WFC: women's and men's fantasy

[sartorias]

The Crystal Ceiling: Is there still a distinction between "women’s" and "men’s" fantasy and horror?I found it interesting, and disappointing, that the panel was all women: Kate Elliott, Charlaine Harris, Nancy Kilpatrick, Jane Kindred, and Malinda Lo.I don’t know how many men volunteered, who picked the panelists, whether it was a man or a woman,

Comments

[ex_naomi_ja]

This is really fascinating to me - especially this:

C.H. mentioned an encounter with somebody at which she was told that she was lucky to have such good sales. She went away from that thinking, "Is it possible that I have good sales because I'm a good writer?"

because I see it in other fields. My boss is a very successful genetics specialist, and one of the first women to receive certain accolades in her field. Apparently when she shows up at what she calls "old boys" events, she gets a lot of sideways glances because, in addition to being a woman, she's also Pakistani, and people simply don't expect her to be there.

That adds some weight to the male gaze theory for me, not just in writing but in other areas of society too. In publishing I find the differences between marketing to men and women (or for men and women authors) fascinating. I read a ton of genre fiction and I often swap books with my fiance. He thoroughly enjoys most of the female-led, female-marketed urban fantasy I lend him, but admits he'd never go look for it by himself because of the covers. I wonder if more gender-neutral marketing would change that?

Anyway, I'm rambling. Thanks for an interesting post!

[sartorias]

I've heard discussions about that, but not from a marketing standpoint.

The received wisdom has been that boys (and men) won't read anything written by women or with women on the cover, but I wonder how true that is anymore? Boys might zoom straight to something aimed at the boy audience, but the more parents I talk to, the more I'm told that their boy is different from the stats--he reads anything that sounds fun, boy or girl writer or cover art, doesn't matter, unless the cover is way too pink and sparkly.

I'd love to hear some marketing person talk about UF marketing strategies. I know that many women's epic fantasies are gender neutral, or skewed male on the covers.

[ex_naomi_ja]

My absolute favourite fantasy books as a teenager were Maggie Furey's Artefacts of Power series. The main character was a redheaded woman. I don't think she appeared on any of the covers.

I don't know about the rest of the world, but in the UK, urban fantasy is most definitely marketed to women. I can't think of many series that don't feature women on the covers - although a lot of them are scantily-clad and posing provocatively, so I'm not sure where that comes into it... The covers that don't feature women feature naked male torsos. And the books that have male protagonists generally have some neutral cover - like the Dresden Files books, for which the UK covers feature no people at all.

I wish I knew more about the marketing side of things because I'd love to know the reasoning behind these decisions and if they actually work.

[sartorias]

Yeah, me too--and also, why the different cover choices for books between UK and USA.

[ex_naomi_ja]

Yes! That drives me mad, especially since (in my opinion) UK covers are often far less attractive.

[la_marquise_de_]

I think there's a general perception here in the UK that books in the sff field by women don't sell well: there was a very interesting discussion about this at the last Fantasycon, in fact. One very senior editor related how she had tried and tried to sell good sf by women here -- including some very big names, like Bujold and Willis -- and the bookshops had failed to shift them. No-one had an explanation for this, but I for one do wonder if our very 'macho' literary fiction culture has a hand in it -- apart from in crime and some forms of social realism (Zadie Smith, for instance), literary culture here is dominated by a set of very strongly male viewpoints and voices -- Will Self, Martin Amis, Julian Fellows, Philip Pullman and so forth, who arrogate to themselves the right to write women 'expertly' but marginalise women writing about themselves as somehow imbalanced, emotional, distasteful. This plays into the behaviour of reviewers and distributors, into how books are marketed and shelved, into how books are displayed... We have a very binary market here right now, where women are expected to want to read emotionally charged sentimental fluff while men read about conspiracy theories, Big Dumb Objects and guns. Or something. This is a huge generalisation, of course, and I know many exceptions, but there is clearly a problem and one that the literary establishment finds hard to address.
Hmm. I wonder if this is one for the Society of Authors. Ponders.

[sartorias]

I wonder how sales are in the UK of women authors outside of the local--if they fit the pattern, or break it, and why?

[la_marquise_de_]

DO you mean of non-UK women writers? In sf, they face the same difficulties as British women writers -- they just don't sell, however well they sell elsewhere.Fantasy is more even, across nationality and gender (the issue is getting the book looked at by a publisher, which is hard everywhere).

[sartorias]

That's what I wondered, yes. Hmm, that's kind of depressing.

[elialshadowpine]

"I don't think she appeared on any of the covers."

She did in the US versions. I remember specifically because I bought those books as a teen girl because of the chick with dragons on the cover. :)

Urban fantasy gets a lot of co-marketing with paranormal romance here. There's a significant crossover, to the point that the main differences are that urban fantasy usually contains more focus on the worldbuilding, sometimes more focus on the external plot, and a HEA is not guaranteed. I have seen books published as both paranormal romance and urban fantasy that I thought should have been marketed as the other. (Like, oh, the paranormal "romance" in which the hero was killed off at the end of the book. Yeah.)

[sartorias]

heh!