to earth and the author supported that. In another the person was tricked into going and was basically a coward.
There was no agency: Instead of acting on and changing the world, the world acted on them with little push-back.
The whole "debate" is based around the false assumption that only tradpub counts.
Of course it would be great if more male authors writing stuff that appeals to men got the corpo publisher treatment.
But for ideological reasons, tradpub is committing slow suicide and the benefits of going with them are negligible at this point because they don't have the budget to provide the first-class treatment they used to.
So you get these tradpub whine articles "Why Don't Men Read." Or sometimes, "Why Don't Straight White Men Read." But the question they're really asking is, "Why Don't Men Buy Our Shitty Books." And the subtext of every such article is, "we painted ourselves into a corner and we want out of it but we don't want to change our behavior."
Men do read. We read a lot. Historically, we read more than anyone, fiction and non-fiction, if you're talking words read per capita, books purchased per capita. I doubt this has changed much, but when your only measure of readership is, "how many traditionally published new titles did people purchase by demographic," you miss everyone who isn't buying tradpub crap.
The map is not the territory and their cartographers are incompetent. That's all.
'But the question they're really asking is, "Why Don't Men Buy Our Shitty Books." And the subtext of every such article is, "we painted ourselves into a corner and we want out of it but we don't want to change our behavior."'
Hmm. "Diplomatic?" Yes, I like many of the people I have worked with. "Rose-tinted glasses?" It hasn't been all fun and games but, for the most part, I’ve had excellent experiences. "Don’t want to burn any bridges?" Why should I? I don’t hold anyone else's opinions, regardless of how much they may want me to.
I sell a men's brand. It's still, thank God and Providence, successful. Publishing executives don't come running up to me confessing their nefarious plans ... especially if they might run counter to my own.
All that said, I think you and I probably agree on many topics. But I reported on the sort of events that I have witnessed, no more. I wasn't there to back anyone else's position. The situation is what it is. I'm glad you are drawing people's attention to it. If I can help, great, as long as I can be honest.
Kristin chose to talk to me because I have a personal history that goes back to when I was playing under the desks at Bantam in the 1960s. It was a casual conversation about the changes I have seen and how we got here. It was context, but I wasn't there to try to lay the ground work for a case. I've got my own fish to fry.
I also wanted to remind people to have hope. The business of today is not the grand old days of the 1970s, when men had lots to read, but getting published was considerably harder. In the 1950s my father blew off the hardcover business as something that would slow him down and squeeze the life out of him. It wasn't until 1968, over 10 years into his tenure with Bantam, that they bothered to help with promotion. He wrote westerns, the most maligned genre in the business. In the very same way that he took on the paperback, today he would take on electronic/alternative publishing. It has limitations but, just like with the paperback in his day, the freedom for an ambitious and entrepreneurial writer is astounding. One door closes, another opens.
Well, I was not expecting you would somehow discover my article, much less leave a response. I'm grateful for both--especially the thoughtful and informative comment..
For the record, my father may have been your father's biggest fan. He was hard to impress, within the realms of his expertise, too. Since you found this article, I hope you'll read the one I wrote about your dad's books:
I grew up in a world where paperbacks were commonplace, and assumed they always had been. I'm still a bit surprised when I'm reminded that they were once considered a novelty or fad, and were condescendingly dismissed.
Did your dad arrange his own marketing prior to 1968? I would be interested in learning about that, as well as his writing process/habits, as you were able to perceive them. There's a lot I would like to ask you about how he researched, what he himself liked to read, about you and the life of an author's child, how your own reading proclivities developed, how you manage his intellectual property...and much more, but I have no doubt you do, in fact, have your own fish to fry.
So thanks again for taking the time to visit and comment. I hope to hear from you again.
I did read that one, and I was really appreciative! LOL, my frying fish are my own gripes with publishing, which are sort of the next layer down from your own.
Dad did all his own PR prior to the release of the movie Shalako in Britain. The producer of that film was a master at promotion, which was kind of a British specialty at the time ... you can even see a couple of Mad Men episodes that remark on this.
That set the stage for Corgi, Dad's UK/Commonwealth publisher to jump in, arranging for a nationwide tour the next year. We traveled around England and Ireland for an extensive period, Dad doing research when he wasn't signing books or doing TV or radio. When we got ready to return home, they gave us a beautifully produced scrapbook. This sort of thing being the essence of British PR. We landed in NYC and my mother marched into Oscar Dystel's (Bantam CEO) office and dropped it onto his desk, saying, "This is what you should be doing for Louis in America!"
Oscar had been an OSS guy, a specialist in psychological warfare, so he was kind of shamed into acting. It's possible an entire generation of Bantam authors and even those at other publishing houses benefited too.
Prior to that, Dad promoted himself. He knew the game from promoting boxers in the Oklahoma City area during the 1930s. He charmed as many entertainment reporters as he could, and arranged to have his name and projects mentioned whenever they had left over space they needed to fill. With daily columns this was often enough. Their material was occasionally picked up by papers across the country. These relationships were so good that he even filled in for Dorothy Kilgallen, an entertainment columnist who is still known for her skepticism regarding the Kennedy assassination, when she was on vacation. All this was made easier because Hollywood and Manhattan, in those days, were a dense web of relationships that the talent agents had not taken rigid control of. You gotta understand the battlefield.
We still try to stay on the cutting edge, though it’s harder at the moment. I can remember a meeting nearly 20 years ago where the people at Bantam very carefully explained to us all the hidden potential in Facebook marketing (this was back when you could adjust the parameters yourself), and we told them we were in the process of running three campaigns. Eyes went wide, “You mean you’ve actually done it!” We had, and they were still just discussing the possibility.
Happy to talk anytime. My email is on our louislamour.com website.
I thought Corgi was a British toy company--had a metal Batmobile once no doubt manufactured in the Batmania days in the '60s, made by Corgi in the UK, if I remember right.
Blows my mind that the skills for promoting boxers would carry over to promoting books. He must have been an outgoing, sociable people person (qualities that I and many from my generation lack).
Your mom sounds like a real firecracker! That anecdote reminds me of a scene in the most recent Midway movie, wherein Dick Best's wife confronts his C.O., Wade McClusky
I commented about this on your Twitter but let me just say I literally released a book late last year that is absolutely, positively fiction for straight men. If they don’t dig gratuitous sex & violence from the male point of view that is uncompromising & unapologetic I can’t help them.
Thanks for commenting here, Tia, Twitter is blocked at my job, so I can't see anything on there until I get home. Is your book only available in print?
This discussion has made me think of my reading and writing history. Early on, I was hooked on thrillers and science fiction. A lot of the stories I read were about Average Joes who found themselves in situations where they had to use whatever meager skills they had to save the world, escape being killed or both. I also wrote (or tried to write) stories like those. But after I married an avid reader, I was introduced to a variety of fiction beyond my limited library. I found myself writing more of the type of fiction my wife was reading, which included thrillers and historical fiction from the likes of Dan Brown and Erik Larson, among others, but also included the Women's historical fiction she read for her book club and gatherings with friends. I found myself wanting to write what she would like to read. My debut novel is a tribute to my wife's memory, but I still have stories I want to finish with men who aren't cowards or idiots in the lead roles. I miss my old favorites from the likes of Ludlum and Crighton. (What ever happened to James Grady, BTW?) I do have a series here on Substack that I would consider Men's Fiction, and most of the subscribers are women. So, more promotion to men is needed. I believe the demand is out there. Men read. They don't always finish the book, so it has t o be good.
I think they disappear. While they are working they listen to nonfiction audiobooks. I did that as well. It was my wife who got me reading fiction again.
Female readers & fans are the easiest to acquire. Probably because they populate the spaces we think of to peddle our wares. If there are spaces where male readers congregate online, they are well-kept secrets.
In the indie commercial sector, men read a lot of the masculine genres. What they don’t read is the more literary stuff for its sentimentality. I tried to write about mass shootings in a way that blends the two. I wrote for young men in particular. It’s called No Winter Lasts Forever. Mostly women have read it and many of them do not approve.
Amazon categories being flooded with nonsense makes it difficult as a reader, and doubly do as a writer. I feel we need our own search engine (which is what Amazon is) with its own priorities, but the problem is always visibility.
Thanks for the promo! I hope my Sword & Seventies novelettes have enough muscle car content for you. It's light in vol. 1, but vol. 2 picks up. There will be a "vol.3" in the upcoming anthology 'Rock and Roll Mercenaries' from Mistcreek Publishing with a serious car chase straight out of Starsky and Hutch.
I've been thinking for a while we need a serious alternative to Amazon. If I was to build it, it would focus on dude-lit exclusively. You can find the feminized stuff literally everywhere else, but this would be a niche clearing house we could depend on to find what we like, and sell our books without them being buried under tons of mediocre normie crap and cultural Marxist agitprop. If my schedule frees up AND I find the software tools to manage the royalty payment system, I will do it myself.
"Currently, Amazon is redefining the category to mean LitRPG and “men’s romance” with AI generated covers, but I still define it the traditional way."
This annoys the shit out of me. The Colonization category is filled with Alien Romance.
But to be fair: its because of 1/authors gaming the categories to put themselves in categories where they will be high ranked (tools like publishrocket let you do this); and 2/the algorithm shifts your category based on your buyers "other purchases." Amazon tossed me into technothrillers instead of Sci Fi Crime and Mystery (my chosen category) because that's what other people bought before/after my book. Amazon is not actively doing this; they just are not actively stopping this shittification of the categories either.
Also, while I generally consider litRPG trash...I did love Matt Dinnaman's Dungeon Crawler Carl... so there is that.
I'm reading A Dangerous Man, and I've read Sledge as well. I can say both have fantastic quality and are epic, violent tales about men takimg revenge and protecting people. Slege has a Sin City, dark comic feel while A Dangerous Man is a nightmare dive into the serious world of Human Trafficking and a powerhouse of a man dismantling it.
It's not just the lack of male perspectives, but some of the published men I've read in recent sci-fi have a loser mentality. In one, the spaceship's people gave up on settling the planet, and traveled back to earth and the author supported that. In another the person was tricked into going and was basically a coward.
There was no agency: Instead of acting on and changing the world, the world acted on them with little push-back.
Can’t blame you. Way too many wimps out there, and a lot of them are writers.
The whole "debate" is based around the false assumption that only tradpub counts.
Of course it would be great if more male authors writing stuff that appeals to men got the corpo publisher treatment.
But for ideological reasons, tradpub is committing slow suicide and the benefits of going with them are negligible at this point because they don't have the budget to provide the first-class treatment they used to.
So you get these tradpub whine articles "Why Don't Men Read." Or sometimes, "Why Don't Straight White Men Read." But the question they're really asking is, "Why Don't Men Buy Our Shitty Books." And the subtext of every such article is, "we painted ourselves into a corner and we want out of it but we don't want to change our behavior."
Men do read. We read a lot. Historically, we read more than anyone, fiction and non-fiction, if you're talking words read per capita, books purchased per capita. I doubt this has changed much, but when your only measure of readership is, "how many traditionally published new titles did people purchase by demographic," you miss everyone who isn't buying tradpub crap.
The map is not the territory and their cartographers are incompetent. That's all.
'But the question they're really asking is, "Why Don't Men Buy Our Shitty Books." And the subtext of every such article is, "we painted ourselves into a corner and we want out of it but we don't want to change our behavior."'
That right there is a pretty good summary.
Hmm. "Diplomatic?" Yes, I like many of the people I have worked with. "Rose-tinted glasses?" It hasn't been all fun and games but, for the most part, I’ve had excellent experiences. "Don’t want to burn any bridges?" Why should I? I don’t hold anyone else's opinions, regardless of how much they may want me to.
I sell a men's brand. It's still, thank God and Providence, successful. Publishing executives don't come running up to me confessing their nefarious plans ... especially if they might run counter to my own.
All that said, I think you and I probably agree on many topics. But I reported on the sort of events that I have witnessed, no more. I wasn't there to back anyone else's position. The situation is what it is. I'm glad you are drawing people's attention to it. If I can help, great, as long as I can be honest.
Kristin chose to talk to me because I have a personal history that goes back to when I was playing under the desks at Bantam in the 1960s. It was a casual conversation about the changes I have seen and how we got here. It was context, but I wasn't there to try to lay the ground work for a case. I've got my own fish to fry.
I also wanted to remind people to have hope. The business of today is not the grand old days of the 1970s, when men had lots to read, but getting published was considerably harder. In the 1950s my father blew off the hardcover business as something that would slow him down and squeeze the life out of him. It wasn't until 1968, over 10 years into his tenure with Bantam, that they bothered to help with promotion. He wrote westerns, the most maligned genre in the business. In the very same way that he took on the paperback, today he would take on electronic/alternative publishing. It has limitations but, just like with the paperback in his day, the freedom for an ambitious and entrepreneurial writer is astounding. One door closes, another opens.
Well, I was not expecting you would somehow discover my article, much less leave a response. I'm grateful for both--especially the thoughtful and informative comment..
For the record, my father may have been your father's biggest fan. He was hard to impress, within the realms of his expertise, too. Since you found this article, I hope you'll read the one I wrote about your dad's books:
https://hankbrown.substack.com/p/louis-lamour-and-the-lost-ideal-of
I grew up in a world where paperbacks were commonplace, and assumed they always had been. I'm still a bit surprised when I'm reminded that they were once considered a novelty or fad, and were condescendingly dismissed.
Did your dad arrange his own marketing prior to 1968? I would be interested in learning about that, as well as his writing process/habits, as you were able to perceive them. There's a lot I would like to ask you about how he researched, what he himself liked to read, about you and the life of an author's child, how your own reading proclivities developed, how you manage his intellectual property...and much more, but I have no doubt you do, in fact, have your own fish to fry.
So thanks again for taking the time to visit and comment. I hope to hear from you again.
I did read that one, and I was really appreciative! LOL, my frying fish are my own gripes with publishing, which are sort of the next layer down from your own.
Dad did all his own PR prior to the release of the movie Shalako in Britain. The producer of that film was a master at promotion, which was kind of a British specialty at the time ... you can even see a couple of Mad Men episodes that remark on this.
That set the stage for Corgi, Dad's UK/Commonwealth publisher to jump in, arranging for a nationwide tour the next year. We traveled around England and Ireland for an extensive period, Dad doing research when he wasn't signing books or doing TV or radio. When we got ready to return home, they gave us a beautifully produced scrapbook. This sort of thing being the essence of British PR. We landed in NYC and my mother marched into Oscar Dystel's (Bantam CEO) office and dropped it onto his desk, saying, "This is what you should be doing for Louis in America!"
Oscar had been an OSS guy, a specialist in psychological warfare, so he was kind of shamed into acting. It's possible an entire generation of Bantam authors and even those at other publishing houses benefited too.
Prior to that, Dad promoted himself. He knew the game from promoting boxers in the Oklahoma City area during the 1930s. He charmed as many entertainment reporters as he could, and arranged to have his name and projects mentioned whenever they had left over space they needed to fill. With daily columns this was often enough. Their material was occasionally picked up by papers across the country. These relationships were so good that he even filled in for Dorothy Kilgallen, an entertainment columnist who is still known for her skepticism regarding the Kennedy assassination, when she was on vacation. All this was made easier because Hollywood and Manhattan, in those days, were a dense web of relationships that the talent agents had not taken rigid control of. You gotta understand the battlefield.
We still try to stay on the cutting edge, though it’s harder at the moment. I can remember a meeting nearly 20 years ago where the people at Bantam very carefully explained to us all the hidden potential in Facebook marketing (this was back when you could adjust the parameters yourself), and we told them we were in the process of running three campaigns. Eyes went wide, “You mean you’ve actually done it!” We had, and they were still just discussing the possibility.
Happy to talk anytime. My email is on our louislamour.com website.
I thought Corgi was a British toy company--had a metal Batmobile once no doubt manufactured in the Batmania days in the '60s, made by Corgi in the UK, if I remember right.
Blows my mind that the skills for promoting boxers would carry over to promoting books. He must have been an outgoing, sociable people person (qualities that I and many from my generation lack).
Your mom sounds like a real firecracker! That anecdote reminds me of a scene in the most recent Midway movie, wherein Dick Best's wife confronts his C.O., Wade McClusky
Thanks, and I will email you in the near future.
Have you ever thought of ranking your favorite new fiction stories? It would be interesting and I'm a little surprised no one is doing it.
That's not a bad idea. My kindle is bursting with new indie fiction. Only problem is I have so little time to read these days.
If this grabs you, you’ll read it in a day or two. Yes it’s my work but it’s a genuine attempt to write real narrative for young men in particular:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0821VBVJH?ref_=dbs_m_mng_wim_calw_tkin_0&storeType=ebooks
I commented about this on your Twitter but let me just say I literally released a book late last year that is absolutely, positively fiction for straight men. If they don’t dig gratuitous sex & violence from the male point of view that is uncompromising & unapologetic I can’t help them.
Shameless Plugging: https://www.thegreatbritishbookshop.co.uk/products/flicking-the-bic-1
Thanks for commenting here, Tia, Twitter is blocked at my job, so I can't see anything on there until I get home. Is your book only available in print?
Correct. Unfortunately I don’t allow ebooks in part to a soured relationship with Amazon bootlegging my work.
A few other authors to throw into the mix: Declan Finn, Larry Correia, John C Wright, John Ringo come to mind.
I’m not an expert, but to me, they don’t write men’s fiction but more like Iron Age unisex novels
This discussion has made me think of my reading and writing history. Early on, I was hooked on thrillers and science fiction. A lot of the stories I read were about Average Joes who found themselves in situations where they had to use whatever meager skills they had to save the world, escape being killed or both. I also wrote (or tried to write) stories like those. But after I married an avid reader, I was introduced to a variety of fiction beyond my limited library. I found myself writing more of the type of fiction my wife was reading, which included thrillers and historical fiction from the likes of Dan Brown and Erik Larson, among others, but also included the Women's historical fiction she read for her book club and gatherings with friends. I found myself wanting to write what she would like to read. My debut novel is a tribute to my wife's memory, but I still have stories I want to finish with men who aren't cowards or idiots in the lead roles. I miss my old favorites from the likes of Ludlum and Crighton. (What ever happened to James Grady, BTW?) I do have a series here on Substack that I would consider Men's Fiction, and most of the subscribers are women. So, more promotion to men is needed. I believe the demand is out there. Men read. They don't always finish the book, so it has t o be good.
I think they disappear. While they are working they listen to nonfiction audiobooks. I did that as well. It was my wife who got me reading fiction again.
Female readers & fans are the easiest to acquire. Probably because they populate the spaces we think of to peddle our wares. If there are spaces where male readers congregate online, they are well-kept secrets.
Shameless plug: https://a.co/d/4BhH9i4
In the indie commercial sector, men read a lot of the masculine genres. What they don’t read is the more literary stuff for its sentimentality. I tried to write about mass shootings in a way that blends the two. I wrote for young men in particular. It’s called No Winter Lasts Forever. Mostly women have read it and many of them do not approve.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0821VBVJH?ref_=dbs_m_mng_wim_calw_tkin_0&storeType=ebooks
Based
Some of this can be attributed to competition from other mediums during the formative years of our childhoods:
Television for the Boomers
Video games and PCs for Generation X
The World Wide Web, then early social media for Millennials
TikTok, WhatsApp, Snapchat, etc. for Homelanders
I'm gen X, and I've always read. It's more immersive than gaming.
Men tend to read more non-fiction than fiction, and historically more non-fiction than women read.
There isn't a trace of non-fiction in my library. It's all fiction, from chaucer to Dante to Dumas to Shakespeare, to Norman to Chaput.
Non-fiction is boring. I read and write to escape, not to see reality on the page.
YMMV.
Shamelessly shilling my book, The Rooster Rider. If you buy a copy, please leave a review.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B09ZCVCWJ3/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.pjeO4gJrYR2VqavVKZZ6hw2cthNLN-L_gWW3TIQ9jEiFA210BnMNL1jU8KyTOAYYqPGaDgPY3e7VQBOkS6G8LqNv6m3fdwuP9IxCUN2HBBvlBbX1-uf9VSm2VLS1j0T7M220mzdGMWZ6IO7KVsuYdR6VfSG3CvyzSx9DBGR9898OB0WOQ5DTrgN6LqLsHmYzsWMGqngQlU3NNAyFHOBXuQ.sSyA7M88B3mzoYW_s_4F3GaydQMD3gfEX2vBThVXWx0&qid=1744153415&sr=8-1
Thanks for sharing your perspective here. I wrote up some thoughts on this before it went viral (as viral as anything goes on Substack, of course). You might enjoy. Cheers! https://open.substack.com/pub/leovaughn/p/make-masculinity-great-again?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=el4qy
Amazon categories being flooded with nonsense makes it difficult as a reader, and doubly do as a writer. I feel we need our own search engine (which is what Amazon is) with its own priorities, but the problem is always visibility.
Thanks for the promo! I hope my Sword & Seventies novelettes have enough muscle car content for you. It's light in vol. 1, but vol. 2 picks up. There will be a "vol.3" in the upcoming anthology 'Rock and Roll Mercenaries' from Mistcreek Publishing with a serious car chase straight out of Starsky and Hutch.
BTW, you had me at “Rock & Roll Mercenaries.”
I've been thinking for a while we need a serious alternative to Amazon. If I was to build it, it would focus on dude-lit exclusively. You can find the feminized stuff literally everywhere else, but this would be a niche clearing house we could depend on to find what we like, and sell our books without them being buried under tons of mediocre normie crap and cultural Marxist agitprop. If my schedule frees up AND I find the software tools to manage the royalty payment system, I will do it myself.
"Currently, Amazon is redefining the category to mean LitRPG and “men’s romance” with AI generated covers, but I still define it the traditional way."
This annoys the shit out of me. The Colonization category is filled with Alien Romance.
But to be fair: its because of 1/authors gaming the categories to put themselves in categories where they will be high ranked (tools like publishrocket let you do this); and 2/the algorithm shifts your category based on your buyers "other purchases." Amazon tossed me into technothrillers instead of Sci Fi Crime and Mystery (my chosen category) because that's what other people bought before/after my book. Amazon is not actively doing this; they just are not actively stopping this shittification of the categories either.
Also, while I generally consider litRPG trash...I did love Matt Dinnaman's Dungeon Crawler Carl... so there is that.
I've heard good things about Dungeon Crawler Carl.
I'm reading A Dangerous Man, and I've read Sledge as well. I can say both have fantastic quality and are epic, violent tales about men takimg revenge and protecting people. Slege has a Sin City, dark comic feel while A Dangerous Man is a nightmare dive into the serious world of Human Trafficking and a powerhouse of a man dismantling it.
Thanks Jesse. Now I’m even more stoked to read them.