Or: How publishing created a generation of boys who think books aren't for them
I was in Waterstones at the weekend, checking out the competition in the Middle Grade section, when I overheard a conversation between a teenage boy and his mum.
Mum: Do you want anything?
Boy: No.
Mum: Sure?
Boy: Nothing I like.
He had been looking and now wore a slightly defeated expression. He clearly wanted something to read. He had probably devoured Harry Potter when he was younger, maybe even Percy Jackson. But now?
We keep hearing that teenage boys have stopped reading, that there's a literacy crisis among young men. But what if we've got this backwards? What if teenage boys haven't abandoned books — what if books have abandoned teenage boys?
The desperate search
Author and commissioning editor, Kesia Lupo, recently wrote a great Substack about the state of YA publishing, and the response in the comments was telling.
“I've been wondering what to recommend teen boys lately and it's so hard not to fall back on Alex Rider/Harry Potter etc.”
“My 13 year boy LOVES to read. Will there be many options for him at 14, 15, 16? Is this widening the gap between MG and New Adult/Crossover. Where will he jump to next?”
Lupo even admits that while there are some good books, “...there isn’t much in this space - we need to do better!”
The great disappearing act
Walk into any bookshop and spend ten minutes in the Young Adult section. Count how many covers would genuinely appeal to a fifteen-year-old lad. I'll wait.
The shelves are packed with books, certainly. Beautiful covers featuring swooning couples, intricate fantasy worlds populated by fierce heroines, contemporary stories about finding yourself and first love. All perfectly valid, all serving their readers well. But for a teenage boy looking for something that speaks to him? The pickings are remarkably slim.
This wasn't always the case. When I think what I grew up with:
The Tripods trilogy (John Christopher), The Machine Gunners (Robert Westall), Kes (Barry Hines), The Owl Service (Alan Garner), Thunder and Lightnings (Jan Mark). I could go on and on. These were books that didn't shy away from the particular intensity of being a teenage boy — the confusion, the anger, the desperate need to prove yourself, the way everything feels simultaneously too much and not enough.
Following the money (and missing the point)
The publishing industry, like any business, follows successful trends. When Twilight exploded, everyone wanted the next paranormal romance. When The Hunger Games conquered the world, dystopian fiction flooded the market. Most recently, “romantasy” has become the golden child — and fair enough, it's selling well.
But when an entire industry pivots toward one demographic, others get left behind. And teenage boys, already fighting the cultural message that reading isn't particularly masculine, have found themselves with fewer and fewer options that feel relevant to their lives.
The irony is crushing. At precisely the moment when boys are figuring out who they are and what kind of men they want to become, the stories available to them have largely moved on to other concerns.
What boys are actually reading (when they can find it)
The appetite is still there — it's just being satisfied elsewhere. They're working through older books, often the same titles their fathers read. They're consuming stories through video games, podcasts, and YouTube videos. They haven't stopped wanting narratives — they've just stopped finding them in the YA section of Waterstones.
When publishers do get it right, boys respond. The Maze Runner found its audience. Ready Player One connected with young male readers. Six of Crows proved that boys will read books with strong female characters — when those characters exist in worlds that feel expansive rather than exclusively focused on romance.
But these successes feel like accidents rather than intentional publishing strategies.
The ripple effect
The real tragedy is that boys who stop reading at fourteen rarely pick it up again as adults. We're not just talking about missing out on a few years of teenage reading, we're talking about creating a generation of men who think books aren't for them.
This has consequences beyond individual literacy. It affects empathy, critical thinking, and the ability to engage with complex ideas. It shapes how men understand themselves and relate to others. And it perpetuates the very gender divide that makes reading seem “feminine” in the first place.
What we're missing
Those frustrated comments reveal what teenage boys actually need: stories that acknowledge their reality. They need books about friendship that goes deeper than banter, about failure and recovery, about the weight of expectations and the fear of not measuring up. They need adventure that isn't just physical but emotional and intellectual.
They need protagonists who aren't perfect, who make mistakes and live with consequences. They need stories that take their anger seriously without excusing it, that explore what courage actually looks like when you're sixteen and everything feels impossible.
These stories exist — but they're increasingly rare in a market that's decided teenage boys aren't worth pursuing.
The way forward
The solution isn't some zero-sum course correction to publish fewer books for girls or to dial back on diversity. The publishing world is big enough for everyone. But it does mean recognising that teenage boys represent a massively underserved market, and that serving them well requires understanding what they're actually looking for.
There should be shelves full of brilliant, contemporary stories that speak to teenage boys' experiences.
It means commissioning books that acknowledge the particular challenges of growing up male without defaulting to tired stereotypes about sports and explosions. It means recognising that boys, like girls, want to see themselves reflected in complex, thoughtful stories.
The thirteen-year-old boy wandering that bookshop isn't asking for much. He just wants to find a story that feels like it was written for someone like him. That shouldn't be too much to ask.