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?

  • Zonetrooper@lemmy.world
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    8 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.