Why Men Don't Read...
Because They're Listening to WebmasterRadio!
Earl Hipp, Elliott Katz and Scott Halzman, writer's for the men's market, tell me that they struggle with the question: "How To Attract Men To Buy Relationship Books?" My short answer was "market to women." Dr. Halzman's publicist took this to heart and found her client's book, The Secrets of Happily Married Men: Eight Ways to Win Your Wife's Heart Forever, on the opinion page of both the New York Times and USA Today and on Valentine's Day no less! Even so, Dr. Halzman tells me it took five years to find a publisher.
The reality is that men, for the most part, read for information, which gives them pleasure and woman read for, well... pleasure. It's how we define pleasure that's different. A man can read about history, golf, radio frequencies, or the mating rituals of albino frogs and derive great satisfaction from such. A woman can read about cooking, romance, gardening, tennis, and the relationship between Anna and Sigmund Freud and enjoy herself immensely. Is this the hard sciences vs. soft sciences argument again? Perhaps. But I think the differences in our reading preferences have as much to do with what we do with the information as it does with our purpose in life. A guy may read history to gain perspective on where his life lies in comparison. A gal may read a book on tennis so that she and her teammate will win at doubles.
Men are directed outward and women are directed inward. This is why men go off to work and off to war. Women look inward to make sense of it all.
I've been told before that I think like a man, so I am in no way advocating stereotyping. My point is that there are inherent differences in how men and women perceive the world and their reading choices, more often than not, reflect that.
Reading to men seems to be a means to an end; whereas reading for women is more like a pie chart. Men tend to be more linear; women tend to be more circular. Men dim the reading light as a cue to make love; women turn the dimmer up in order to finish the last chapter. SIGH!
