Now is a Great Time to be a Female Author
Sometimes, it can be really daunting to think of starting something courageous as a woman. Whether you identify as a feminist or not, whether you believe that women are oppressed or not, every woman has that little voice inside our heads that waits until we want to start something ambitious and then says “you know, this is going to be even harder, because you’re a woman.” And sure, this applies to all walks of life from the workplace to trying to get a car fixed, but this is a feeling that holds especially strong when I talk to my friends who dream of writing a book one day. For some reason, a lot of us hold on to the idea that the creative world is dominated by male voices. And while we’re not necessarily wrong -- after all in the past decade only 3 Pulitzer prizes for fiction were awarded to women -- the situation is not as bleak as our minds might convince us. Actually, I think the exact opposite is true. We are probably living in the best, most exciting time to be a female author.
Some of you are probably thinking “that’s a bold statement” and others are probably thinking “obviously, women are less oppressed than ever before” but I don’t just mean compared to the past. I don’t just mean we’re better off than the Bronte sisters and Mary Shelley. I mean right now is a time to get excited about! Right now, you should be so proud to call yourself a female author, and so excited to start working on your latest creative project. Why? Because women’s voices are becoming more relevant now than they ever have been, because women represent a huge segment of buyers that major companies are finally paying attention to, because women’s projects are being optioned left and right, and because for the first time ever there is actually a pronounced hunger for diverse stories being told. Keep reading, I’m only getting started here.
Women’s Voices are more Relevant Globally than Ever
I don’t just mean within the writing world, I mean period. In every sphere of life, you’re suddenly seeing women given platforms to use their voice. The past decade in global politics has seen a huge wave of firsts: first presidents, first councilors, first senators, on and on and on. What’s more, we’re not just seeing one-and-done candidates, but we’re seeing these women help other women get where they are. In global business there are more women in the workplace than ever before, and female CEO’s and high-level executives are helping other women smash through the so-called glass ceiling. In politics women are helping other women run their campaigns. Women are taking advantage of their rights to vote and have a voice like they never have before. In Hollywood, arguably the most globally influential film hub, you’re seeing female directors taking on a multitude of projects and being spoken of in the same breath as their male counterparts.
All of these things are not unrelated. When women start winning in one avenue of life, it has an effect on every other industry. More female television producers mean more female-led television shows which might mean more female-led cooking shows which inspires more women to believe they can be professional chefs who turn into more female business owners – it trickles out like that from field to field. Literature is no exception. The more relevant women’s voices are in all of these different industries, the more women “experts” there are writing books on cooking, business, finance, memoirs, how-to’s, etc. When you see more women on the non-fiction shelves selling books, that has an effect on the bookstores overall. Pretty soon, the industry figures out that women authors write books that make money, and you see more female authors start to pop up on the fiction shelves, too. All that is happening without even taking into account the fantastic changes that are slowly shifting the world of fiction.
Women are a Hot Demographic
Something many women struggle with is being torn between writing what they love and writing where they feel they can be successful. But the truth is, because of changing habits of female readers, women are becoming successful authors in fiction genres across the board. It used to be that men purchased more books than women, but by the late 90’s this gap had closed almost completely, and by some reports even flipped. Now, it’s a pretty known fact in the literary world that women read more fiction than men. So, when I say that women are a hot demographic I don’t necessarily mean that all of a sudden women are purchasing more books than men, or even purchasing more books in general. Rather, that women are purchasing more books from women now. Starting in the 90’s, women authors succeeded predominantly in the genres that women overindex in reading. Women overindex in reading Romance, Domestic, Historical, and Horror novels while men overindex in Spy/Politics, Sci-Fi, and Suspense novels.
However, more recently, women have been breaking into and making a name for themselves in genres that women authors previously didn’t have much leverage in. More importantly, they’re succeeding. In the more traditionally female genres, the popularity of male authors like Nicholas Sparks has been superseded by the likes of Nora Roberts or Catherine Bybee and countless others. But also in more traditionally male genres amongst the James Bradleys, Jackson Bennets, Michael Robothams, and Stephen Kings there’s also Naomi Aldermans, Paula Hawkins, and Karin Slaughters. More women buying books from female, as well as male authors, means that there is a strong uptick in the number of talented female authors making a name for themselves in every genre. And every successful female author makes a publishing house that little bit more likely to take a chance on the next talented female author that crosses their path.
Women’s Books are Being Optioned
Not every author writes a novel with a dream of that novel becoming a movie one day. In fact, most don’t. But nowadays, it almost seems like having your book turned into a movie is the proverbial dream for an author. The film industry, not only in Hollywood but also around the world, is becoming increasingly fascinated with adaptations. It makes sense why it’s attractive to an author – it’s exciting to see the world of their novel come to life, they often get a hefty paycheck, several thousand (or more) people will pick up their book before the movie is released, and it’s just flattering to think that someone loves your story enough to retell it. If the idea of your novel being turned into a film one day doesn’t excite you, feel free to skip to the last two sentences of this point. But if it does, I have great news. Female authors have a strong presence in the movie adaptation game. Once upon a time – or through the mid 2000’s – movie adaptations were men’s stories. They ran the gambit from Artificial Intelligence and Blade Runner to Jumanji to Lord of the Rings to every Nicholas Sparks movie ever made.
But starting in the early 2000s and through to today, the world of adaptations is very different. Women are having their novels adapted from all sorts of genres. There’s the fantasy series like Harry Potter and Hunger Games. There’s suspense/thrillers like Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train. There’s romances like Everything, Everything and Tulip Fever. There’s even bold contemporary fiction stories like Crazy Rich Asians and The Hate U Give – both the exact sort of story that would probably have never been made a film even 5 years ago. Regardless of whether any woman actually desires to see her novel turned into a film, what this new trend reflects to me is the new wave of interest and belief in women as storytellers. Studios will only adapt projects that they think will be commercially successful, which means that even outside the literary world, people are recognizing the capabilities and successes of female authors like never before.
There is More Interest in Diverse Stories
My last point is the most personal point for me. Looking at everything else, you might argue that these trends have been appearing for a while. After all, the first Harry Potter film came out in 2001, women have been growing their presence in thrillers and sci-fi for over a decade, and across the board the prevalence of women rising to positions of influence didn’t just start four years ago. However, the shift that has me the most excited is that across the board there is suddenly much more of an interest in diverse stories. Now, it’s not just becoming more common to see women speak in professional settings, they’re actually being sought out because as a woman they might lend a unique perspective. It used to be that women in those male-dominated genres found success writing novels with male protagonists a la Mary Shelley, Ann Rice, or J.K. Rowling. Now, women are becoming successful across the board writing stories about women, with authors like Katharine Arden, Jeanette Ng, Katie Kitamura, Tomi Adeyemi, Fiona Barton, and so many others having their works praised as must-reads and their female leads discussed across a variety of literary circles. And what’s especially exciting is that these lists aren’t restricted to one type of woman.
More than ever before, people across the world are reading stories about women who don’t come from where they come from, look like them, think like them, or act like them. Books like The City of Brass or Americanah or Habibi or The Land of Forgotten Girls or so many others are becoming international hits not despite of, but because of their ability to draw from global cultural influences. As a Nigerian-American girl growing up, I used to always believe that if I ever wanted to succeed as an author I would have to write my books about white men and women – that if I wanted to explore my own culture or insert my own perspective I’d have to craft my work carefully so that it would be “relatable.” But as the world has shifted and changed, so has my ability to dream up new stories with characters that come from different places, characters who look and think and act differently. For every woman, regardless of your ethnicity, that should be so freeing. We’ve entered an age where women are becoming exceptional, widely recognized authors because of our ability to look within ourselves and write characters that differ from the norms that dominated the world of literature for so long.
Becoming a novelist is a challenge. There are so many decisions – self-publish vs. publishing house, print vs. digital – and so many pitfalls and so much that might seem unclear. As with everything else in life, it takes hard work, talent, and perseverance to make it as a novelist. But there is no reason that any woman should hold onto the outdated idea that there’s anywhere in the world of fiction that she cannot make a name for herself. The world is changing for the better, ladies. The doors are wide open, and there’s nowhere left that we cannot go.
