Quick! Write that boy a book!

[spqrblues]

(A rant, not related to Rome at all. You can skip it.)

It's taken a long time, but I'm finally hearing, from more and more quarters, exasperation at the sheer bewildering wrongness of the near-constant insistence in the publishing industry that "we need more boy books"—a mantra I've been hearing since Day One of entering the publishing field. (Never mind for now what a "boy book" actually is—you can refer to the section in the Chicago Manual style guide on removing girl cooties.) A few days ago, YA author Tamora Pierce questioned this Truth in her journal, in which, along with much other spirited commentary on a variety of sub- and related topics, she states:

In the last couple of years, there has been a lot of stuff about how we don't have enough books out there for boys.

The last couple of years? Try the last couple of decades.

I have no idea when this idea originated—but I'm thinking it began whenever someone saw that there were a noticeable number of books that girls really like, with strong female heroines who are interested in something other than cute boys and taffeta (not that there's anything wrong with either, in moderate amounts). That you could look at a bookstore children's section and see more than Tom Swift, Boy Scout manuals, and the tamer novels of Robert Heinlein. Still it goes on, the pressure to make books "boy friendly," because (I am often told) we must give boys more, or they won't read at all. There just isn't enough reading material in the world directed at males. Keep this just between you and me, but I hear there are entire genres of novels written with the expectation that no men will read them at all (Romance genre, I'm looking at you).

In all seriousness, I've heard there's a phenomenon in which a man can be sitting in a lecture hall full of men, then if a handful of women enter and take seats, there's a perception that the room has been, well, taken over by women, a perception that there are many more women in the room, by percentage, than there actually are. I explain it poorly. But I did hear this, probably in lj or on DailyKos, so you know it's real.

I'm tired of being expected to make books I work on more "appealing to boys" (read: more violent! more muscle-y! more Xtreme! no kitties with pink bows! toss in a four-page fight scene!) because what's of prime importance is capturing the wild male reader, and girls, well, they'll accept anything you have on offer. One hears this at conferences (which I attended far too many of the past few weeks). One hears this at acquisitions meetings. I think the company I work for is bending away from this a little bit, but not in a way I would prefer. Can't have everything. Also, can't be more specific in a public forum. Alas.

I'd quote what YA editor Sharyn November has to say about the perpetual "we need more books for boys" wail, but this is a family journal. I only allow naked body parts, not cussing. Oh, wait, I allow cussing, too. Okay, never mind.

Comments

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Hurrah for your well-rounded brother. I firmly believe that the experiences we have as we grow up, experienced solely through reading, can be as informative as what happens to us in the real world, not to mention fostering a sense of empathy.

One boy who grew up to be an editor recently said to me that the boys he knows read plenty of things, but a lot of young men may be more interested in sports magazines and X-Men and Naruto than 300-page bildungsromans. And in any case boys who are into a specific genre, such as science fiction or fantasy, are busily gobbling down books en masse and dissecting them on message boards and assessing minutiae with all the passion of an academic scholar.

There's that segment of thought that says men are more visual and women more verbal, usually brought up to explain different preferences in pr0n (though those thinkers may want to check out some yaoi galleries sometime and reassess). Then the contrasting argument that boys will read more if young-adult publishers just stop flooding the shelves with all these books boys don't need such as, oh, Judy Blume and Sphere of Secrets and Tamora Pierce and the "problem" novels. The discussion originates from teachers and librarians and journalists as well as publishers, and even the publishers never claim it's based on marketing and a desire to increase profits. Myself, I've never heard anyone say "we need more of that male spending money" the way some publishers are eyeing the manga market and rubbing their chins and muttering, "maybe we can get girls to give us their money too."

It's a concern about literacy and fairness. And the perception of neglectful publishing. Want to catch the eye of many YA editors? Mention "high boy appeal" in your manuscript's cover letter. Boys are considered to be falling behind. Perhaps this is in parallel to the idea that girls fall behind in mathematics at a certain age, when they begin to be discouraged from maths and sciences in subtle ways. Setting aside any theories about women being wired for verbal communication and the transmission of complex social and generational information (hey, they don't call 'em old wives' tales for nothin'), it's possible there's more impetus for girls in many societies to want to explore fictional worlds, to gain experiences they may not have physical access to, to learn communication, empathy, and how people react and interact in a variety of situations, even as they practice social interaction with their peers. Boys do the same, but could it be that girls take this to a much higher level?

Do boys really read less, or is it that people in general (or in the English-language market) don't read much, but when they do, whoever they are, what they want to read are "girl books"?

[domitian8.livejournal.com]

If we are defining 'girl books' as 'books that involve complicated narratives, develop nuanced characters, and require an actual investment of attention and energy to digest', then yes, of course there is a bias toward such books.

ajodasso is right- there is an incredible volume of books being published. People are reading. Some of those people are male. The people who take reading seriously are going to be reading good literature.

If all we're talking about it putting in some fight scenes to trick boys into liking something that is otherwise good writing, I can't really object. I just tend to get concerned whenever I hear something that sounds like an appeal for dumbing-down a product. We already have British and American editions. I shudder to think what a 'boy edition' would look like.