• Questions

  • Why my BL book has mostly female viewers?

Loserboi
The BL genre was made for the female audience because they are the ones who read it the most. That is why there are a few fudanshi (who are either straight, bi, or gay. Most fudanshis are actually straight) but a ton of fujoshis.
To be honest, some gay males don’t like yaoi because it is fluffy with bishounen man and sometimes don’t put the gay community in a nice light (yaoi tends to have a lot of rape in its mangas) or show unrealistic things.
Some gay men lean towards Bara rather than yaoi.

I’m not bashing yaoi, I love it (I read BL stories 24/7) but men still want manliness in a story and yaoi doesn’t really give off that feeling.

      Loserboi
      Mine is exact opposite almost same numbers statistics wise.
      36% male viewers vs only 15% female and I also write BL...
      Go figure, I was always curious about it too because I expected more women. :X

        Boy, I get 10% male audience, 20% female, and the rest are unknown :D
        BL is mostly like by female population. But so long as they appreciated the story, their gender doesn't matter.

          Loserboi As others may have stated, BL main target reader are women. The majority of readers are in the new adult target.

          I can kind of validate when I stood in a BL book aisle at Animate and was surrounded by women.

          I suspect your kind of story might be bara, which is typically male target.

          Unfortunately, WN only has a one-size fits all target reader for LGBT+ stories that's women.

              RJMidnight I'm tolerant with gays, but I don't believe that straight men enjoy reading BL.
              I tried to read one about quick transmigration (extremely high rated on novelupdates a few years ago), closed my eyes on sexual things and imagined that passive partner is a girl, but it didn't work at all. May be these "straight" male readers ain't that straight at all? 😂😂😂

                  Dwarkin
                  Not all the males who read BL are straight, but some are. There are articles over it where straight males do read BL, most don’t read the ones with all the smut, but like the ones where plot is the main thing; like the Chinese yaoi novels.
                  Even if you don’t really believe it, it happens.

                      Dwarkin The score for BL novels on NU is one of the most corrupt things on the internet. They all have completely biased ratings... ALL

                      If you manage to find one with a rating below 4.0, then it must be the utter bottom of the barrel.

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                          Wolfick
                          I don’t fully trust reviews on NU cause some are biased on a few characters and when I read the story, I don’t see what they are seeing and feel like I’m reading a different story from them.
                          So I pay attention to the summary and tags. I’m actually picky on some novels from there and don’t understand the real popular ones.

                              RJMidnight Generally, anything 4.0 and over holds promise. If it is the type of novel you like, then you will most likely like it. Below 4.0 are those you will either love or hate. Below 3.5 is generally rubbish, but still appeals to some.

                              BL novels (Yaoi or Shonen AI) are an exception to this as people who like them, tend to like all of them, while those who don't simply don't read them and in turn leave all the voting to those who are biased toward the genre.

                                  Wolfick so it's like that - no wonder there were (and may be are) so many bl novels with rating 4.8+ whenever I tried to find something. Thanks to Qidian and WW, it's been years since when I tried to find a new novel through NU ranking list.

                                  RJMidnight may be I just was unlucky, but I remember a ton of excited reviews (from the "rotten women", I guess) about great plot and character development. It was the reason to try to read that novel 😂

                                        Wolfick
                                        I’m so-so on the ratings because I read a few with high ratings that was not for me or I couldn’t see how it was popular.

                                        Other than that, sometimes the rating on NU, I can agree with.

                                            RJMidnight I don't remember the name (it was at least 3-4 years ago), but I'm sure it was about "quick transmigration". The MC was bottom, and it was one of the novels with the highest rating on the whole NU, something around 4.9, AFAIR.
                                            I guess, there is a chance that it's still one of the top BL novels there😁

                                                9 months later

                                                My BL book has more male readers than female ones though 'Others' dominates with 50% of total. Is this normal?

                                                  DrAxy66 I also write BL novels and for a long time, my audience was mostly male. But now, I have almost double as many female readers than male.

                                                      beloved_writer I see, I was expecting more female viewers though but I guess the genre kind of mixed up with male-leading stories

                                                          Does it matter if your viewers are male or female? Also, I don's see any huge disparity between your readers. You've got a slightly bigger female audience. That's great. (You have Readers! Congrats!)

                                                          By the way, BL novels attract not only female readers. Their appeal depends on their focus. If we are talking about explicit romance novels with a lot of sexual scenes, then, yes, female readers are more likely to pick them up. But if a novel is plot-heavy and does not focus exclusively on the steamy relationship between two gorgeous dudes, it has a broader appeal. I'd say some BL works by Priest fall within this last category. Most people read them because of their mystery element and complex worldbuilding. Plus, there are gorgeous dudes, gorgeous ladies, bitter betrayals and political intrigue.

                                                            questions for the females here why do you like bl so much but its meet for guys just a random question from a 70 percent straight male

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