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?

  • dermanus@lemmy.ca
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    14 hours ago

    I’ve heard the same. Women are the majority of readers these days, so they’re just chasing the market.

    • Zonetrooper@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      From what I understand, it’s less about chasing a market than wanting to be perceived as correcting the previously highly male-dominated writing scene.

      Subjectively, a little informal discussion among writer & fan groups to me suggests that men who read fantasy tend to slowly but steadily acquire new materials, often from word-of-mouth among dedicated communities; women, by contrast, tend to latch on to a particular breakout series or author, with awareness often propagated by social media such as “Booktok”. This means that while both groups purchase in similar volumes, a book whose audience favors women can experience surges of popularity which make for prominent best-sellers over limited timeframes.

      Admittedly, though, this is informal - so take that with a grain of salt.