You write like a guy

You write like a guy

Does an author’s gender matter?

Can you tell if a book is written by a male or female?

Does it make a difference to you when you buy a book?

This topic came up in a recent thread in the Amazon Kindle community.

Part of the issue was, oddly enough, my own gender.

I don’t pretend to be something I’m not, but I also avoid identifying it when I write.  The same thing goes for my Significant Other and offspring…it can be a little awkward when I write, honestly, but I don’t say she or he for my family.

If it’s awkward, why do I do it?

Because I think it shouldn’t matter to readers.

My Significant Other could be my domestic partner, my wife, my boyfriend, my girlfriend…all kinds of possibilities.

I love my actual status, but I’m sure people with other statuses love theirs as well.  I think because of prejudice, it is easier for some people to identify themselves than others.

I think people should be able to choose to make that identification for themselves and their family or not…so I don’t do it, just to open that door a bit wider.

Some Kindleers have met me and my family..that happened at last year’s Kindle & Koffee day.

There are some pictures of me out there…although interestingly, there is at least one picture that is labeled as me that isn’t.  🙂

I think this is one of the great things about the internet: people can be known by their words, without their age , religion, gender preference, race, country, gender, and so on, being part of that judgement.

I don’t misrepresent it…I just don’t present it.  😉

But enough about me.  🙂

Certainly, people think it makes a difference, or at least used to do so.  Women who wanted to write science fiction and comic books used to sometimes pick male pen names.  The same is true for men who want to write romances.

I think the former has become less true over time, as people have gotten over the concept that science fiction is a male thing.

As for men writing romances…quick, name a famous male romance writer!  Admittedly, some of you can’t name any romance writers 😉 , but those of you who know the genre might be surprised.

It’s funny…I was considering listing some examples, but I would feel like I was outing them.  Is it possible their sales could drop off if readers knew they were male?

How unfair would that be?

If you had read an author for years and then found out that your romance writer was male, would that make a difference?

Pen names are actually much more complicated than that.  Some single pen names represent more than one person…wife and husband writing teams, parent and child, and so on.

Other names are “house names”, owned by the publishing company.  The same house name could be used by a lot of people…possibly even people of different genders.

Hmmm…let’s do this.  I’ll throw in a couple of samples.  You can let me know if you think the author is male or female.

Sample 1

Let me try and give you some notion of her: not that first impression, whatever it may have been, but the absolute reality of her as I gradually learned to see it. To begin with, I must repeat and reiterate over and over again, that she was, beyond all comparison, the most graceful and exquisite woman I have ever seen, but with a grace and an exquisiteness that had
nothing to do with any preconceived notion or previous experience of what goes by these names: grace and exquisiteness recognised at once as perfect,
but which were seen in her for the first, and probably, I do believe, for the last time. It is conceivable, is it not, that once in a thousand years there may arise a combination of lines, a system of movements, an outline, a gesture, which is new, unprecedented, and yet hits off exactly our desires for beauty and rareness?

Sample 2

When the terrace was reached it appeared not only to have caught and gathered all the heat of the valley below, but to have evolved a fire of its own from some hidden crater-like source unknown. Nevertheless, instead of prostrating and enervating man and beast, it was said to have induced the wildest exaltation. The heated air was filled and stifling with resinous exhalations. The delirious spices of balm, bay, spruce, juniper, yerba buena, wild syringa, and strange aromatic herbs as yet unclassified, distilled and evaporated in that mighty heat, and seemed to fire with a midsummer madness all who breathed their fumes. They stung, smarted, stimulated, intoxicated. It was said that the most jaded and foot-sore horses became furious and ungovernable under their influence; wearied teamsters and muleteers, who had exhausted their profanity in the ascent, drank fresh draughts of inspiration in this fiery air, extended their vocabulary, and created new and startling forms of objurgation.

I’ll give you the answer on these later.  🙂  UPDATE: You can see the answers here.

One more question:

Feel free to leave me a comment…do you think it’s silly that I don’t identify?  Do you think it does matter what the gender of an author is?  If you read a novel written in the first person by a female character, would it matter to you if a male author wrote it?  How about if it was the other way around?  Do you think female authors of traditionally male literature should identify, to create more opportunities for other female authors?   Is the same true for male authors of traditionally female literature?

Is it all a non-issue?

I’m interested in what you think…

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.