I was going through “fantasy books” on amazon and was surprised to see that most of them are written by women, and the ratio is not even close. I was kind of expecting the opposite.
Does anyone know why this might be the case?
I was going through “fantasy books” on amazon and was surprised to see that most of them are written by women, and the ratio is not even close. I was kind of expecting the opposite.
Does anyone know why this might be the case?
I don’t have a problem with women writing fantasy books. I just wish the fantasy market wasn’t glutted with ‘romantasy’ novels. I really, really dislike those.
I can appreciate what you’re saying, but it’s kind of like action adventure films. They mix the genres because the audience they’re targeting wants that. So, if women are interested in romance, they can expand the fantasy readership by putting that in there. I’ve read some that aren’t bad and some that are pretty tiring, but Allen Dean Foster wove a romance element into the Flinx series now and then, and it was a key part of the Spellsinger series. So not really just a women-only thing, and likely for the same reasons - expanding the market for the books.
I’m not exactly opposed to romantasy as a concept. I like that it has brought a lot of women to fantasy genre as readers and authors. Also, maybe this would lead to more interesting takes on romance and sexuality in fantasy literature, because, suffice to say, that could use some improvements.
But I’m kinda worried about the current situation where romantasy is basically just the marketing hype thing. The Popular Thing Right Now. A lot of the stuff doesn’t get written because the authors like to enrich fantasy literature, it gets written because they realised can make money off of the TikTok crowd.
…I mean, I guess it’s not a new problem, the same thing happened with horror when Twilight was big.