Men level up their reading game

For the past three months, former Marine Jonathan Shuerger has written a chapter a week for his new book Devil Dog. It’s a Christian literary role-playing game (LitRPG) novel inspired by the video game series DOOM and C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters.

With a tall stack of boardgames like Scythe and Ankh at his elbow and loose papers strewn across his office floor, Shuerger describes LitRPG as the male counterpart to fantasy-romance or romantasy. “It’s very masculine-coded, because men really like leveling up,” he said.

LitRPG blends video game mechanics like player stats and leveling up with the overall story. A publisher in Russia first marketed the genre about a decade ago, but the recent popularity of Matt Dinniman’s profanity-laden Dungeon Crawler Carl books has introduced the genre into mainstream culture. Market research company Circana says the first book in the series is the ninth-most-sold book this year, and Dinniman’s other books have appeared on various bestseller lists. The eighth book in the series came out in May.

The popularity of LitRPG is something of an anomaly. By and large, men aren’t picking up books very often, and that may be both a supply and demand problem. Screen time and podcast listening increasingly replace print reading, driving down the sales of nonfiction titles. And as men read less, publishing houses focus on content that appeals to women, leaving men with even fewer reasons to pick up a book. But as the success of LitRPG shows, men are willing to read if they can find a good story to draw them in.

According to a Pew Research Center study published in April, women are 7% more likely than men to say they’ve read a book within the last year. Marc Malandra, an English professor at Biola University, has watched that trend develop in real time. During his almost two decades in the classroom, male students have become less interested in reading, a trend he mainly attributes to increased digital engagement.

Malandra believes that’s especially problematic for Christians: “The less critically engaged we become with texts just on a general level, the less specifically we would be able to understand some of the things that God might be teaching us through the Bible.”

The decline in reading doesn’t mean men aren’t interested in learning. According to Edison Research, 57% of men listen to podcasts, making them a popular means of exploring nonfiction topics like history and politics. Increased podcast listening could explain the recent slump in nonfiction book sales.

Shilo Brooks is president of the George W. Bush Presidential Center and host of The Free Press’ Old School podcast, where he discusses great books. He believes men aren’t reading partly because it’s not modeled as an aspect of masculinity. “Just as you watch football every Sunday morning, dads, your son should see you reading a book and should know that’s something men do,” Brooks told me.

Brooks says there’s another aspect contributing to the phenomenon: Contemporary literature written by men and for men is increasingly rare.

Between 1970 and 2020, women’s share of published titles jumped from 20% to 50%, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. That could have something to do with the leadership at publishing houses. According to a 2023 study from Lee & Low Books, women occupy nearly 63% of board and executive positions at publishing and book review companies, up from 59% in 2015.

Male-authored books are by no means obsolete. Theo of Golden by Allen Levi is a top fiction bestseller, according to The New York Times. Percival Everett’s satirical novel James remained on the list for over 40 weeks. But successful female authors far outnumber their male counterparts. This year, seven of the 10 top-selling books were written by women.

Jonathan Shuerger believes there’s still an eager audience for male-centric fiction. “When I gather my intel from readers, there’s just this sense of men being like, ‘If they wrote something for me, I’d read it,’” he said.

Last year, a new publishing house launched in the U.K. called Conduit Books announced that it would focus “initially on male authors.” Several of its first offerings focus on father-son relationships.

Andy Patton is the director of content at the Rabbit Room and author of the LitRPG novel The Ill-Starred Knight. He’s not sure if there really is a male-­centric fiction deficit since classics like The Lord of the Rings certainly appeal to men. But he does believe LitRPG taps into a pastime that particularly appeals to men: video games.

Patton thinks the publishing industry broadly will soon realize that there’s an eager audience for LitRPG. Like many LitRPG authors, Matt Dinniman originally shared his first Dungeon Crawler Carl book on a Reddit-like forum called Royal Road. LitRPG authors release their story drafts on the platform and often gain significant followings before their books are finished. In 2024, an imprint of Penguin publishing began distributing Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl series, and Patton imagines that’s just the start. “Other big publishers are going to grab these titles that have been proven to be successful in the niche market … and throw them all over the place,” he said.

The growth of LitRPG has a downside. Shuerger described many popular books in the genre as “highly sexualized.” But because the genre offers something for men, Shuerger says the game-like format allows him to introduce Christian ideas to male readers. “The Christian life is about growth … but it’s not as simple as leveling up,” he said. “You grow really through suffering. The more tribulation you undergo, the stronger you become.”

Shilo Brooks believes there’s room for what he called “Diet-Coke-and-potato-chips reading,” but he argues men should also avail themselves to serious literary works from authors like Shakespeare and Faulkner. “The emotional confusion that’s pretty rampant … some of that is a consequence of not having those kinds of bonds with great thoughts and the scope of human history,” Brooks said.