Women seem to be the predominant readers and it seems predominantly porn for them. If men read books it's predominantly long-running sci-fi series. I've had success and interest in readership but it's not sci-fi (Epic fantasy) and my most success wasn't even a proper novel but a comic. The problem is comics are pretty much dead as well for English speaking countries. Am I wrong or do I need to start prioritizing different countries?
>>24848780the market is quite literally dead if you're not a smut writer. wait a couple of decades and hope things get better.
>>24848820>wait a couple of decadesIn a couple of decades the average normgroid will be completely illiterate
no one wants to read realist fiction, at the very least it needs to be speculative fiction or romance or something with a niche that has things you know you will like. otherwise why would you even know it exists?
>>24848957It's very idealistic and has romance, but it's comparatively small and scale and focused more on small characters and barbarian conquests rather than large scale warfare. If I were to guess my biggest issue though it's that the Greek and Persian empires and terminologies are not interesting to the average American alongside the type of character focused writing being not as appealing to autists than ones that focus on intricate world-building. I don't think men outside of dedicated nerds even read novels in the US.
>>24848780A lot has changed in 25 years. Harry Potter into The Hunger Games, Twilight into 50 shades, social media and Amazon, and most importantly for men reading, video games. Genre fiction has been entirely subsumed by franchisable genre fiction. The midlist is gone. Female porn went mainstream and, predictably, took over almost the entire market. And the geniuses of the ivory tower like David Mitchell are deplatformed unless grandfathered in. Literary fiction is exclusively interracial lesbians fleeing oppression or fighting the institutional racism of whites. McCarthy would have zero chance of getting published today. We haven't even touched on AI or the fact that 4 million books were uploaded to Amazon last year. In essence, you're likely doing nothing wrong. You're just playing the old game. Though you must acknowledge, character driven storytelling has never topped charts in any form of media. Your characters can be cardboard cut-outs and you can still be the biggest selling author of all time if you have a killer hook in the form of a mystery, a timeless debate like faith vs reason and end every chapter on a cliffhanger. All this to say, if I were you, I wouldn't be too granular in my self-assessment. You're probably a good writer. It's probably not your work. All you can do is write, market, write, market, write, market. The main thing for success being market. Look at Audra Winter, if you can without throwing up.
>>24848968i read novels for example but you know what? i went the the store the last time i wanted to buy one and it wasn't even in stock. so i listened to the audiobook, which was free through a sub. it was a good book but the author only has two books. so if i want more i have to wait. also, if you go to a library the waiting list for new books is usually quite long. personally i think you went too far in the niche direction maybe. i kind of meant more, it needs to be realist but have soft elements of a niche thing. it also REALLY helps if it's an established IP but that's out of your controlif people liked you comic, why not focus on that instead of a novel? i know this is /lit/ but you seem to have found success. you can also write a novel when you have even more comic success and maybe more people will read it then? there's a lot of reasons to have hope.
>>24849004>personally i think you went too far in the niche direction maybe. i kind of meant more, it needs to be realist but have soft elements of a niche thingIt's somewhere in the middle. I find going too in-depth into politics (especially Byzantine politics) way too convoluted and would just drag the story down since I want to focus more on the morality and "nobleness" of characters like many classical epics.>if people liked you comic, why not focus on that instead of a novel? i know this is /lit/ but you seem to have found success.I've had some success but I'm learning to have success requires you to move or disassociate from the US because comics are in a worse state than novels here. You can get some success getting involved in counter-culture superhero stuff but that's basically what comics are associated as. I'd need to find contacts that would help me stick a footing and properly visit places like Greece, West/Central Asia, and Japan. They still seem to have a semblance of an interest in this type of stuff novel or comics, and I think Japan even has a specific type of book format designed for train reading.
>>24848780Novels can be science fiction though?
>>24849001So basically, if you're actually in it for art, just keep making the best possible work you can?I'm not saying never try to make a dollar, of course, but you shouldn't let yourself be discouraged by something as small as the market being fucking insane (at the moment)?
>>24848780>Women seem to be the predominant readersA fake stat that no one has ever provided proof for.https://www.vox.com/culture/392971/men-reading-fiction-statistics-fact-checked
>>24849960It also doesn't help that most people in academia (and thus most commonly published research) are probably of a leftist and authoritarian bent.
>>24849960>posts link to a paywalled article as sourceMight not have even bothered to post it.
>>24848780They stopped publishing literature that would have any appeal to men, which is why men don't read.Like you said, men still read classic SciFi and lots of men are reading Marcus Aurelius etc. The desire to read is there but the material is lacking.That said, we have many centuries of literature. maybe it's time for better reading lists and a self-curated male literary community.
>>24849960This is simply a phenomenon of 99% of published material being targeted at women and then women becoming the primary consumers of that material.
>>24849960This article brings up a lot of the points I was going to ITT, namely that women have ALWAYS been the primary consumers of novels and fiction since as far back as novels first became a popular publishing format in the 19th century. Even in the 1800s the perception was that novels were womanly, and men should read nonfiction instead. This was a very archaic mode of thinking that modernism, ironically enough, fought back against, turning fiction writing and reading into masculine pursuits. The authors picked to champion this new masculine wave of fiction were often not very popular in their own day, and relied on the support of academic and cultural institutions to be given outsized importance in the literary canon. Point in fact: most people do not read James Joyce by choice, they're shoved toward Joyce by promoting him as somebody who ought to be read by "serious readers of fiction" (a concept that did not exist before the 20th century, mind you). In fact, Joyce had trouble even finding a publisher willing to take Ulysses, and he was actually sued for trying to publish "obscenity" over it. It was a book so unpopular publishers didn't even want to print it. This is an extreme example of what I'm talking about, but a lot of the masculine literary canon is along the same lines of less widely read books selected for ideological and cultural reasons rather than reflecting the readership's interests or the broader cultural moment. These are not books which reflect the zeitgeist, but rather the intellectual preoccupations of academia. So we get to this farcical panic over "men not reading fiction". Why is men continuing to snub fiction, as their own great great grandfathers did, such a problem? It just smacks of 20th century academia wailing and gnashing its teeth over its lost influence over the mainstream culture.
>>24849952>>24850094I might be too influenced by the idea that making money has value, admittedly. I simply assumed that television and that the proliferation of smartphones has meant that's what most youth spend their free time watching fiction instead of reading. Nerds who actually are interested go mostly into sci-fi which covers the mechanical itch really well.Still, publishers seem to have a bias towards females like >>24850098 said and not even females who are interested in stories but simply sexual fantasies. The funny part is I'm not trying to pander to men (my main character is a woman praised for her wisdom and charitable heart) just the females prioritized are ones that don't care about heroism. My assumption that I should prioritize other countries and then return to the US still seems more probable to success although my reasoning may have initially been wrong.
>>24850138I was just thinking this. How literature, even Hemingway, has a weird kind of "metrosexuality" a kind of homosexualized masculinity that ends up existing as the female mind's definition of masculinity, even when coded as heterosexual.It must be the format.This is also why YA or the male oriented lost genre of adventure novels are more prolific (fantasy and scifi being more mature though perhaps not more sophisticated adventure fodder relabeled as "genre"). That there is a kind of neutered masculinity, nascent but unrealized, in boyhood.Something feminine, envious and aspirational towards unrealized masculine, in fiction.
>>24850207Maybe we should invent a new genre that combines historical and philosophical analysis using pseudo-fictional narration the expresses the author's opinions through thematic framing.The closest thing I can think of like this is Dante's Inferno or even Paradise Lost.Something where the narration occurs through the fictionalized voice of a historical sage and speaks towards factual history, with symbolic or metaphysical elements that convert thematic interpretation into a plotline.Rather than a hero's journey (the adventure novel), it's the unfolding of thematic commentary in the form of a plot that exists as a psychedelic journey through factual events and figures.Instead of a cipher, the character is the reader himself who is already taken (isekai) into the narrative world before narration begins, with in media res. This disorientation is settled by the fictionalized use of real world sages who are spokesmen for themes, and then the character is forced into conflict between the spiritual archetypes psychedelically manifest as historical figures clashing in the spirit realm. The motifs and objects of this realm draw directly from history, and do not need to interact realistically. Rather, the resolution of themes drives plot direction, and the character's journey represents the author's bias in how they believe conflicting ideas ought to synthesize. The plot's conclusion involves the main character supporting the victor who achieves this preferred synthesis, representing the reader's awakening to that gnosis.
>>24850207Making money definitely has value, no matter how fucking useless fiat currency is if the motivations of the common man (make enough to live and advance your goals) and the motivations of the elites (whatever the fuck we want since we can print more) do not align.I do think fiat currency was a mistake, admittedly, but I am immensely biased as a member of either the upper lower class or middle class depending on the metric you use to describe me.I have not, personally, lived through shit like the Great Depression where gold standard currency let us down, so I do admit a personal bias.
>>24850226>Maybe we should invent a new genre that combines historical and philosophical analysis using pseudo-fictional narration the expresses the author's opinions through thematic framing.I'm shocked something like historical fantasy isn't a term. Epic fantasy was the closest I could think of.>>24850257I'm a fiat currency hater too and have silver + gold investments. It's not so much I care about money but I do care about my work actually hitting as many people as it can. The purpose of art is to let it breathe and give form to ideas so that other people can appreciate them.
>>24850209It's fairly clear to me that the 20th century attempts to create a hegemonic masculine literary culture have not borne out. It was temporarily successful, but the decline of men in academia has resulted in these books being sidelined. Women are mostly not interested in these books either. The 20th century's literary canon is a product of academic preoccupation with endless discourse over ambiguous intent and meaning, which applied to masculinity leaves men awash in feelings of anxiety and uncertainty. It is not a wonder that more recent attempts to break into the "literary scene" are a laughable parade of maudlin, navel-gazing faux autobiographies by the latest would-be tortured artists and neo-Hemmingways.For the rest of us, there is genre fiction.
>>24850335Has anyone like Hemmingway emerged who has actually known war and strife?
>>24850402Isn't that what Mein Kampf is?
>>24850429I thought Hitler's writing was denigrated as illiterate.
>>24850402No, how could they? Hemmingway lived through two world wars and was a close spectator to the Spanish civil war. The current crop of literary writers do not have such a background or anything close to it. I speak of the Hemmingway "style" which influenced writers so strongly in the early 20th century, and which even to this day is seen as inherently "literary". >>24850429Hitler was a contemporary with Hemmingway, I was speaking of recent, especially millennial authors trying to break into the literary canon by aping 20th century sensibilities and styles.
>>24850517I mean, Korea and Nam and WW2 and Korea were relatively close to one another...I personally know two people that were in Desert Storm and served in Iraqi Freedom as well.
>>24850525>I mean, Korea and Nam and WW2 and Korea were relatively close to one another...And those are all mid-2th century conflicts. I am talking about the current crop of literary authors, who were born largely after 1980, yet try to write as though they were born in the early 1900s.
>>24850532Sadly, most of those people were probably chasing the 1960s-1990s dream of getting an entry level job in an industry/corpo and advancing to middle management.I was literally just thinking of anyone anti-war who had actually known its gifts and curses.
>>24850517I mean there's Forrest Gump and Jarhead and they both suck.
>>24850536There's no real wars since Vietnam. Even bad Fallujah is not real war.Real war is Fallujah but it lasts for longer than a year.
>>24850557Yes but, in theory, someone even as late as the early 2000s could have watched the life out of a friend or enemy's eyes.
>>24850563Maybe Ukraine will produce this.
>>24850579Probably has, but since the war isn't over yet they probably won't start publishing for at least another year.
>>24850209>even Hemingway, has a weird kind of "metrosexualityWhat do you mean "even Hemingway"? You know the guy was a giga larper insecure of his own masculinity, right? That's why it feels faggyfied
>>24850628Yeah I mean that is what I meant.Real masculinity is meathead baseball players taking nutshots at each other as pranks, and looking for excuses to fuck each other up just cause.
>>24850554Jarhead is an example of post-Vietnam GI fiction, and Forest Gump is pure boomer wank.
>>24850579That is my thinking, but most of that literature will be in Russian or Ukrainian, not English, unless NATO is more directly drawn into the conflict. Though I suppose there is nothing stopping a young man from America going to the warzone as a journalist or humanitarian the way Hemingway did.
>>24850652That's sort of the point. There's a paucity of genuine examples.
Fantasy still has a large readership, maybe more than sci-fi. But I think it's very saturated and hard to make a name for yourself
>>24850690On the bright side, it's probably the easiest time to self-publish.That cuts both ways, but hey, it's not like a book has a shelf life unless you do something retarded like referencing the 2016 election.
>>24850701You have to1) Be actually a good writer with good material2) After that it's all marketing.The correct answer would be it's all marketing, but then you get like Shad's Shadow of the Conqueror which lacks sufficient quality to take advantage of the marketing.
>>24850658There's no way to create good literature that's pro-Ukraine though, although a sort of hell of being conscripted and disillusionment would work (for both sides). Mainly because the synthetic nature of the globalist apparatus is the death of genuine meaning and completely nullifies any possibility of a vital Ukrainian nationalism that is literarily relevant.>In my dreams my war is the next season of Servant of the PeopleIs fundamentally satirical.
>>24850734At the end, it's the same as always: you have to win, and everyone else wants to win too. There was never a time where one good guy was competing against a bunch of incompetents.
>>24850763Yes but a robust marketing approach that is half of your battle at least is a minimum requirement now, in addition to writing a good book.
>>24850777Trips of truth
>>24850777As true as it always was.
>>24850738To be fair, there was literally no point in anyone (except Ukranians) dying for Ukraine. If any global party wanted it protected from Russia military bases would already be there so any attack on Ukraine would be an attack on that nation).
>>24850738What an utterly preposterous post. There's so much wrong with it I scarcely know where to begin. First you presuppose that the only way literature can be "good" is if it aligns with whatever narrow ideological bent you subscribe to, and then you further presuppose on this, that there are no redeemable perspectives from Ukraine, and then even suggest that because the Ukrainian side of the conflict is rife with misery it somehow bereft of literary perspective which is so utterly, profoundly lacking in historical nous there is no way to address it except to call you an imbecile. Imagine approaching the subject of literature from the standpoint that its only value is as a vehicle for nationalist dogma. What utterly vile, despicable thinking.
>>24850856The very clear point flew way over your head and you sound like a NAFO faggot.
>>24850690I do need to work on the marketing bit. I also barely see people talk about fantasy novels, but if they do it mostly involves a very intricate magic based system and high magic in general, the former of which I intentionally lack outside of the fundamental rule that using the magic requires a sacrifice of your physical body. Trying to mathematically quantify the worthiness of some person defeats the point and my magic system is extremely gatekept in universe.
>>24850098>>24850138>>24850209The point of the article is that the actual difference in readership between men and woman is marginal. Yes, there has always been a trend towards woman reading more fiction. But the only real peer reviewed survey showed that there is only a 10% difference between the two. This small difference doesn't warrant the outrage or the worried conversations that have sprung up around it. And the reason we have just accepted this view is because people desperately need a scapegoat to blame the misfortunes of the world on and this is just one of many.>Of course the people who voted Trump into power don't read! Of course the people who made Andrew Tate popular at one point don't read! Of course the group I percieve as sexist are un-empathetic and therefore non-readers! Evidence be damned! I'll believe it anyway!
>>24850138>These are not books which reflect the zeitgeist, but rather the intellectual preoccupations of academia.I've made this exact same point over and over, particularly in regards to what Americans consider their classics. Moby Dick is the epitome of this - an autistic intellectual's fixation hated by everyone who isn't also an autistic intellectual.
>>24850738Russia is able to invade Ukraine because there isn't a truly globalist system anymore. And the idea that defending your country from an expansionist petrostate is "synthetic" is an amazingly vapid take. Russia isn't some emancipator against degeneracy, it's a civic nationalist hub of chiId trafficking with the highest rate of HIV in Europe that massively lacks proper toilets and has a higher divorce rate than the West
>>24851098The only reason Russia dislikes NATO is because it dissuades them from invading smaller countries they border. That's the only "concern" they have.
>>24850073
