BOOKS FIND WOMEN

"When women stop reading, the novel will be dead," English author Ian McEwan wrote in the Guardian a few years ago. A little earlier, the Booker prize-winning author decided to do an experiment and handed out free books (not his) in a park. What he discovered was an absolutely obvious gender misbalance - it was mainly women who took the free books. 

Women read more than men do and many surveys in different countries of the world attest to the fact. Men, on the other hand, often buy and "collect" books without even reading them. Interestingly, 46 per cent of men tend to exaggerate the number of books they have read. 

There are many theories that attempt to explain the reasons why women read more. Psychologists say that women are more emotional. British scientists ascribed this to the so-called "mirror neutrons" which they believe are more sensitive among women. The In These Times magazine noted that only 20 per cent of men read books in the USA, Canada and Britain. Women read twice as much on average. Interestingly, increasingly less people the world over read books. According to the same survey, an average American reads only four books a year. 

Therefore, a paradoxical situation emerges: while increasingly less people read books, women read more. What does this amount to? Publishers are beginning to focus on their female readership. 

This is especially true of publishers in Eastern Europe where the paper book market suffered the most due to electronic piracy. Why buy a book if it can be downloaded for free?

There are good books and bad ones. As well as promoting reasonable, kind and eternal values books have always had an entertaining function. Now books are undergoing a peculiar "genderization". What men find appealing women may find disgusting and vice versa. If men are attracted to super fantasy action films with an uncomplicated and straightforward title and plot (methods of catering to people's emotions are always one and the same, irrespective of the age, status or intellectual development of readers), women are attracted by love-themed or popular novels (that feature aspects of "real life").  For example, in the ratings of Russian language fiction, the majority of books are gender prose. In this context, the charming author, Boris Akunin, temporarily became the most popular author. 

The rating of global book sales from Amazon last year is even more telling. Twilight, an erotic novel by E. L. James, is leading the list. 

How about here in Azerbaijan? 

Azerbaijan, which is not among the most book-loving post-Soviet countries, follows global tendencies all the same. Reading in Azerbaijan, like in the rest of the world, "is not for everybody". At the same time, like elsewhere, in Azerbaijan, women constitute the majority of book shops' clientele. They come first where innovations emerge. The list of bestselling books in the capital Baku is the new book of 50 Shades of Grey, Bared to You by Sylvia Day, and the now fashionable bestseller of the British author David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas, the screening of which was shown by all cinemas in the capital, as well as Hunger Games by American writer Susan Collins - a new topical post-Apocalyptic fantasy for youth. Men with less discerning and conservative tastes, prefer Cingiz Abdullayev's detective stories,  or pocket action books or modest classics in old format. 

What happened to the book market?

The point is that most books that are published target a female readership. Have you noticed how much book covers have changed over the recent years? There is an important aspect to note here: not only women's literature but ordinary books have also changed their outward appearance as more books are published with luxurious, colourful, vintage covers. Tough macho covers with scary weapons have suddenly disappeared and given way to elves, weedy girls with languid looks, pictures by impressionists, flowers and vintage gramophones, half-painted Big Bens and Eiffel Towers, coffee and cigarettes..

Publishers are well aware of these tendencies and follow them.

Several important accompanying factors need also be pointed out. Book publishing, and, first of all, paper book publishing, has been experiencing a serious crisis which is more evident in places where the population can download free press from the Internet with impunity. All this happens amid the emergence of widescreen mobile telephones and electronic readers, all of which naturally causes prices to drop. In conditions where one can access several gigabytes of electronic books free of charge (and this is a few dozen thousand books), or simply steal them from pirate sites, the need in paper books is gradually dying. 

What happened? To answer this question one needs to answer another question: What do paper books mean to us now? Why are we buying them nowadays?

It is no secret that a good, tastefully selected and beautiful library is a coveted and prestigious thing to have. Publishers are well aware of this. First of all, books have become more costly. This is not only because the fewer number of copies which certainly increases the price of each copy. Paper, the quality of page proofs and printing - all these are now of better quality. Books have turned into luxury items for homes. They now look more beautiful, more high class and ideally fit into the interior as an item of furniture. My acquaintances who can afford to buy many books started buying classics. These books are in every family in order to just put them on the shelf, that is, exclusively for aesthetic purposes. Compare the shabby-looking old Baku edition of Master and Margaret with the enticing and elegant covers of the new editions. Or the shabby strictly economic tomes of the Soviet period which read better in new editions. This way, except for their original function to educate and entertain books are also style accessories. Going to a bookshop is a certain ritual, an act of becoming a member of the community. For simple and purely functional reading increasingly many people prefer free electronic sources. It is for this reason that sales records are set by what formerly used to be disposable books, such as those by Aleksandra Marinina or James' Twilight. These books are now coated in luxurious covers. On the face of it, both of these books look like literature but have as much in common with the art of the letters as do harsh action books.