Quote:
Originally Posted by dkperez
I use several libraries. Including a couple that have gone to the "cloud library" (I was told by one library worker that it's cheaper than Overdrive).
I recently fired up the cloud library, and took a look at the "featured" page. Row after row of books - new arrivals, adult fiction, etc.
And in my rummaging it APPEARS that at LEAST 90% of everything they feature is written by a person with a female-sounding name... Not 100%, but a huge, overwhelming majority.
Are the vast majority of authors women? Are the people at the cloud library that set up the "featured" page attempting to bias the list in favor of certain authors or a gender?
It's not a big deal, but I found it odd that their listings would be so one-sided...
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I've noticed this as well.
It's often said that more books are written and published by male authors, but I'm starting to doubt it. I've been in a B&M bookstore a few times in the last few weeks, and when picking up random books in the fantasy section, all but a few of them are young adult fantasy coming of age works, written by females, with (often) female protagonists.
Same with Kobo recommendations; over 90% of the books recommended to me are written by females, and most of them have female protagonists, and are either YA coming of age fantasy, or distopian. Most of them also seem to be modelled on the 80's coming of age fantasy by writers such as Eddings, Brooks, and Tad Williams.
I do read mostly fantasy, and I have read a lot of 80's coming of age fantasy as well, but I don't read ONLY that; still, it feels as if the fantasy genre is now dominated by young(ish) women, writing about young female protagonists, often using a saccharine way of writing (as determined by reading some sample chapters here and there; often it's more romance-with-some-fantasy than anything else it seems).
I could be wrong though, and that my experience is as it is just because of Kobo's recommendations (which is, granted, based on books bought 7-8 years ago, when I started to replace my paper books with e-book versions), and because of the books stocked by Dutch stores these days...
Oh. And with regard to library borrowing... the few times I've been in a library in the last year or two, all of the staff was female, and most of the patrons were female as well. These females were indeed mostly to be found in the YA/fantasy sections (the younger ones), or the romance section (the older ones), and some in the mystery section. It was hard enough to find a guy somewhere, the ones I saw were mostly in fantasy, science fiction, and horror.