26 July 2005
Women Writers Double Their Share Of Bestsellers
Bestselling novels by male authors like Dan Brown and Stephen King are heading for extinction, according to a new study which reveals that writers like JK Rowling and Danielle Steel have helped women double their share of #1 bestsellers over the last 20 years.
The study of the 354 novels to have topped the hardback fiction section of the world-famous New York Times Bestseller List during the 50 years from 1955-2004 was conducted by Lulu (www.lulu.com), a website – launching in Britain 3rd August – that lets anyone publish their own book and sell it on the Net.
The female share of #1 bestsellers over the first decade of the study (1955-1964) was 17.8%, and still just 23.8% as recently as the 1980s – compared to 46% over the last decade (1995-2004); and 50% so far this year.
Thanks to classic writers like Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, the novel itself is sometimes considered a female literary form. Yet, barely 50 years ago, reveals the Lulu study, women novelists went four straight years (1958-61) without notching a single #1 bestseller. Twelve years in all saw women draw a similar blank.
1999, the year that JK Rowling first made the list, saw women writers publish nine out of 12 of the year’s #1 bestsellers – a record 67% share. In fact, the first three Harry Potter books each topped the list between June and September 1999.
The New York Times responded to this unprecedented feat by restructuring the classification system. Just before the publication of the fourth Potter book in 2002, the established a separate children’s fiction list, for the apparent purpose of excluding Potter from the main, adult list, even though many reckoned that most Potter readers were adult. The fourth and fifth Potter books topped the children’s list, as will the sixth, just out.
2002 saw the largest number of different women writers – nine – top the list, although their books still comprised just 43% of the year’s top bestsellers. This year has seen 10 #1s so far, of which five have been by women, putting women on course to claim a 50% share of the list.
If present trends continue, bestsellers by women will imminently overtake those by men before going on to make them extinct. “Once”, says Bob Young, CEO of Lulu, “women writers took on male pen names, like George Eliot, whose real name was Mary Ann Evans. Soon, male writers may have to adopt female names: the Dan Brown of the future will become Danielle and the Stephen King will be Stephanie.”
The study was conducted by Lulu as part of a drive to boost the share of books by women which make up its own list of bestsellers (www.lulu.com/browse/top100.php). “Only 22 of our own 100 bestsellers have women as the only or main author”, confesses Young. “We’d like to see that figure grow”.
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