Women’s Contribution to SF and Fantasy
Science fiction/fantasy: 7.3% of sales
General fiction: 12.1% of sales
Mystery/detective/suspense: 25.7% of sales
Romance: 38.8% of sales
Lots of numbers to take a look at. It’s easy to see the growing influnce of women as authors. But the percentage of women authors still lags the participation of women as fans and readers.
The big quesion, of course, is “Why the disparity?” I can’t help it: my sense of fairnesss is invoked.But a couple of little questions percolate to the top: SF/F/H offer the same kind of entertainment as mystery and suspense. Why aren’t we entertaining at about the same percentage of readers?
And with the dominance of romance readership comes the twin edged sword of “How do we attract women readers to SF/F/H?” The best selling sub-genre of SF of military SF isn’t likely to pull in a core readership of women. There are a couple of new sub genres being born as we speak: romance fantasy and romance SF but their emergence is likely to polarize an already fragmented field
In the 1960’s, the field of SF was rejuvenated by the new intellectual and artistic directions of the writers of the New Wave. These days, we’re just hoping to survive. Will the writers of the Purple Wave save our bacon or give the field its quietus?
Personally, I’m hoping for an injection of old fashioned “Romance” with a capital “R,” as in the Romantics.
Best regards,
Alan