Special Edition | Part 1: Do Women Really Read More Than Men?
episode SUMMARY:
In this Special Edition episode of the Books for Men podcast, host Douglas Vigliotti explores whether women “really” read more than men. Vigliotti discusses the macro data and research supporting the idea that women read more than men, particularly in fiction. He also delves into the reasons behind this trend, including but not limited to societal factors, nature versus nurture, and the rise of audiobooks. Vigliotti acknowledges the importance of diversity in the publishing industry but raises concerns about a widening gender gap that could be irreparable if the current trend continues. In part two, he plans to address why men are reading less, particularly fiction, and the top 10 reasons you should be reading fiction. Vigliotti concludes with a call to action to support the initiative of inspiring more men to read by sharing the podcast with friends, family members, and other people who might enjoy it.
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READ THE TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to Books for Men, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do. So this week I am introducing a brand new segment on the podcast and it's got a very original title, Special Edition which is the name of the segment. And this Special Edition is going to be broken out into two parts. The first part is going to ask the question, do women really read more than men? So, before I even get started into that, I am a little bit under the weather, so I apologize if my voice is a little nasally. I'm a bit congested, but I wanted to record this. I'm going to be traveling in the near future and I needed to get everything done for the podcast before I hit the road, so to speak. Or the air is another way to put it, I guess.
(00:57)
But anyway, let's get back to the question at hand. Do women really read more than men? And so there's something that kind of triggered me to go down this road again. It's something that I addressed in the trailer of this podcast, which was, I don't know now, almost two years ago. Recently though, I did an interview with Bradley Tusk on his podcast Firewall, down in the city, and it was a fun conversation, but one of the things that became apparent to me almost immediately was I should probably have a better hold on some of the macro data that exists around the publishing industry. So that way when asked about the data or the research, I had something to pull from. Not that I think it's necessary to understand the fact that men are reading less or men don't read. This was sort of the basis of the entire podcast, right?
(01:59)
It was theoretical in a way, at least it was not done looking at big data. It was more or less looking at little data. So I often say street logic is the best way to understand this phenomenon. If you're around a group of guys, I would challenge you to ask them what they're reading, and you'll probably find that one out of 10 is maybe reading something. Most people aren't even ready to admit that they're not reading anything. And if you do find a man who's actually reading something, there's probably a better-than-average chance that he's reading nonfiction, not fiction. And I'm well aware that there's always an exception to the rule, but what I've come to find is that the big data as I started to dig through it a little bit more, is actually supporting that narrative in quite a big way. I also want to point out that I've had a lot of conversations over the last few years with people in the publishing industry.
(02:58)
And this ed is also shared from them as well, whether they're willing to say it publicly or not, that there are in fact a lot less men that read fiction than there are women. And I think like all big issues or cultural issues, there are complex and there's a lot of reasons that kind of relate to this. I think that there's some nature, some nurture at this point. And I'll talk a little bit more about why I think men are reading less as well as my best theory on why men don't read fiction but still read nonfiction. And for the record, when I was saying before, if you find someone who reads, I would take that even a step further and see if they're actually reading the book or if it's an audiobook. Because with the rise of audio books, in my own experience, as I navigate the world and have one-off conversations, I find that more men are reading or listening to audiobooks than actually reading the book.
(04:02)
And again, I'll get into a little bit more about that as well because to me there is a difference between listening to something and reading something. And it's quite a big difference actually. Education or learning or obtaining the knowledge, so to speak, is only one reason to read a book. And in my eyes, it's not even the best one, not even by a long shot. So while you definitely can get that from listening to the audio version of any book, it doesn't offer all of the other things, the more important things in my eyes that potentially you gain from actually sitting down and reading the book. Now, I don't want to deter anybody out there who listens to audiobooks because there is a purpose for them, and I think that that's still better than a lot of the short forms of content that you can consume.
(04:56)
But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself right now. This is something that I'm going to be addressing in part two for now. Let's circle back to that big question. Do women really read more than men? So it's hard to address this question without first acknowledging the fact at this point that yes, women are reading more than men. If we're going to look at this situation or this phenomenon in a way with any kind of clarity, we first have to acknowledge what the facts are and what the truth of the situation actually is by the numbers. And the situation that I'm going to describe to you is a very unique phenomenon to publishing in the book market. Most creative endeavors still see a large disparity in favor of men, but in the publishing and book market, it is a heavily female-dominated industry, both in terms of employment as well as new authorship.
(06:06)
Now, I understand that there are a lot of people out there who are going to react to this initially in a very knee-jerk way, but again, the data supports this. It's not hearsay, it's not 1955 anymore, it's 2024. And as I mentioned, this is a very unique phenomenon in the publishing and book market industry. It is not the same in the film world or the music industry. And for the record, I want to make it known that I am happy to see the meteoric rise of female voices and women really in publishing and in the book market. I think that it's a testament to progress and our ability to grow as a society, but we can't pretend like it isn't a real phenomenon that exists. And part of acknowledging that means acknowledging that there are a lot less men reading and a lot less of new male authorship.
(07:13)
So I led this off by saying that I started this very podcast based on little data and street logic as I called it. But I do want to mention that I did do some preliminary research at the time as well. One of the articles that I came across was this Guardian piece from, I think it was 2021 which stated how women had taken over the literary fiction market. And it was a really sprawling article, super well done, probably around 4,000, 5,000 words I would say. And it took in a lot of different voices from the industry, and it sort of laid out what I am depicting to you here today. However one of the key statistics that came from that very article was a study or research that was conducted by the UK Publisher Association, and it was about employee representation in the publishing industry.
(08:06)
It found that 78% of the editorial employment was female. 83% of the marketing employment was female, and 92% of the publicity employment was female. And then as I kept digging, I found a separate study on words rated.com that cited female employment in the publishing industry or book market industry as being close to 75%. So three out of every four employees were female. Now you might be asking yourself, what does this matter or why are there so many females inside of this market? And that gets into a little bit of a different question, one that I will answer shortly, my best guess anyway, but I did want to cite a major study that was done in 2023 by Joel Waldfogel, who is an economist at the University of Minnesota, where he evaluated sales data from book stat in Amazon. So over, I think it was 10 million titles, he reviewed data of 1.8 million Goodreads titles as well, and over 230 million ratings as well as historical data from the Library of Congress.
(09:27)
Some of the key findings were as follows, 10% of all 19th-century books in the Library of Congress were authored by females, which obviously wasn't a lot. However, what we saw from 1960 and even more specifically 1970 and on was as I already alluded to this meteoric rise. And so the new book market was only 18% female in 1960. By 1970, it was almost one-third of all new books were females. And by 2020, the majority of all new books were published by females. But the real interesting finding was that not only were females beginning to be more prolific, but they were also more successful on average. There was a separate study done by Nielsen Book Research, which evaluated the 10 bestselling female authors of all time and the 10 bestselling male authors of all time. So for females, it was people like Margaret Atwood or Jane Austin.
(10:39)
And for males, it was people like Dickens, Stephen King, or Lee Child. And what they found was that of the 10 bestselling female authors, 19% of those readers were men. While 81% of those readers were women for the male authors, what was found was that 55% of the readers were men while 45% of the readers were women. Now, if you haven't already realized, this is a really interesting statistic because what it points to is that women are more likely to read male-authored books while men are less likely to read female-authored books. Now, I'm not going to get into the right and wrong. We both know that you should read female-authored books. If you are a man listening to this podcast right now, I'm just referencing inciting the data. And so when I combine everything that we know, why I said earlier that it's a little bit nature and a little bit nurture, is that we have all this momentum in the industry with female authorship and female employment and all of this stuff, which again is great, but if we know men are less likely to read female-authored books, yet more and more and more of the books are written by females.
(12:14)
It's a self-compounding issue that if not corrected at some point, has the potential to completely extinct male readers. Now, I know that that's an extreme stance, but if you think about it, this is going and trending in this direction now, which in my eyes is one of the big reasons that I am passionate about doing this podcast because, in the smallest way possible, I am attempting to hedge this problem. In a 2019 article, another Guardian article actually, they found that 80% of novels were purchased by females. Not only is that number pretty staggering, but I'm going to toot my own horn here. My street logic actually made sense because if only one out of every five novels is purchased by a man, it would make sense that one or two out of 10 would say they were reading and never mind fiction, right? I'm no mathematician, but I think I was onto something there.
(13:20)
So the question is why did the publishing industry and the book market have this meteoric rise with females, but other creative endeavors haven't seen the same type of success in that regard? We could point to the obvious cultural things that happened in 1970, and they were probably the biggest reasons why, which was the women's movement and women's liberation in general, the evolution and the creation of birth control. So that was and has been a huge landmark for women and women's rights. Sadly, in recent years, we've seen some of those rights get peeled back, which to me is just insanity. But that goes down a whole nother road. One of the other interesting things that an article that I read pointed out was the idea that because writing is more of a solo activity as opposed to other creative endeavors, call it the film industry or the music industry where there are significantly higher levels of collaboration, women found it easier to write and to do things in an isolated way because there could be less sexism, so it's less pressure-filled.
(14:37)
Now, again, that's just a hypothesis. It was interesting. Nonetheless, I will say that as far as education is concerned, females are now the dominant university goers. They have higher valedictorian rates in high schools. This is all data that Richard Reeves points out in his 2023 book of Boys and Men where he talks about basically the sad decay of American men and the growing disparity between men and women overall. And sadly, like anything we have to be able to recognize two things can be true at once. So we can say that we are pro-women's rights and before the continued development and encouragement of more women's voices and leadership, while also recognizing the struggles that many men are going through today. Now, again, I'm not going to get into all the details of that because that's not where my focus is, it's more on just the reading aspect of things.
(15:52)
But I do think all of this comes together at a head and coincides with this, as I already mentioned, a meteoric rise in publishing for females. So you may be still out there saying to yourself, I'm not so sure about what you're saying. And one of the things that I do want to encourage you to do is look at new authorship versus legacy authorship. It's not total number of authors that are published because there are still plenty of male-authored books. In fact, I share a lot of them on this podcast, right? It makes intuitive sense that if you're a man, you're probably going to read more books that are authored by men. And if you're a woman, you're probably going to read more books authored by females. Just think about your favorite musicians or favorite artists. You usually find some kind of similarity with those people, whether you voice it out loud or not, and it's usually easier to do when they're of the same gender.
(16:53)
So I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb there, but the reason why I said new authorship, as opposed to legacy authorship, is because for young people who are trying to get into reading, if new authorship doesn't look like them, sound like them, then they're less likely to engage and read those books. And I think that that's the same narrative that's driving the diversity and inclusion in the publishing industry to get all of these ethnic voices and new voices in, which is a great thing again. But I do want to again, pull it back to men as a whole. The question that I want to ask is, do you really want a world where there are less men reading fiction more specifically? Because again, that's where the bigger issue is. And maybe that doesn't matter to you, but I guess in a selfish way, it matters to me, which is why I do this podcast.
(17:53)
I think we covered a lot here, but I did want to just key on one more question before we leave it off for part two. And that one question is why are men reading less? So I think I hit on a lot of the nurture aspect and where we are societally and situationally, and I could probably believe it or not go into much more detail, but I'm trying to keep this high level enough where it doesn't get too drowned out in nuance that doesn't matter or go off in too many different tangents. So with that being said, I think that there are some base-level things as to why men don't read, let's say, or why they're reading less. And it all starts obviously with boys and young men. And I think still there's more of a propensity for things like sports or to play video games.
(18:49)
And even more so now, as I already mentioned, the audio form has dominated culture, and so podcasts are a big thing. And audiobooks, as I mentioned, and social media, one of the big things that we have to acknowledge now is that everything is designed for speed and many less things are designed for slow, deliberate engagement and consumption. And I do think that there are some downside effects to that, something that I will definitely be covering in part two. I think that there's something appealing to the speed and aggressive nature of the evolution of technology, whether it be in video games or otherwise, that appeals to the biology of men. I don't know what it is. I could probably assume and point to testosterone as Carol Hoover pointed out very eloquently in her book T: The Story of Testosterone. Now, I know that there are plenty of people out there who think that there is nothing biologically different between men and women.
(20:01)
I am not in that camp. But with that being said, kudos and more power to you if you want to spread your message. I just think that there are things that are inherently more masculine, and there are things that are inherently more feminine. That's not to say that there's nothing that isn't nurture, but I do believe that there are a lot of things that are just nature. They are what they are. When you're a man, you're more inclined for this. And when you're a woman, you're more inclined for that. And for whatever reason, reading seems to appeal more to women. I do know that the majority of book groups are also female. There are also some theories out there that this starts all the way back in childhood where girls are able to sit for much longer periods of time than men are, or other theories that suggest that women are just overall more empathetic than men are.
(21:00)
And maybe that's the maternal ness in them. Again, going back to the nature aspect of being a female versus being a male, as in one can reproduce and one can't reproduce. So I think that there's definitely a lot of things that are interconnected there. I'm not the best person to speak on this, but I do believe that there is something that draws females to reading that does not draw men to reading. And I think it's that same thing that makes the way that we've evolved on a technological level for speed and action and all of this fast-moving stuff appeals to men in a different way than it appeals to women. And again, I'm speaking in generalities here. So it's not to say you can't have exceptions to the rule or the majority. In fact, one of the beautiful things about the world that we live in today is that you can find almost anybody, no matter what their sex, gender, race, nationality, or whatever way you want to divide people up.
(22:09)
You could find exceptions of people doing that thing, and they could be your inspiration and your exposure to that. And I think that's one of the beautiful things about growing up in today's environment, even though I think exposure has some downsides, all of which I'm not prepared to get into on this podcast episode. But that's just all to say there's something about reading that for boys and men just isn't as cool as playing video games, being a sports star, or watching social media, I think there are more distractions than ever before. And if you're not biologically inclined to read and the trend is not set up to give you the product that maybe would appeal to those innate sensibilities or biological traits, then it's easy to see why boys or men are reading less. Alright, so I've been talking long enough. I don't think I've ever done a podcast episode that's gone on this long on this show, but it was an important episode to cover a very wide-spanning topic that I probably could do another 30 minutes on.
(23:26)
With that being said, there will be a part two where I will answer the question specifically, why don't men read fiction? So why are they favoring nonfiction? And then I will be giving you the 10 reasons why you should be reading fiction. So don't forget to tune back in for part two next Monday. Until then, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to share it with friends and family. Anybody who you think might enjoy it or maybe with this one really needs to hear it. Word of mouth is everything. And with this podcast as this episode so alluded to, is to inspire more men to read. And I need your help to do that. You can always double down on that support by taking 30 seconds to rate, like, follow, and subscribe on whatever podcast platform you're listening to this on because doing so, helps more people find the show. If you'd like to connect with me, you can always do so on Instagram @douglasvigliotti. It's the only social media that I have. For more information, visit BooksforMen.org where you can get full transcripts for all of these episodes, as well as sign up for the newsletter, which is a monthly roundup of every episode, complete with full book and author information, all the best quotes and newsletter only book recommendations. Again, all you have to do is head over to BooksforMen.org.
