I DUNNO, J.K. ROWLING DOES OKAY: Why Men Don’t Read Books by Women. “A writer for The Guardian, M. A. Sieghart, has asked the perennial question, ‘Why do so few men read books by women?’ Curiously, the people who always ask this question never follow up by asking how women authors might better appeal to men or how the publishing industry might get a better share of the underserved male-readership market. No, the assumption is always that men have something wrong with them and need to change. It’s not the books that are the problem, it’s you. The customer is in the wrong.”
Well, all media discussions of men start with the presumption that men are the problem, and are wrong. That’s because most consumers of media are women, who need to be pandered to.
Plus: “Danielle Steel writes trashy romances. Jojo Moyes writes trashy romances. Jane Austen wrote non-trashy romances. Atwood writes a variety of things but is best known for a pearl-clutching feminist screed that confuses Baptists with the Taliban, though she also churns out an occasional apocalyptic science-fiction novel disturbingly obsessed with child pornography. To put it briefly and bluntly, men don’t want to read that shit.”
Though interestingly Jane Austen was quite popular with men in her time, and didn’t get labeled as a women’s writer until much later.
Also: “By the way, the Japanese manga Demon Slayer outsold the entire American comic-book industry last year. This is not a coincidence.”