Women Read More Fiction than Men and or More Women Read Fiction than Men

The book giveaway for the House of Rejects, which ends on July 27, is going far better than I expected. With over a week left, 174 people have already signed up. I had been worried that there would be no interest at all.

"Oh, silly," said my wife. "Of course they'll want to read your book." Then she pointed to something we both thought was interesting. Almost all of those who signed up for the giveaway are women. For every 25 participants about three or four are male. The rest are female. Or so I gather from the names and pictures.

This made me think about whether there's something about my book that attracts more women than men. So I looked at the other giveaways. Same result. More women than men signed up to win the other books too. I guess I'm not special.

But now I'm curious. Are there more female readers out there, or is Goodreads an anomaly? Off to Google!

From NPR:

Men account for only 20 percent of the fiction market, according to surveys conducted in the U.S., Canada and Britain.

Book groups consist almost entirely of women, and the spate of new literary blogs are also populated mainly by women.

From the Telegraph:

A study of reading habits showed almost half of women are 'page turners' who finish a book soon after starting it compared to only 26 per cent of men.

The survey 2,000 adults also found those who take a long time to read books and only managed one or two a year were twice as likely to be male than female.

I learned something new today. But why did it take so long to see? Maybe it was bias.