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Elmer's avatar

Not to mention the amount of public domain and pirated books available for the download.

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Just a dock worker's avatar

I read all of hp Lovecraft this way couldn't other wise due to the niggro word in s a they banned that shit pretty quick also had something to do with the,harvest christian church, they controlled alot of the book stores in pe at the time, no harry potter for us lol

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ahabicher's avatar

Good advice that nobody wants to hear.

"What? You can't speak ill about our precious sensitivity readers!!"

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John A Douglas's avatar

Well said, bro

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Brian Niemeier's avatar

o7

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TurquoiseThyme's avatar

Exactly, I’m a science fiction and fantasy reader. When I started reading it in the 80’s it was a co-ed genre. I also started on my parents old science fiction from the 60’s and 70’s, which was predominantly masculine in tone.

Now the publishers keeps forcing romance into the genre, and claiming it’s science fiction or fantasy. This is an absolutely terrible strategy for sales, people want to know what kind of story they will be reading. It has to be political or possibly some kind of revenge fantasy on their ex-boyfriend. Like ruining Star Wars, or making that terrible all female Ghostbusters.

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Carefulrogue's avatar

>Watching every franchise they grew up with gutted to deliver half-baked lectures

>Seeing every male character neutered, humiliated, or erased

>Listening to publishing execs declare their tastes backward, toxic, or irrelevant.

These points in particular. I sit in a discord where we discuss the Wheel of Time books. Sometimes. Mostly we’re all there to bash the fuck out of the now dead Amazon TV show ("Huzzah! The witch is dead!"). Bookfans were bashed by the director, our favorite characters forced to their knees and emasculated, core ideas of the books subverted. Instead of watching the show (except to mock) we have book clubs where we talk about other interesting fiction, or rereads of the series we so love.

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John D. Westlake's avatar

I read lots of stories where a barbarian smashes a broadsword into the head of the monster after ravishing many wenches. (Metaphorically. Sometimes literally.)

Oldpub NYC houses don't publish much of that.

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Moon Gouda's avatar

The Big Five were crazy for not making an Amazon competitor ten years ago or so.

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Letters to My Son's avatar

Could Elmore Leonard get published now?

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JC Denton's avatar

I'm a man, age 32. I read a book a week, almost entirely non-fiction. I pay in cash at my local Dymocks. Almost always it's not in stock so I have them order it in, and I give them only a burner email to notify me. Obviously I'm not the typical customer of books, but how would these surveys even know I exist?

I sometimes read the classic fiction books of the Western canon. I NEVER read modern fiction, or pretty much anything that would be in stock at a bookstore.

Sometimes I can only get the books on Amazon, in which case I do so.

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Carol Ann Power's avatar

So sad, but true

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Alex's avatar

Don't even know where you get the 30% statistic.

Starting to notice a pattern with most pieces about "mean do read, actually":

1) Establish that "men do read, actually" but...

2)...They read less than women because they're not being pandered to, so...

3)...men would read more if writers catered more to their tastes, and...

4)...I just so happen to do that, buy my book!

Are these actual thinkpieces, or glorified ads?

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Alex's avatar

Also noticing a funny contradiction: The men who want to retvrn to tradition and get out of the slop machine, and the writers that tell them that amazon cornering the bookmarket is good, actually

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