Has publishing abandoned teen boys?

I got my grandson (15) reading Terry Pratchett. He loves the humor. I also picked up 1984 for a Christmas gift.

Edit, Thanks for all the great suggestions. I got him reading The Hornblower books at 12, and he’s never looked back.

I feel like it’s more of a teen boys avoided publishing.

This is something I think about often. I teach a college freshman-level remedial reading and writing course, and between 80-90% of my students are usually young men. Completely anecdotal just my experience, but I do wonder how it all ended up this way.

It’s interesting that teen girl readers were always expected to – and did – read books geared at boys, but teen boy readers won’t and aren’t expected to do the same. All of the books that already exist haven’t disappeared either.

There’s this chicken and egg problem that I’ve been curious about for a long time.

You see, where I live in Ontario, we have this literacy test that every single student has to take (OSSLT). The ministry of education brags that every single student educated in the Ontario education system is literate, because they won’t let you graduate unless you pass the test (or pass a remedial literacy course).

Every year, they poll students on their reading habits before the test, and like, the results are miserable. Less than half of the students taking it report even reading regularly in their spare time (and they count social media reading, like you reading this comment as reading!).

But something that I always found curious was the vast gender gap in reading. Girls seem to read 20 percentage points higher than boys do, and I always wondered – Was it because publishers don’t publish books that appeal or boys? or was it the opposite? That boys don’t read so publishers don’t bother.

Former teen boy here. Kids have lots of things to read that isn’t being packaged to them as YA fiction. 

As a teen I read Stephen King, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and a lot of other sci fi and fantasy.

🤷‍♂️

Who is writing those books?  

I know a ton of women who write as a hobby (ao3, wattpad etc) and obviously that translates to some books that both genders can identify with but quite a few that only women will. 

The question is where are the men posting their written work? I have no clue. They’re the ones who can write for teenage boys with accuracy. 

My favorite books as a tween were probably the Gregor the Overlander series by Suzanne Collins, the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colder, and the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan. I don’t really know what’s popular among kids today since I don’t have any, but I personally never felt like they’re weren’t books that were geared specifically to my demographic as a kid.

I think the issue is that books in general are just looked down upon as inferior forms of media among young boys as opposed to things like tiktok/YouTube. I don’t think that’s the only problem thats resulting in the lack of literary among kids, but it’s probably the biggest.

I (27m) was once a teenage boy. I read very much as a kid, and continued reading as a teen, but it wasnt YA fiction.

As a young boy, my mom would read to me every night, and we would take turns reading pages to one another before bed. Boxcar Children, Ramona, The BFG come to mind. As I got older, my interests in science fiction took over because they matched what was happening in my videogames. Star Wars and Halo novels were my bread and butter. It seems most boys skip stereotypical “YA” fiction and get funneled into either the sci-fi or fantasy pipeline. Another underrated and huge source of my vocabulary and comprehension was playing the videogame Morrowind and reading all of the text to move about the world and find my way. I started playing Age of Empire 2 as well, which cultivated in me a lifelong deep love of history. I remember checking out non-fiction books from the library on Ghengis Khan and the Spanish first contact with the Aztecs. That’s when I wasn’t sponging up Wikipedia links on historic figures and battles.

Once I got into high school, I moved into reading the classics. Doestoevsky, Bronte sisters, Tolstoy, Dumas. So much fun and also deeply meaningful. If you start measuring boys by YA fiction, though, I think you aren’t really getting the whole story at all. It’s amazing to me how few institutions seem to truly understand boys.

When I was a teen boy, I was mostly into George Orwell and Ender’s Game and WW2 novels or historical action novels and Greek mythology and Poe/Lovecraft/King. I don’t even know if there’s any YA aimed at boys besides maybe like Percy Jackson. I feel like most teen boys would be into sci-fi or fantasy like A Song of Ice and Fire; I don’t think most teenage boys surging with testosterone are into a sanitized PG-13 YA experience.

Work in a library. I can tell you that a very small percentage of boys read. And when they do there’s not much in recent fiction for them. Right of the bat most the YA stuff is romance and sexual discovery. None of the teen boys want any of that. There’s a huge gap in offering between preteen captain underpants/Minecraft books and Tom Clancy/Stephen King stuff. I usually steer them towards crime novels, historical fiction, biographies. Books that involve teen their age are mostly involving some kind of super powers/fantasy or Alex Riders super spy type stuff. It’s hard to have regular teen boys doing regular teen stuff.

Sales optimisation has killed culture

So I’m a high school librarian. I also work on a committee for a YA award. Of course I’m sharing my observations on my demographic. Your school experience may vary, but I’m there right now every day and I have noticed the shortage of books and readers.

I will say, there aren’t a lot of straight white male narrator books coming out. I still see the straight white male (that doesn’t have anything perceived as “other” about them) in multiple POV books, but theirs is not the whole voice throughout the book. Sports books tend to still put out a few but there have also been fewer sports books overall and a bigger trend toward girls in sports.

My male students who are readers enjoy Manga/graphic novels, Alan Gratz, Red Rising, Camp Valor, wilderness survival, sports, and mystery/horror. Most of my male students forced to check something out will either check out a large book (think It by Stephen King) and never even pretend to read it or look for something made into a show or movie or look for something they’ve already read. They make no qualms about the fact they won’t read it. I do have reluctant readers who will read if they actually are hooked by a book, Golden Arm, Camp Valor, The Unfortunates, and oddly enough Mindy McGinnis books (because she came in person to our school) have been the ones I get the most feedback about.

I’ve also moved all the sports nonfiction to the sports fiction section. They’re all together in the same area. I’ve found it isn’t cool to “look around” the library so if you put it all in one place they’re more likely to find it. I’ve had a number of boys very excited about the nonfiction and ask me for more books like these and what they mean is nonfiction. I’ve tried this with other genres too, but sports is where it has taken off the most. Historical fiction and nonfiction WWII books have always had a small fan base and those readers typically did look for those in the nonfiction section, moving some over there hasn’t really had the same effect.

But my overall observation is reading isn’t cool. The library and books are stupid. It’s stupid to be caught looking at books. It’s a shame, but even when I taught English and we had reading time the boys overwhelmingly did anything to get out of it. Bathroom, go to the library (and now on this end I see what they do when they come here and it’s not productive behavior) or anything else that will get them out of class. My boys who do read, and I love them and some play sports and have girlfriends and do all that, are still not who their peers would call the cool kids. I do have non white and non straight males who read and they’ve got lots of choices because a lot of times gender and race aren’t a driving factor in which books they’re interested in. Same with the girls.

There’s a stigma, there is an overall goal of not doing and actively avoiding, there is also an underlying issue of lower ability leading to that avoidance. Those gaps have already developed prior to ninth grade.

And I do have a lot of adult crossover books, but the thicker the book the less likely it will be checked out and actually read. I get a lot of recommendations on cool guy books from my husband and pass those suggestions along, but even the most curious teenage boy who might just want to read for once is going to face a more difficult reading level in adult crossover and that’s going to be an immediate turn off.

It’s a multifaceted problem. I don’t think publishing more books would get more boys reading. I have something like 6k books, 11 books per student, and most of the newer books right up their alley aren’t checked out. If anything there is a market for YA quick reads featuring white males, because those would be of most interest, but I don’t think they’d be going to a bookstore to buy them, it would be primarily libraries like mine that would buy them. And that’s the issue for publishers.

And just to add disclaimers on disclaimers, my whole job is to get kids to read. I promote the heck out of books, actively search for books they’d be more likely to read, promote books that are a little out of their comfort zone that they’d still like (Concrete Rose has done really well). I spend a lot of time looking at shelves with them. I film tiktoks of myself going through the shelves pointing out books and describing them so kids might see it and not have to deal with the “embarrassment” of the librarian helping them in person. I try. A lot. I have books on lower reading levels just because I know to meet them there. But not even the most savvy adult can overcome their perception of reading based on their peers. And not even the best book can overcome things like video games and phones. There’s a lot out there attracting their attention. Books aren’t one of them. But I do try.

People forget that before Harry Potter, YA fiction was barely a thing. Somewhere around middle school, we all started reading Stephen King and that was that.

No but marketing has. Adults always recommend books that are aimed at even younger kids.

What you like at 13 can be completely different from what you like at 19. We can’t really lump teens as a whole.

One issue surrounding this that always bothered me even as a little girl was that little girls read and watch and generally consume all kinds of media (on average). Like, I and the other little girls used to watch dragon ball z and other shows and read books with male main characters, or aimed at little boys, etc. But my brother was leaving the room when sailor moon was on. He watched a few episodes, so he knows what it’s about, and that’s it. And I can say with certainty that he never read a book with a female main character that was written by a woman or was aimed at little girls or women.

And I remember that this was the vibe growing up. If it’s meant for little boys, it’s a general kids thing that girls can enjoy too. If it’s meant for little girls, only little girls consume it.

So I’m wondering is the issue with the publishing industry or with how little boys are socialized?! (mind you, all this that I’m talking about was happening in Romania in the 90s… I can’t imagine the situation changed too much since then tho…)

So this is purely anecdotal but when I was growing up I had stuff like Eragon, Harry Potter, and Artemis Fowl. The cool thing about books is that they age a lot better than movies but I think that there is definitely a bigger draw that new books have vs older ones.

Now I’m no longer the target demographic for those books so maybe I’m just not seeing the ads for them but I’m not aware of any new big YA series for boys. Most I have heard of lean more towards girls. Again, take that with a grain of salt and it’s just what I personally have observed.