[nmaria]

Folks,

does anyone know if most SF readers are men? I am talking novels here, books like star wars with lots of battle scenes. Who reads these? mostly men? do women even read stuff like star wars? what age group would these people belong to?

[zachariah]

My psychic powers detect a student in search of primary research material.

[nmaria]

just researching my audience

[NickeeCoco]

I don't read Star Wars books, but I've been known to enjoy a space opera novel/series from time to time. I'm female and in the 25-30 category.

[Soon Lee]

You appear to be conflating Star Wars with SF. They are not exactly the same thing.

Are you thinking perhaps of Military SF, like the sort that Baen books (http://www.baen.com/) publishes? Star Wars is more Space Opera but there are also many other sorts of SF that don't emphasize the big spaceships and explosions in space, like Connie Willis whose SF stories concentrate much more on the characters, or Ted Chiang or Nancy Kress or Greg Egan where the stories attempt to explore the possible impacts of new technologies on what it means to be human.

Why is the gender of the reader important?

[KatG]

Unfortunately, there's not a lot of demographic research of the kind you're after in fiction publishing. At this point, near as we can figure, the audience for SF is maybe 60% male and 40% female. I've no idea what it is for Star Wars tie-in novels, but I would suspect it's about the same. As for the age range, it's pretty wide, from YA teen ages through to senior citizens. The bulk of fiction readers tend to be in the middle, years 30-50, but that may be slightly off since SF attracts young readers too.

Unless you are writing a romance novel, which guys tend to deem too girly, the gender breakdown is really unimportant. And unless you are writing a YA novel, the age of the readership is also fairly unimportant. Women read all types of fiction, men are more picky, but if you have some action in the story, and certainly if you have some suspense, it will probably be fine. But I should also point out that we've had many male SF writers who have written stories without suspense action and those have done well with males too.

[nmaria]

thank you! that was really helpful. Maybe I'll post in the September flash fiction, I hope you all are. have a great labor day.