Men Quit Fiction and Publishers Chase a Vanishing Reader

Women accounted for 62% of consumers who bought more than ten books in the previous twelve months, according to Nielsen BookData's Panorama do Consumo de Livros, released in 2025. That single figure explains why publishers' catalogs and promotion strategies now bend toward female readers — and why the industry keeps struggling to bring men back to fiction.

Deyvid Genu, a military police officer from São Paulo, runs the @nosso.enredo channel on Instagram and TikTok, reviewing new literary releases. A video he recorded in uniform after his shift, announcing the film adaptation of the romantasy (romance-plus-fantasy genre) series "O povo do ar", drew one million views and incredulous reactions. One commenter wrote: "Sou a primeira na minha árvore genealógica a ver um policial noticiar uma adaptação de livro de fada." Genu said he hesitated before recording because he found very few male book creators, and added: "Gosto de desafiar o estigma de que homem não lê ou lê somente autoajuda." He reports sexist comments but ignores them or answers with a joke.

Why are men drifting away from reading?

In June, the New York Times reported on young men's retreat from reading and raised the hypothesis that online betting and videogames have taken its place. Ana Crelia Dias, a professor and researcher specializing in editorial production, described the shift: "Mulheres compravam mais livros, mas esses livros não eram feitos para elas, ou por elas. Agora, estamos vendo essa lógica virar."

Editors interviewed by O Globo point to fiction as the point of greatest resistance. Rafaella Machado, executive editor at Galera Record, the young-adult imprint of Grupo Record, said: "Você lê para aprender alguma coisa, como autoajuda, business, religião... Eles veem a literatura como perda de tempo, como algo que não vai servir a um propósito produtivo ou financeiro."

Some initiatives test whether the gap can be closed. Footballer Gustavo Scarpa reviews books on his Instagram; his September post on "A morte de Ivan Ilitch" pushed Tolstoy's classic onto the bestseller list. Kim Doria, founder of cultural company Olá Olá, created Só Garotos, a book club devoted to fiction written by women and built to foster sensitive exchange among men. Men, the explicit target audience, barely showed up. "Cada encontro é um desafio de mobilização," Doria said.

Can publishers fix the habit early?

Specialists say boys and girls read at similar levels in childhood, driven by school. The gender split emerges in pre-adolescence, when reading becomes voluntary — and young heterosexual men then abandon recreational reading for life. Amanda Orlando, editor at Globo Livros, called this the central question for publishing groups. She cited recent wins in middle grade (the 8-to-12 age band) with "Diário de um Banana", "As aventuras de Mike" and "Capitão Cueca", but admitted: "Depois disso, perdemos esse leitor... estamos quebrando a cabeça para saber como levar esse leitor para o próximo nível."

The young-adult segment, among the market's fastest growing, now serves an engaged female and LGBTQIAPN+ readership, with romantasy, romantic comedy and queer-representation fiction dominating shelves.

Has the market's gender logic inverted?

Machado recalls that in the early 2000s, female authors hid behind initials — J. K. Rowling, E. L. James, V. E. Schwab — to avoid the chick lit shelves (commercial fiction about contemporary women's lives). At recent international rights fairs she noticed the reverse: men such as L. J. Finn and T. J. Klune now use initials. "Talvez eles acreditem que mulheres não queiram ler um livro escrito por um homem," she suspects.

The evidence says otherwise. Orlando, who publishes Portuguese bestseller Valter Hugo Mãe in Brazil, estimates women make up about 90% of his readership and queue for his events. "A leitora mulher gosta de sensibilidade e profundidade," she said. In 2022, Joyce Carol Oates claimed on X that publishers were refusing to read debut novels by young white men; agents rejected any supposed ban, and Brazilian professionals insist quality still decides. Literary agent Eugênia Ribas-Vieira of Riff sold one male-voiced novel about a son facing his father's end of life within a month. Marianna Teixeira Soares of MTS frames the change as expanded repertoire, not replacement.

For Machado, the real opening for male authors is the new masculinity itself: writing about contemporary men "revendo a forma como foi criado e enfrentando suas dificuldades afetivas." That theme, not initials on a cover, is where publishers expect the next male readership to be built.