Poll: Do you prefer to read female or male protagonist stories?

I love a strong powerful woman 💪👩🏻

I am also wondering which gender is more popular. In fact i am gonna shorty pubblish my second story with a female leader and I am curios if he gonna do better than my first one with a male lead.

I enjoy what the author can write well and make a compelling story...so what sex the protagonist is doesn't particularly matter to me, nor their proclivities. I tend to prefer romance in my novels, especially when the MC is straight, but I know there are plenty of authors that can't or won't write that, and that's fine...so long as that's fairly obvious from the outset, like it is with your characters. I don't like real world politics getting involved in stories I'm reading, though...so I tend to avoid the ones that look like they could throw that into it.

Stories with females seems more thought out then male stories.

Je préfère the ones where they're not humans or very civilized, or some kind of higher being type thing

I tend to stick to female lead stories, but I will read a male one on occasion, only if the story hook is good enough. I'm not sure why I read female lead stories since im female I relate easier, but RR has female lead stories with little to no romance which is really hard to find so I read a lot of them there.

When I think about it, in general most stories I have read seem to have a male lead character. I do not enjoy harem themes, but I do like a strong group of side characters, especially if the second MC is female. I absolutely despise those "feminist" stories, where the whole thing is based on gender and not their personality. For your stories: I think I found Wolf of the Bloodmoon first on Kindle and soon after the first book of undying mage. Those two are still my favourite stories. For some reason I never got around reading your Pioneer of the Abyss story, maybe because I started Reaper shortly before that and those two characters felt very similar in the first few chapters, so I stuck to the first one (and quantum just sounds more interesting than deep sea, you gotta admit). With your stories I literally don't care about the gender, you have most as rather introvert but mindstrong base personalities, no matter if male or female. The rest is about their traits, abilities and skills. As long as it focuses on story (or level) progression or is an actually invested slice-of-life and proper personality development, I will most likely enjoy reading it. Thats why my all time old favourites are Terry Pratchett and Markus Heitz. On patreon it is close between He Who Hunts Monsters and Primal Hunter I suppose, my longest subscriptions. Oh and I am still mostly patiently waiting for your Dungeon Core story to continue as that one was a brilliant nod to The Divine Dungeon and I really look forward to where you will take yours. It is actually quite a decent example of what I mean with a strong female second MC. Meanwhile I started with the Google docs for Void Crowne and I rather enjoyed it. But as I am here, I didn't follow it on RR, while I did for your older stories for the ease of reading older chapters and getting to the next. Patreons UI sucks for long chapter lists. Maybe thats a part of those statistics too if there is a significant overlap between patreon and RR followers?

I am a major fan of The First Defier, and Randidly Ghosthound. I also love Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter series. Many male characters come off as absolute morons. Like the author is looking at how they think a Man should look from a ten year olds perspective.

I read almost exclusively female protagonist stories but if the story seems interesting enough (like your winter wolf) I will read male stories.

I like reading Female POV because I feel it’s not used as often for these toes of stories, but it’s also usually more interesting to see things from their POV regardless.

I do find myself reading a lot of different genres and styles and so on. Female lead are probably around 60% maybe 70. But I don't really care what the lead is, as long as there is not this "classical" harem boy running around dumb as a rock and with 0 self reflection abilities or even the ability to change what they are lacking.

Female mc if single no romanceor yuri if there romance don’t like reading female with straight romance. It is enjoyable to read female mc action and most male mc they always go harem and I hate harem.

do a lgbt+ story and boom you will gain a whole new following of people

Personally I think the way you start the series is different for each gender and that makes me less likely to read. Of your books I have enjoyed all of them except calling of wrath and void crowne and I think the fault lies more in the hook to the story than the gender of the MC. My guess for the difference between amazon and RR is that people on RR are more used to strong hooks and browsing dozens of stories a day so when your story does not start super strong right out of the gate they quickly give up while people on amazon are more likely to give you enough time to get them invested. The way VC started felt too slow and was not enough to keep me invested so just changing the speed of the first few chapters might have an effect on readership.

Personally I think you should stick to female protagonists because if you do male I WILL expect romance. Edit: just for your information, that wasn’t a suggestion it was an opinion and rule I set for myself. If you don’t do romance in a male protagonist story I will not support or read it.

I’ve just been waiting for more chapter backlog on void crown

I wouldn't care if it (to me at least) didn't seem common for an emphasis to be placed on the fact the MC is female. Kinda like another user said, male, female, bot, blob, as long as it's compelling and im not reminded every second paragraph of what they are. Almost as annoying as the opposite gender of the author being written as just props.

A loaded query certainly. I have to wonder if the statistics you are referencing imply more about the specific audience you have cultivated rather than overall trends in the genre. Seeing as your results on RR don't match Amazon and considering the ratio of FMC to MMC books you have released, I would assume the former, at least initially.

Im transfem. Female protagonist stories hit better for me. I struggle to empathize with the male protagonists given just how strongly i feel about masculinity in general.

I tend to favour female MCs after too many novels where the male MC dominates everything by sheer force of personality. I haven't even started Void Crowne for an entirely different reason: the blurb sounds utterly generic. I can summarise the key takeaways in one fairly short sentence: Hungry guy joins System war.

I only read female lead books, the male protagonist books I'm not as big a fan of. Plus Yuri is good

I prefer female lead and have read almost all your female leads except Abyss and Wrath. If I had to pick, favorites being Reapers Resurgence and Crimson Eternal. Male leads don’t interest me as much but I enjoy your writing a lot so I will probably read them eventually.

Void crowne is actually the first male protagonist story from you that I'm reading and I'm loving it. I only started following you with crimson and unless I'm mistaken you only published novels with female characters since. Will give a try to your other male protagonist story's :) I'm male btw

Personally I judge the works by the story and not the lead characters… they are just another character in the story and it does not matter what gender they happen to be. On royalroad I give the author ten chapters and if they have not hooked me on something by then I move on.

I don’t care about the gender as long as the story has no plot holes and the characters are well enough written. I am also reading your books on Patreon and the ones I really like I buy on Amazon if they get published. If it helps, I can say what I don’t like: - Capable Protagonists who suddenly turn dump for no reasons - Real life Politics mixed into the story - Protagonists who get everything handled to them on a silver platter I can’t remember anything of the stuff I disliked in your stories as far as I read them. Two more things, first of all you have many stories so some people maybe focusing only on one or two. I focused on blood moon and Aria. Second I didn’t read all your stories, but sometimes writers tend to have a pattern in their stories that always repeats. Some people like this, some don’t like it at all. As a suggestion you should check your stories if they fallow the same pattern. That could be something you might try to change in a new story and gauge the reactions.

Anything done well.

At the bottom of the barrel, like free sites RR or SH Female protagonists tend to do better simply because there’s a massive amount of really crap cringey harem SI garbage in those spaces that people don’t wanna wade through. Raise the bar a little and the demographic changes.

I prefer male, but I think it's more to do with characteristics depicted and perspective. For example of perspective, if it's from a first-person POV, I don't connect with the female POV. But if it is 3rd person, I'm fine with it because I'm observing a reaction from the female character.

Don’t care about the gender more that they are well written. A lot of the time, but not always that tends to be the same gender as the author.

For your book I prefer the female characters I feel they are better written but I will read both in a more general terms I don’t really have a preference

I read primarily lesfic unless the story is interesting enough and has a fmc with no romance subplot.

I don't really mind. I have in the past tended more towards FMC but read both probably almost equally. Lately I have tended away from FMC slightly but only because they are all starting to feel the same in LitRPG with similar tropes and character directions constantly making things more boring.

I like both, though I have issues either way. Certain trends that sour me whichever is chosen, that honestly boil down to romance choices and depictions made by some authors the more I sit down and think about it. For Male MCs, it is usually harem garbage or their female love interests failing to provide more than "love interest" in their story contribution. For Female MCs they usually sidestep harems and the like, but then a lot of authors seem to assume that since their Female MC is tough and powerful, that automatically means she is gay. She is a strong independant woman, so obviously that means she scorns dudes and bangs chicks. Kind of a pet peeve of mine since once I started noticing it I couldn't STOP noticing it. And you STILL end up with a similar issue to Male MCs where the romance interest contributes "being pretty/handsome and possibly rich" and fuck all else.

Personally i only really read male protags for the reason you listed above. Im loving void crowne i binged basically all of it yesterday and im a huge fan of rise of the winter wolf. I definitely have a preference for non human mcs like dragons, vampires etc. as well but it’s hard to find good ones for that

I like and read both, although whether or not I stay with them depends on their relationships and how well they are written. If a male mc ends up with a harem or bunch of love interests unearned I tend to check out. If a female mc has asshole or overly assertive or unrealistic love interests i dislike that too. It all depends. And of course the plot has to be good lol

This is very interesting. I usually read male protagonist stories because the kind of stories I prefer have male protagonists. I enjoyed Wolf of the Blood Moon immensely because it was my kind of story. Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson is one of my favourites. Also enjoying The Wandering Inn immensely. So for me right now, the gender of the protagonist is not an issue. Maybe it was when I was younger? Or maybe I didn't find those books when I was younger. I don't know. I just know that now, I need an MC who feels authentic and the story has to be my type.

Personally I read both. But I like the female protagonists more. I also just find the fact your characters arent into romance refreshing at times. Cause I can *see* at times where other writers would have formed a harem or made someone a love interest

I'll read anything, I don't judge a book by the protagonists gender, race, or species. Never even occurred to me to do so til I read this... I do prefer woman protagonists though (opposite gender to myself), especially cause they're typically badass.

I happily read both, but I prefer a mix. For example, I think 4 of your ongoing stories are female lead (Death, Wrath, Reaper, and #MinerAqua), and 2 are male (Winter/Rain guy, and Void Crowne)? Would be a bit boring if you had 6 stories, all women. It would be too easy for them to seem samey

I don't really have a preference and read both. More important for me is that the MC needs to be believable in both logic and emotion. However there is a much higher ask for powerful female MC, maybe because of emancipation?

Personally, I don't care about the gender of the protagonist, and I've read and enjoyed all your stories (some more than others). That being said, I've noticed stories with male MCs are more likely to feature elements that I personally dislike but that are popular, like action-focused stories, harem elements, etc... So most of my favorite stories feature female or nongendered MCs

As a girl and then woman who loved sci fi and fantasy, I had to enjoy stories with male protagonists as well as female. I prefer a well written male protagonist story more than a caricature female protagonist every time. But I do really enjoy seeing stories with different types of protagonists. I especially enjoy the well written unusual protagonist. The female protagonist that goes against type to be more brutish than clever. The male protagonist more sensitive saint than muscled hero. One manga author mentioned that the stories he wanted to write were unpopular until he took the protagonist he defaulted to, then switched a couple of those "obvious" traits to their opposite. Maybe the sensitive hero is huge, or the brutish berserker is usually soft spoken and polite. It was when he did that with a protagonist that he created a popular series.

I have never cared about their gender for any genre. If it is a good book that I am interested in reading, it will get the same amount of attention as I give any other book. When I am interested in a book I will read it so much it is a problem Edit: maybe this says something about me but I have read all kinds of romance and gender has not mattered there either

I think Luna (writer of the Albright system on RR) said it best when he said that in terms of RR : FMC is where character stories go, Male Lead stories are almost exclusively numbers go brrr, brain-off slop, barring the very few outliers. If you want to write a character story, it has to be FMC or you are actively kneecapping yourself, because character story readers search for FMC, and the people looking for number go up stories read MMC, so neither of those audiences will find your work.

I think it depends on how well the author can write from that protagonists perspective. I enjoy reading your stories, regardless of the protagonists gender.

Male, female, dungeon core, non-binary, AI, or even a weird little blob with questinable food preferences is all good with me! As long as the story is good, I'm going to binge it lmao.

I prefer Female MCs, mostly because the Male MCs I keep finding are ‘cringe’ in some way and properly other things. I don’t know about your Male MCs stories as I haven’t gotten the time to read them, including your newest one.

I use to read and listen to a lot of books but they are all male and there isn’t a lot of female lead books in this type of genre and I enjoy it more