Head Tale

Here's a good article poking holes in the fallacy that only women read.  It's actually a bit of a chicken and the egg thing – do only women read because publishers only produce books targeted at women because those are the ones that have been the most successful in the past?   

This is probably true in libraries too.  We keep seeing studies that say that women are the majority of our patrons but often we don't ask why that is beyond “men don't read”. 

There's also a gender bias in both publishing and libraries that the writer tip-toes around.  But the truth is that the majority of people working in both publishing and libraries are female, the majority of library programmers are female, the majority of library collections development folks are female so a subtle bias is going to creep in no matter how conscious you try to be. 

Men read. Tons of them do. But they are not marketed to, not targeted,
and often totally dismissed. Go to a book conference, a signing. Outside
of a Tucker Max event, what percentage of attendees are men?

I'm reminded of the program which I think ran in Southeast Regional where the branch held a “how to fix motorcycles” workshop.  It was a huge success with tons of men in attendance.  Same thing when another branch had a “hunting and fishing” program. 

(Oh, and I happen to have read the mystery book described in the lead-off anecdote of the article.  I'm glad that teen nephew of the publisher gave it a thumb's up! )