Old Post Republished
According to the most recent polls (Nielson) I could find, 16% of romance readers are men. Or at least 16% are men who were comfortable enough admitting that they liked reading romance. As with all studies, the numbers can be skewed based on willingness to answer honestly. RWA says its closer to 6%, so I’ll take the average for the duration.
Since romance is by far the biggest fiction umbrella genre both for number of books published and sales, that 12% is really a large number of actual men who sit down with a book to read about love between two people. Kinda warms the heart, actually.
I think the stigma that might stop a guy from browsing the romance shelves, or at least the romance pages at Amazon. These books are women’s stuff! They’re the pink toy aisle little boys refused to go down when they were young. They’re scented skin cream and scarves when it’s not cold out. Despite the fact that most romance fiction is heterosexual, reading something so girly and full of feeeeelings might make someone question their manliness.
Of course I, and that 12%, don’t believe any of this. And of course, most of the other guys who don’t read romance probably don’t’ think this either. They just like other things.