New York Times Fiction List, Male Versus Female Authors.

The Number of Weeks Atop the New York Times Best-selling Fiction Novel List, Males Versus Females.

Above shows the domination of male authors in the period 1979 through 2010 with the red (male author bars) often having more than 40 weeks. In 1993, male authors had 52 weeks. This contrasts to the most recent years, as shown in the graph below.


I have made a number of posts regarding the nature of the books and authors that have made it atop the New York Times Best-Selling Fiction list. These include the age of the authors, the length of stay on top, the length of the books, and the sex of the authors.

I am revisiting this matter due to, in contrast to the early years, women have taken over the top spots in recent years.

The New York Times Bestsellers list first became a national sampling of best-selling books on August 9th, 1942. Men spent more weeks as the author of the number one best-selling fiction book in 51 of the years from 1943 (the first complete year) through 2010 with women dominating in seven years. In ten different years women were shut out with no weeks with the number one novel. More recently, from 2011 onward, women have spent more weeks on top in 5 of 7 years.

A horse race is on. The female dominance began in 2011. However, due to dominance in the year 2010, over the course of the 2010s, males have the overall lead of 209.5 weeks versus 208.5 weeks for women. 

Women have achieved parity so far in the 2010s.

The above expands the right-most portion of the previous graph making it easier to visualize the diminution of male dominance. Since 2011, men have dominated in two years, 2013 and 2017.