Quote:
Originally Posted by theducks
What/why is it that people select books solely for these criteria?
Must have Male Villon and Female hero (or the flip)
Must be Adults only main characters.
Only books with Blue Fish
or any other 'only' criteria
I don't think in all the years I have been reading of ever (not) selecting a book because the Hero was Female, The Author was Female, the publisher was not one of the big 5.
I do tend to buy Genere (SF or Fantasy)
I do understand certain 'Avoids' that violate religion or moral beliefs
But WHY so rigid a selection criteria?
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No idea. I had no idea it existed until I did a poll of my cozy group and so many of them said they didn't like to read books by male authors or with male protagonists. I did know that fantasy/sci-fi had a rep of editors not buying women heroes/writing and supposedly of male readers not wanting to read it. But I didn't know the reverse was true. We did an experiment on the same forum where a couple of us suggested books we really loved by male authors or that had male protags. A couple of the ladies gave them a half-hearted try...
I never really notice UNLESS something in the book makes me look. (For a new author. Obviously, if I've read the author before, I'm familiar enough with him/her.) The other day I was sampling a book and that author happened to have used initials. I read the first scene and stopped dead to go look up the author name (because I was reading on my kindle and hadn't paid attention.) I scrolled down on Amazon and found it was a male writer, writing a cozy. Ah. That explained the scene more clearly to me because I was having trouble figuring out why ANY author would depict the female doing what she was doing. That a male was writing the description helped clarify...but it annoyed me because then I had to stop and wonder about the entire passage.
There are MANY male authors who can and do write excellent female characters. I'm not picky about my characters or my authors. But if I notice something amiss, that's probably just bad writing.