I recently read an article about female writers are on the decline. With the current push for diverse books I’m a tad skeptical. I admit, most of the books I read are cozy mystery books. That genre seems to be mainly female authors and protagonists. Not always.
This year I have read 19: 2 books were written by men and 17 were by women, including 1 by a wife/husband team.
So I decided to take a look a the books I read in 2017.
In 2017 I read 96 books 🙂
Authors:
female- 66
male- 28
both authored same book- 1
Yes, I realize I my math doesn’t add up. I missed a book somewhere. It’s safe to say it was probably written by a woman.
Because I’m avoiding my WIP, let’s go one step further and look at the genres I read. This should be interesting.
Genres:
mystery- 38
fantasy/sci-fi- 11
non-fiction- 11
fiction- 7
YA- 21
children/middle grade- 6
romance- 1
WOW! I actually thought I read more fantasy than that. Well, YA is fantasy…mostly. Only 1 romance! Yeah, I don’t read romance.
And yes, I’m still missing a book somewhere… **sigh**
Anyway. For even more fun let’s see how these books were published.
Publication:
traditional- 75
indie- 21
That time my math works!
What does all this mean? It means I read a lot of books by and about women knee deep in dead bodies!
Take away:
I don’t know if there is a decline in women writer’s. I don’t have a problem finding new books by female authors. When choosing a book, I don’t look at gender or skin color of the writer or protagonist. I didn’t break down race because I’m pretty sure it’s overwhelmingly white. And I would have to think really hard about each book and that’s too much work this morning.  If you went with me to the book store/library, you would see me walk down the aisles, picking books up to gaze at the cover and title. I might look at the author but I can guarantee I never read the back blurb. I apologize to all the authors. I know how hard those back blurbs are to write.
So, my reading isn’t very diverse. I lean toward southern mysteries centering around a female protagonist. If you happen to know about a mystery featuring a non-white protagonist let me know.
All this talk of books makes me want to go to the library.
Catch you later,
-CK