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A comment on A lack of male protagonists is making it harder to get young boys into books.

Re:A lack of male protagonists is making it harder to get yo... by RamblingCTO on Sunday November 08, 2026 @08:43AM (#50413296)
I was at my typical bookstore lately and I walked right out again. All the recommendations by staff and bestsellers all anchored around "I'm a woman and I see the world like so and so". I wanted inspiration on life in general (think The Alchemist or whatever). Not how it is to be a woman. Not hating, but I'm a dude in my mid thirties and an avid reader. The whole bookstore was remade to cater to young women, tiktok viewers (has selfie walls and shit), and table top games. I get that there's market pressure, but it was already hard to buy books already (like english books taking 3 weeks to be ordered and such). I don't want to order on amazon ...

Really a pity. Another big store opened 100m from them. Hope they get their ass whooped.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:A lack of male protagonists is making it harder to get yo... by bombcar on Sunday November 08, 2026 @09:14AM (#50413552)
We can protest and complain all we want at the end of the day stores are built for their customers and men and women shop differently.

We may not like what it says about the world.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:A lack of male protagonists is making it harder to get yo... by RamblingCTO on Sunday November 08, 2026 @09:27AM (#50413652)
Yeah, I know. That was the first moment of my life where I felt obsolete lol.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:A lack of male protagonists is making it harder to get yo... by BobaFloutist on Sunday November 08, 2026 @10:39AM (#50414195)
Frankly, while it might be jarring no longer to be the prioritized demographic, I've realized that the proper response is to be grateful to the romantansy fans for propping up the genre fiction publishing industry. My fellow sci-fi/fantasy fans sure aren't doing their part to buy books, so I gotta appreciate romantasy booktok for subsidizing the books that I like to read with their purchases of books that I don't want to read.
[ Parent | on HN ]