Novel genre demographics?

You're going to get an enormous range of people who read in any given genre or category. For example, a good chunk of YA books are sold to adults. Likewise, there's no stigma in India about men enjoying love stories, so there's a real market there for selling romance novels to men.

Certain genres might attract more of a particular demographic, but it will only ever be a tendency, not a rule. I think you'd do much better trying to market to people who like that sort of book, rather than to women, men, teens, college graduates, etc.

indianroads said:

MODS: I wasn't sure where to put this, sorry if this forum is the wrong place.

I was looking on line this morning to see if there was some information relating to sex, age, education, and what genre these people read.

I found the pew research site, but that only lists the medium used for reading, ie. print, electronic, or audio.

I think it would be really useful to know the sex, age, and education of people who read thrillers, or scifi, or fantasy ... etc. This would certainly be helpful in marketing.

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There are stereotypes you can try to tap into for marketing. For example, romance books are mainly read by women*, Westerns and war books are mainly read by men* sci-fi and fantasy are gaining more female readers than they had 25 years ago when it was mostly just male nerds*, YA is only ever read by people under the age of 21*, adults generally don't enjoy books written for children* and so forth.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any metrics/resources you could access. I don't even think too much about my audience when I'm writing a story: I write for hu(wo)manity!


* not saying I believe or agree with these, just that they're out there.

RWA has some information on this for romance here.

indianroads said:

This thread was one of those - I wonder... musings.

I write for myself, and have no ambition to become the next King, Koontz, or Crichton. I was simply curious.

One of the things I've read about marketing was that you need to get your product in front of the people most likely to buy it. Whether it be motorcycles, computers, or books. In order to do that, you'd have to have a pretty good idea who those people are that might be interested in reading something from your genre. As I said though, it was just a passing muse.

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In fiction publishing for adults, wouldn't the target audiences be defined by what they read, rather than age etc?

jjdebenedictis said:

You're going to get an enormous range of people who read in any given genre or category. For example, a good chunk of YA books are sold to adults. Likewise, there's no stigma in India about men enjoying love stories, so there's a real market there for selling romance novels to men.

Certain genres might attract more of a particular demographic, but it will only ever be a tendency, not a rule. I think you'd do much better trying to market to people who like that sort of book, rather than to women, men, teens, college graduates, etc.

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This. I can't speak for all genres, but in the ones I spend the most time reading and writing (SF and F), there is such a range of subgenres and styles that it's hard to keep track of who reads what the most. There are some cliches, such as women prefer urban fantasy and men prefer hard or Mil SF, but I've met plenty of exceptions to these "rules" in person and online. I'm a middle-aged woman, and I like secondary world fantasy set in pre-industrial times (not just medieval settings, and I'm pretty burnt out on classic high fantasy with elves and so on) and socially themed SF, space opera and hard-ish SF, as long as there's a good story there about people I care about.

But I also like stuff outside these genres and demographics, and there's such a range, even within them, that I can't just look at a cover and know for sure whether it's for me or not. Except for scantily clad women. That generally suggests the story isn't for me. Except there are are some good titles that have this kind of cover, and the women on the cover aren't even dressed as they are in the book

The Urban Spaceman said:

There are stereotypes you can try to tap into for marketing. For example, romance books are mainly read by women*, Westerns and war books are mainly read by men*

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Stereotypes, maybe, but as generalities, I think correct.

The Urban Spaceman said:

sci-fi and fantasy are gaining more female readers than they had 25 years ago when it was mostly just male nerds*

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I suspect there's a significant gender difference between the main audience for Fantasy and the main audience for "hard" SF. Females might outnumber males in the Fantasy reading audience, but I suspect the hard SF audience is still male-dominated.

The Urban Spaceman said:

YA is only ever read by people under the age of 21*, adults generally don't enjoy books written for children*

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I don't think anyone believes these stereotypes any more. Harry Potter probable brought as many adults into the YA audience as it did young people.

indianroads said:

That's what I was aiming for. Take suspense / thrillers for example, what age, sex, and maybe education would read that genre?

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All ages, sexes, and education. You sell crime fiction to crime fiction readers, rather than selling crime fiction to a [set defined by age etc]. This is why books are sold using the technique of 'if you like books by Ian Rankin, you'll love this new one from Val McDermid' rather than 'if you're a 35 - 50 year old Rwandan woman with a B.Sc. in physics, you'll love books by Denise Mina'.

The advantage of marketing these days with social media is you don't really have to make a guesstimation based on demographics and proxy assumptions. Facebook, for example, has a pretty good idea of who likes thrillers and who likes science fiction. That's the power of modern marketing. It gives you targeted niches so the spend is more efficient, rather than targeting a certain gender or a certain age in a clumsier way.

Automated algorithms seem to do a pretty good job these days of marketing books (and everything else) to the right buyer. Sometimes, at least. Amazon's recs occasionally get weird.

Of course, if you only ever bought books recommended to you based on your previous purchases, you'd swiftly end up down a rabbit hole. I wonder if Amazon throws in something ramdom once in a while to diversify your reading tastes?

I suspect that if Amazon is throwing "random" suggestions at you, it's because their data-mining algorithms have picked up patterns & correlations in the data (not just your book purchases) that weren't obvious to casual observation. They know *a lot* about their customers.

ETA: sort of like the convenience store of legend that saw a bump in sales when they shelved diapers and beer together -- they were selling both to exhausted dads in a hurry

LibraryThing is very good at suggesting books I've read but haven't catalogued yet.

jjdebenedictis said:

Likewise, there's no stigma in India about men enjoying love stories, so there's a real market there for selling romance novels to men.

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I'm very glad to have learned this today.