Why Did the Novel-Reading Man Disappear?

Some of us are still here, though we may be culturally irrelevant. So much the worse for the culture.

Men are leaving fiction reading behind. Some people want to change that.

...One real challenge at hand is a frenzied attention economy competing for everyone's time, not just men's. To present the sorry state of the male reader as having solely to do with the gendered quality of contemporary fiction misses a screen-based culture that presents nearly unlimited forms of entertainment.

"Our competition isn't other publishers," said Sean Manning, the publisher of Simon & Schuster. "It's social media, gaming, streaming. All these other things that are vying for people's time, attention and financial resources."

Asked whether the publishing industry needed straight men to read more fiction as a purely economic matter, Mr. Manning focused instead on the social benefits of reading.

"It's a problem if anyone isn't taking advantage of an incredible artistic medium," he said. "It's hurtful not to be well-rounded."
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nyt