Yeah, definitely. That was even on special request by her publisher, since young boys tend not to read YA fiction by women in as high of numbers even when they're the target audience for the book.
That's sad, that such attitudes still exist.
I have to wonder, though -- is that really the case, or is it just an artificial rule that marketers assume to be the case? In the toy industry, there's this long-standing prejudice that girls aren't interested in action toys and that boys won't buy female action figures, but if you talk to actual kids, you find it isn't true -- it's a myth that the marketers created and imposed on the industry, often to the frustration of the actual children who'd welcome more flexibility.
You know, I'm not actually sure. It does look like males are already
a small segment of the YA book demos in general as it stands (that chart taken from
a presentation at the Bologna Children's Book Fair in 2013), but I can't find any actual crosstabs based on either age or author's gender to back up the claim. From the same presentation, it also looks like
teen boys are just less interested in books in general than teen girls overall.
Whether or not
Christopher is correct regarding the theory of simple inertia and assumption, regardless of children's actual tendencies (a theory which has merit), the idea of young male readers being potentially put off by a female name isn't too surprising. Growing into manhood is a transition that involves, essentially, the establishment of a distinct conceptual space in order to make a claim at societal worth - an answer to the defining question for all tribal beings: what do you bring to the social group? The answer for a female is obvious; indeed all additional forms of social worth in females have long been considered secondary (with varying degrees on how all-consuming and inflexibly defining the "reproductive bottleneck" identity is). The answer for a male involves finding something to do or to be, ideally something that the womb-bearer can't or isn't as suited for, something that differentiates himself, because males don't have inherent worth to the tribe. In many cultures, boys passing an initiation are physically separated from the rest of the group, to assume a new role and space; a physical distancing alongside a conceptual one. To simplify somewhat, you don't have to be told how to be a woman - biology alone handles that. You do have to be told how to be a man. The idea that boys might, as a rule general enough to have an observable effect on choice of authors, be leery of taking such instruction from a non-man shouldn't be surprising. Make no mistake, what a child is doing when they read is growing into their later identity, and like selecting subjects of study in the later years of school there
will be consequences if you choose the wrong path. On that point, there's the fact that societies in general, unsurprising given their utilitarian needs and insecurities, are leery of loosening the parameters of the traditional male roles when compared to the female, as without the ability to exploit or shame a standard of manhood a society's capacity to keep itself laboured and its institutions functioning in the manner to which it has become accustomed is curtailed. The possible need for boys to differentiate into an established and unquestioningly male identity (to whatever degree it is innate and/or a consequence of adaptation to inevitable societal pressures - pressures that are going to be there whatever certain people claim they dislike differentiated gender roles or not*) is analogous in some way to the need of a youth of either sex to break away from their parents and assert their own identity. If a boy is not pushing away from the female, he cannot differentiate from it, and thus cannot be of use to, or attractive to, the feminine or society as a whole. And despite the claims of ideologues, society - including, 9 times out of 10, those very ideologues -
will be judging him on this, because it's how the tribal model works. To whatever degree the boys-women writers thing is a factor, it isn't surprising.
* It doesn't matter how much Literature students natter on about the contributions to the culture, etc., if it doesn't help you find a job and make a wage, it's a poor choice even if you quite like studying Literature.
As for names, authors in many genres adopt either the other sex or androgynous names to suit the genre and its intended audience, and even if we assume that there is no "boys leery of women writers" effect (a potentially big if), adventure stories, thrillers, etc., fall on the "male" side of the stereotypical line - again, whether actual interest or readership reflects that (I suspect, particularly among children and based on my own experiences with them, the divide isn't
that much in evidence.).
As a possible point of interest building on the body of my post up there, I've also seen what I might even call a clumsy and largely ideology-driven effort to encourage boys to show interest in "girly" things; I distrust this and find it counter-productive, since it always locates "the problem" within boys and not within everyone's later expectations and demands on them, and so can be considered, in my mind, borderline abusive, even when it isn't accompanied by tiresome attempts at demonization.
Children will like what they like, and saying that they are Wrong, Wrong, Wrong for doing so - whether it's because they're not being stereotypical or because they are being stereotypical, is not, in my mind, to be at all encouraged.
As a final note, since her name came up, I miss Heather Jarman. Among her many contributions, she defined the Nasat, lest we forget. P8 Blue is rather a role-model of mine, really, come to think of it, and it's because of what Jarman did with her.
. Autocorrection is my best friend.
