Sale Books by Gender

[stevenpiziks]

Every so often, Audible creates a sale list. Buy one book from the list, and you get a second book from the list for free. The current list has 150 books on it. I was scrolling through it, and I noticed something ... interesting. I went back and did a more careful examination to see if I was right. I was. Here it is:

Over 80% of the books on their list were written by women.

Here's how it broke down:

150 books

129 written by women

18 written by men

3 written by authors with androgynous names

(When the author's name was androgynous or used initials--which usually signals a woman--I checked the description of these books to see if there were any clues to the author's gender. For some, it was clear. For three, it wasn't.)

So 12% of the books have male authors. If you assume the three androgynous names are male, it becomes 14%. This means between 86 and 88% of the listed books were written by women.

The vast, vast, vast majority of literary agents are women. The same is true of editors. Is the same true of writers? According to this list, yes.

I don't know how Audible chooses their books for the sales list. Is this just coincidence? (Though when you have a 50/50 chance of any given person being male or female, the odds of 80+% female chosen at random are minuscule.) Does this list reflect the literary market at large? Did Audible deliberately choose female authors over male ones?

I have no idea. But I'd be interested in knowing.