[LMB] trashy books for guys - what's the difference?

[Lois McMaster Bujold]

[LMB] reader stats
Mark Allums mark at allums.com
Sat Feb 2 00:15:44 GMT 2008

 >> In the never-ending department of How do people read,
 >> anyway?, another query...
 >>
 >> We've heard, with the reliability of any other internet
 >> statistic, that about 20% of the readers in the romance
 >> genre are men.  Has anyone done a comparable survey ("the
 >> plural of anecdote is not data") to find out what
 >> percentage of the men's adventure fiction genre readers
 >> are women?
 >

I know this is not what you asked, but I think you are asking for
marketing purposes?  What sells?  For me, I love a good mystery, in any
genre.  SF mystery, Fantasy mystery, mystery mystery, even
techno-thriller/adventure mystery, if it's well-written.  I see no
reason why nearly any niche genre can't have a mystery story (slash
mystery?).

--Mark Allums


***   Not for marketing purposes, since 1) marketing's not my job, not 
that anyone else seems any better at it and 2) I can only write the 
books I find in my head; it's not as if I had another choice, or owned 
another head to rummage in.  But I do like to check those assumptions 
("at the door") that seem to guide marketing, not to mention literary 
judgments, informed or otherwise.

I don't classify O'Brien as men's-adventure; those are not category 
books, those are historical fiction, period.  The Executioner series 
would be closer to the trope tangle I have in mind, gun porn certainly.  
(James Bond has rather escaped into some larger category, "cultural 
phenomenon" perhaps.)  Something that is as comparably constrained, both 
exclusive and excluding, as the modern romance genre.  (And, I suspect, 
as comparably scorned.)  Trashy books for guys.

The *assumption* is that the two sets of readers are as thoroughly 
segregated into opposite sides of the bookstore aisles as the two 
genders of kids at a junior high school dance are to the opposite sides 
of the school gym, but is it really true?   And to what degree?  I'm 
looking for some survey-type data already compiled -- or have the men's 
adventure folks just not bothered to ever ask that question, the way the 
romance crowd has?  (And if not, what does that say?)

My own take on the two genres is that in romance, characters get to 
*say* things readers would never get to say in real life but wish they 
could, to vicariously triumph over those who oppress them, and in 
guy-books, characters get to *shoot* folks readers would never get to 
shoot over in real life but wish they could, to vicariously triumph over 
those who oppress them.  But my reading in both market sectors is not wide.

As a point of... something, I note that about a third of the members of 
SFWA are women, two-thirds men, but I don't know if that stat holds 
across the readership as well.

Slash mystery, hm.  Sure, why not?  But to be properly satisfactory as a 
true blend, the mystery would have to be/include something that 
threatened the emotional relationship between the main characters, in 
much the way that romantic suspense does.  A plot that existed apart 
from that center, that could as well be solved by any two random 
strangers on the street, wouldn't deliver the emotional goods I suspect 
the readership craves.  So in straight (so to speak) mystery, solving 
the puzzle is its own reward, but in romantic suspense (regardless of 
the genders of the couple), solving the mystery is merely the key to 
saving the relationship, which is the actual prize.  (And then there are 
those stories whose plots exist merely to keep the sex scenes from 
happening all at once...)

Mystery does seem to be a universal donor, like Type O blood, an element 
that can be added to any other genre, just as F&SF seems to be a 
universal receiver, like Type AB blood, that can *accept* elements from 
all other genres,

Ta, L.