Men have abandoned modern fiction in droves. Blame video games, movies, or social media if you must.

However, the real reason is simpler and more embarrassing for the publishing industry: its gatekeeping curators no longer recognise a 10 even when it’s standing in front of them, and the ongoing Sydney Sweeney denialism proves it.

Publishers want men back.

Yet, they refuse to do the very thing to get the male demographic back buying fiction.

It won’t happen until publishers stop gaslighting men into thinking the only books worth reading are exclusively female-centric, trauma-based, smut-adjacent, navel-gazing, introspective material and hire editors and find reviewers who can look at a Sydney Sweeney and honestly call a 10 a 10. Otherwise, that gap in trust will only widen.

Walk into any local bookstore, if they still exist, or your local library, if they still stock books, and you’ll see that 80 per cent of the books being pushed as ‘must reads’ are on the shortlist for the Stella Prize.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this in principle, as bookstores know their buyers, and at the end of the day, they need to keep their lights on.

However, a large vocal portion of these same curators have convinced themselves or have been convinced that Sydney Sweeney is ‘mid’ on a good day and objectively unattractive on the rest. While at the same time ignoring that she has the kind of look that would easily inspire Botticelli or Dali.

Really, spend five minutes on BookTok, BlueSky, or in your local writing group. People will look at you with a straight face and the deepest sincerity and disparage Sweeney because they found a picture of her without makeup, or they believe she has basic features, or she is all sex appeal and no substance.

The same group will then give a five-star glowing review to a 500-page novel about a middle-aged woman’s journey to finally find herself by abruptly leaving her family and starting a relationship abroad with a man half her age.

Likewise, to the quarterlife crisis novel featuring the Brooklynite-writer who suffers from ennui and can’t find a decent man because every guy is either a crypto-bro abuser or an emotionally unstable soy-boy, and she learns loving herself is all the love she needs.

When the people who choose what gets published, write the blurbs, stock the bookshop’s front table, and review the books in the weekend paper are also the ones dismissing an objectively attractive woman as ‘nothing special’ on mainstream social media platforms, men notice.

They then question these people’s ability to judge in other areas. If these content curators are so out of touch with objective standards of beauty and male sensibilities, how can men trust their book recommendations?

This isn’t political. However, until publishing stops demanding that men deny their lying eyes, stop believing that 400 pages of a 30-something’s Bumble disaster is high art, and requires that all must believe 2+2=5 as entrance to reading modern fiction, the exodus will only continue.