“Look. Some of my best friends are men. I’m married to a man. But men make up less than 50% of the population and only about 20% of the fiction market.
Why spend time catering to such a niche market?” – Mary Robinette Kowal
“Happened to be in Target again and decided to check in on the “Fantasy” section. Unlike last year, any male-centric fantasy is nowhere in sight. It’s all Chick Lit and Booktok slop. Modern publishing hates male readers” – John A Douglas
“Thus far, the critics of John fall into two categories:
1) Lies!!! This is all made up!
2) Haha!! Yes it’s happening! Sucks to be you, you male oppressor person!” Herman P. Hunter.
All statements from X this week…
Now I am one of those odd souls who wants all good boys and girls to enjoy reading. Weird, I know. Actually, I even want all nasty boys and girls to enjoy reading. I even want this if it is not my books they’re reading. Completely batsh!t. Mary would struggle to deal with the idea… as it seems would Trad publishing. They feel less people reading, as long as those people not reading, are not their people, is just fine.
One of things that just doesn’t seem to get through to these people is that, yes, you occasionally get writers who don’t read books… their writing is horrible, usually poor-quality regurgitation of movies. Hell, even those who don’t read a genre make a cod’s head of it when they try. That’s where writers who produce good reading actually come from: the reader-pool. Obviously, those writers reflect their experience, their tastes, their politics, into their books. I’m not talking about sermonizing here, just people DO write what they know about, and are interested in. If you’re only getting writers who leave out huge chunks of the reading-capable demographic… that should be a massive red flag, saying something is wrong — and there are bigger problems down the road – especially if the numbers of authors from that demographic section is declining. You’re losing a chunk of your market, and you’re having an effect on your society, producing people who don’t read and don’t make you money. Even if your mission in life is to sermonize your ‘message’ — whatever it is, if people aren’t reading, they’re not getting it. You’re preaching only to the converted faithful.
It seems to me, that there is a delusion out there in Trad publishing, that, if there is nothing else, the ‘heathen’ will knuckle under and read their ‘message’, and give them their money for it. Men looking for say action or adventure with character they can ID with, if they can’t find it, will read the only thing available: say romantasy, and get the messages and learn to love it. Well, the collapse in their sales is a pretty clear answer to that. They won’t. Even if Indy weren’t eating their lunch, readers just aren’t going to do that.
Now, I am the first to acknowledge that it’s HARD to understand what people say 10-15 IQ points above/below you actually think and understand. We’re our own frame of reference. It’s also background: I know I tend to see math/stats relationships that I actually struggle to explain to people without the background. Having struggled to grasp a friend’s discussion on String Theory – I know exactly the problem!
All of these relationships seem painfully obvious to me — It seems like a kid with grade 8 math and an IQ of say 100 would have no trouble in understanding. So: either I am misjudging how much intellect is needed not to pack up laughing helplessly at Mary’s ‘logic’ and math – or I am stupid.
Let me just spell it out as simply as possible in case I am misjudging how obvious it is.
1)49% (male pop. share) is literally almost equal to the female share as potential market. There is no reason a lower proportion of this should be able to read. If anything is missing it is desire. It’s a large untapped market – far more precious than the 51% which is a saturated market.
2) 20% is a HUGE niche (much bigger than sf/fantasy, in which she writes) anyway. Simply to play with back-of-the-beer coaster numbers: Assuming 50% of your population could be readers, say 150 million in the US alone, and for ease of calculation 73.5 million male 76.5 … and let’s say sf/fantasy a 1% niche. 7.65 million each female… which must then be divided among all the crowded shop of 10’s of thousands of female authors who direct their work only at a female audience. It’s not equally divided of course, and some women will not choose to read thus targeted books, and some men will. If the same proportion of men could be brought to read, that’s 7.35 million… or even at the 20%… 1.47 million – divided among… very few authors – maybe, pushing it, outside of Baen, a 100… which individual has the potential to sell more? Unless I was the best woman author (Mary isn’t, IMO – and there are 90% who will get few sales, while 10% sell well, and the top 1% of those exceptionally) I’m willing to bet that NOT selling to the niche crowded with female authors, can’t be a better bet than selling into a smaller, but less author crowded niche. There’s just less competition. The odds need to be less than 5 female authors selling to their female ‘niche’ to every 1 male (or female) author selling to male ‘niche’ for it to be equal or better sales. I think (judging by John A Douglas’s photograph)… maybe 100:1?
3) And then there is the 10% catch 90% of the fish (true on trawlers, true in publishing). The proportions should still be the same, no matter which niche you sell to. BUT, here’s the thing it’s not a fixed percentage, but a number — IF supply of authors is limited (it’s not on females selling to females side, but clearly is on the other side). So, if you have 10 000 authors, a 1000 will be selling well, of those 10 exceptionally. To a 1/5 audience: 200 well, 2 exceptionally… except there ARE only 100 authors… In situation where supply is that limited, those selling into the smaller niche are less likely to be in the 90% group ‘don’t sell much’ ;-/
Or maybe I’m too stupid and publishers, and authors like Mary have a higher IQ and better grasp of math, and I am just not getting it. But looks like authors (male and female) appealing to both sexes, or men, mostly – are doing pretty reasonably as Indy authors…
Mad Genius Club 
21 responses to “‘Niche Market’”
I’m not sure Ms. Kowal understands the concept of untapped markets.
As a writer whose heroes are mostly men I get the occasional review from male readers surprised by the fact that I wrote my book for everyone, not just women.
Marketing aside, men are fun to write. Never mind the greater speed and strength (statistically) of men, they also can have spiritually awe-inspiring moments regularly (and statistically). As the lesbian art historian Camille Paglia noted in her book Sexual Personae, it’s the men who throw their bodies on their families to protect them from bullets. It’s the boys who rush the school sniper. The middle-schooler who saved his sister recently. Historically, it’s been the men at the ramparts, in wars, and serving as trash collectors. Statistically, in real life.
I do not discount all the women who have served their country and defended others with their lives, but there is also something magical about men–the good ones–at core. They’re cool.
I suspect it’s a cheat that’s gone feral.
What was that line from Narnia– “Wars are ugly when women fight”?
Just like getting emotional boosts by killing the dog, adding sex, hurting kids– you have the focus fighter being a woman, and the stakes are already high. You don’t have to work so hard for it.
All of those can be used properly, as part of a great story. But they can also be abused.
And so many of the folks writing now, don’t have a clue about making stories.
I have nothing against women MCs. I’ve loved many books with them. I’ve just always puzzled over why I write mostly men MCs.
Same reason a lot of guys mostly write female main characters– they’re interesting! Especially if someone has a deep admiration of the opposite sex, it can feed into really loving who you’re writing.
Measured by the same standards, they can all be great characters.
Which is why the “it’s got girls, it’s for girls” is so annoying. 😀
Sometimes we write what can’t help but fascinate us. I’ve written monster MCs that were terribly difficult but wildly fun to characterize. Totally need to do that one again as a rewrite someday.
But writing men as a woman and women as a man? It’s subtly different and can be quite intriguing. The sexes tend to look at things just slightly different enough to be understandable (too different and it’s the uncanny valley or something like). What Foxfier says is absolutely true: they’re interesting to us! Heck, the species probably wouldn’t have been quite as wildly successful if not.
The appeal of the Other, so to speak.
Her logic is so bad that one must wonder if it was meant to be humor, and his selection of test location could possibly be worse if someone worked really hard, but difficult to choose one more biased without serious travel.
It’s tarjay– marketing to affluent middle aged women– the shelves are literally marked “ROMANCE” for a sold portion of where he’s scanning along, and there’s, what, three series there, in complete form? Because they currently happen to sell?
I’m so old I remember book lovers wishing that places would ever bother to stock all the books, at least for a currently selling series. And that’s besides “wait, there’s a whole section for fantasy? Not one small section a child can reach across, filled with “fiction” that includes westerns and the latest big thriller?”
That’s before one starts looking at specific books and going “ok…not my thing, but that’s not chicklit…it happens to have an attractive woman on the cover, that use to be a sign of fantasy, but whatever”
Oh, wait, he added in “booktok,” so if it’s popular enough to actually be stocked, he’s got an out, anyways. No need to actually engage with the books, define terms, figure out what this specific market gets success with. (Wait, why does this sound familiar?)
More relevantly, I’ve been watching this shtick for a couple of years now, including the videos with avoid-showing-the-section-you-film-the-most, and wish they’d quit whining and start seeing this as the golden opportunity it is– HEY, LOOK, HUGE UNDERSERVED MARKET!!! LET’S GOOOO!!!!”
Treat it like a market sample– go check that there aren’t books of the sort you want in the wrong place. Go check a store that isn’t drowning in virtue signaling. Check when you travel, too– video is a good choice for this, because you can go back when you have time and see, but you need to get the whole book section.
Places they might have fantasy with big snarling guys on the cover would be the media tie-in section, because that’s where epic fantasy more focused no breaking skulls is.
Still going to be a lot with girls on the cover, though, because for some reason guys really like sexy chicks who could kill them.
Publishers don’t have to write books for men. That is not going to stop male readers from reading books they want to read, books written for men. That is because books don’t really go away. A lot of guys do what I do when we cannot find books we want to read on bookstore shelves. We go into the past.
So many books came out in the 1950s through 1980s it was impossible to have read all of them. Forget today’s politically-correct Mike Hammer. Copies of 1950s Mike Hammer stories can be found in e-book form or through Abebooks. Cheap, too. Ditto Max Hennessey, Richard Woodman, Philip McCutchen and a host of others.
Plus you can find a lot of non-PC male-oriented lit from indie writers. Chris Durbin, Andrew Wareham, and Roger Maxim come to mind. That is just fiction. I have excluded SF only because I assume readers here know SF examples of what I am speaking of. There is plenty of older and very entertaining non-fiction available, too.
If today’s mainstream publishers wish to leave money on the table, I am more than happy to accommodate them. Doesn’t mean I won’t spend my reading money on what does interest me.
And westerns, too – Louis Lamour, Elmer Kelton, and the rest of the classic Western authors; from what I have seen, copies of their books sell hugely in the second-hand market.
Earl Adkins, aka Earline Adkins Weatherbee, was a female western writer. She told me of a number of male romance writers who wrote under a female persona.
Good writing is independent of gender. And good writers can overcome that shortcoming.
Dick Francis’s books are amazing.
Big fish, little pond. Small fish, big ocean.
There’s no point in writing to a target audience unless you can do it well. The kinds of writers who poormouth men as a reading market are doing the men a favor by not trying to write to male markets, because they would make a hash of it.
Seems to me authors like Larry Correia, John Ringo, David Weber, Michael Z. Williamson and, oh, that Dave Freer guy have all made out pretty well writing for that ‘niche’ market. 😀
They can be so glib when dismissing huge swathes of the population they don’t like.
I’ll never understand that unearned sense of superiority.
I am completely amazed that Mary three names is still listened to by anyone in the writing community. (Hell I’m amazed she’s alive.) She’s bepunked herself so often as to be a stereotype, much like Bernie Sanders, who I’m also amazed is still at all relevant.
V/R
William Lehman
Her middle name always makes me do a double take because I first noticed it on someone higher-profile who is/was in a different line of work.
Dave, I can’t believe you really quoted Mary Three Names. I guess she made quite the impression this time, eh? ~:D
“Why spend time catering to such a niche market?”
Well, it could be, in this time of ever-falling sales numbers, that the mere existence of an untapped market would normally bring a rush of authors eager to take their money. But no, instead we get #Mary3N disparaging said market as not being worth the bother.
If it was only #Mary3N, I would suspect sour grapes, because Miss Mary couldn’t write a men’s fantasy story if her life depended on it. But the truth is this attitude is everywhere, so I suspect a political arrangement.
That’s why I proudly write my stories the way I do. I have to, because hardly anyone else is. Used to be you could find a reasonable men’s SF/F novel on any spinner rack, but these days I have to do it myself.
That’s why the giant tanks, giant spacecraft and robot girlfriends. When was the last time you read something that had a robot in it that didn’t degenerate into Frankenstein by the end of chapter one? I think that’s a political policy, not a cultural trend.
There’s always the C.S. Lewis/Tolkien approach: “Tollers, there is too little of what we really like in stories. I am afraid we shall have to try and write some ourselves.”
Which is a good idea. Just remember that if your work is a bit too, let’s say idiosyncratic, you’d better not expect it to sell well. Or at all. I’ve seen that happen to people I know.
Nor does it help to have a friend who just knows your work is sheer genius, leading to them shoving it down everyone else’s throat at every opportunity until you have total strangers telling you not only do they hate your story, it caused them to turn off from the genre entirely. Not because they read it, but because your self-appointed promoter wouldn’t stop bugging them about it.
Like Spinal Tap’s, traditional publishers’ appeal is becoming more selective.