Mate have you not been paying attention to anything in the last 15 years?
I should have added more emphasis to my use of the word
everyone, but fair point.
Why do men always complain that they are being oppressed by a lack of pulpy literature being written in Current Year for them? Men are already occupied with a whole industry of multi-billion dollar movies, TV shows, and video games made by them just for them. Women are getting big in publishing because it's their only recourse in this situation, and it's much easier to enter than film or game development. Teenage boys aren't refusing to read because they're getting Twilight and bow and arrow princess books shoved down their throats; they'd simply rather play video games and watch porn. Do you know how many teachers and parents have tried and failed to encourage teenage boys to read? This is only a market that's being abandoned because it disappeared. If you want to revive it, stop complaining and show there's demand for it with your wallets.
I'm not particularly interested in pulp fiction as a reader. I do read genre fiction, enjoy it, and write it myself; but pulp fiction for males of all ages is still available in self-publishing. Most of it just happens to suck. The unfortunate realization I've been circling for a while is that the midlist of traditional publishing is what fostered a lot of writers who eventually broke out to become bestsellers. The midlist is now the self-publishing industry, but the major difference is that the roles formerly played by gatekeepers—editors of all kinds—are now contractors to the writer. When the editor is employed by the writer, it's up to the writer to set aside his ego and learn from the editor and up to the editor to have the will to tell the writer when his book sucks. Editors are only likely to have that willpower if they don't need any one writer and can risk pissing him off.
This inversion of the writer-editor relationship means that writer's go on producing shit and making a living from half-literate readers who forget about their books as soon as they open another on their Kindle.
When traditional publishing maintained more midlist authors, some of them were able to improve book after book. Many more gradually built fanbases until their second, third, or fifth or sixth book became a breakout bestseller. We still have the latter in self-publishing. I don't think we really have the former.
What's left of male-oriented literature is in self-publishing. Without the support of publishing houses, only the lowest common-denominator litRPG slop can survive. Palahniuk, Ellis, Alan Furst, William Gibson, and Neal Stephenson, these guys wouldn't survive if they were starting today (maybe Stephenson would find a way to sniper shot his way onto Amazon's bestseller list, because he'd turn that into an interesting reverse-engineering problem).
Self-publishing as it currently exists doesn't support quality writing. It moves too fast and gives too little. And right now, there's nowhere else for male writers who don't have MFAs or someone else's money to live off of.
Do some men complain too much or too thoughtlessly about the recent shifts in the entertainment industry? Yes. I think the initial impulse to encourage more women to produce work in all fields of entertainment was a good one. Even female writers whom I find obnoxious have produced work that I found personally moving. A perfect example is Mary Robinette Kowal. Judging by her public persona, I find her insufferable. I've heard from somone who met her at a writers' conference before she basically usurped Writing Excuses that she comes off as a politician, always angling for favor and influence. That said, the original Lady Astronaut of Mars short story made me choke up.
But, much like the push over several decades to get more women into higher education, there's been an over-correction. What started as a push for parity has resulted in an inversion of the male-dominated past. It's dynamics like this that make me think that what people call "social justice" is really social vengeance.
