STR8UP said:
Alright kids, this has been simmering in the back of my mind for a long time now....
We NEED a movement. It might not be extremely well received TODAY, but you can be assured that in the future the pendulum will swing the other direction and it WILL take hold, trust me on this one.
Thats why I said Rollo's book might not be an instant hit, but in time I see it becoming an all time classic.
I have been contemplating writing something myself. Men today NEED guidance. Many seek it, but don't really know where to turn.
Rollo's style seems to be clinical with an emphasis on positive masculinity.
If I were to write something I would concentrate on a broader spectrum of what men need to know in todays world. From women, to money, to power.
Fact is, today the responsibility of becoming a man rests solely on the individual. There's no symbolic gesture, there's no such thing as the society turning a boy into a man. You're either born with it, you live with your situation, or you seek it out.
I would say that most of the guys here have had to seek out their manhood. I would be willing to be that there are millions of other guys out there who would be receptive to this type of information.
I've always wanted to do something with my passion (learning about male/female relations). Maybe I need to get on it.
No doubt, there's a definite need (and probably a definite market - albeit a niche market) for such a book. But good luck finding a publisher.
You'd better be prepared to self-publish or distribute it as an e-book. I doubt that your manuscript would be met with much enthusiasm by folks in the publishing industry. And although you may get conservative publishers to show some initial interest in the idea of a book that details "how to be a man" in today's society (especially one that attempts to counter societal wounds inflicted by extreme feminism), they would also probably expect such a book to promote "traditional" ideals of male behavior (i.e. "chivalry," A.K.A.: AFCism).
Publishing is, generally, a female centered (and female dominated) industry. And although there's an emerging literary genre known as "**** lit" (as opposed to "chick lit"), the focus of such books is generally drunkenness/debauchery --
Tucker Max ("I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell") and
Maddox are the authors that inspired the genre -- and the supposed indiscriminate horniness of young men. There's also a lot of interest in publishing books about "pick up" and PUA's (especially after the success of Neil Strauss and Mystery). But both of those genres ultimately exist because the women who, basically, run the industry (I'm speaking in vast generalities ... of course there are straight men in the publishing industry, but the industry is very chick centered) think that young guys will only read books if they're about sex and drinking. Any manuscript that contains the kinds of truths that are expressed on this forum would probably cause publishers to get their panties in a bunch.
As for the conservative publishers, it's true that some
are putting out books that are critical of the over-sexualization of modern American society, and of today's young women in particular (for example,
Carol Platt-Liebau's "Prude" and
Wendy Shalit' s "A Return to Modesty"and "
Girls Gone Mild"). But these books almost always serve to reinforce the old myth that women aren't/shouldn't be sexual by nature, and that there's nothing more sacred than marriage, etc. And although a lot of these books provide a valuable service by identifying a primary cause of the overall decline of today's young American woman (radical feminism), they usually encourage men to put women on pedestals and to act like total AFC's.
But, yeah, there's a need for books like the one you want to write.
BTW, there are a few books - although VERY few - that address
misandry and the devaluation/changing roles of males in modern American society.
Harvey Mansfield's "Manliness,", which received lots of attention last year, is well worth reading (and a pretty easy read for such a substantive book). Oh yeah ... and just for the record, I actually really liked
"I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell."
