I’m biting the bullet and publicly admitting that I’ve started writing a book. Well, it’s non-fiction so really I’ve started writing a book proposal. The topic is to do with women, record collecting and deciphering the man who loves record collecting more than women.
I’ve scratched out most of my chapter summaries and today I started working on researching my book’s market. Holy crap did that open a black hole of Internet information! It seems that in the last 3 years everyone realized that a) women have a lot of money and/or decision making power about purchases in their household and b) marketing to “women” as one group will not get you hot shit.
So today I’ve read the blog of one of the authors of The Soccer Mom Myth, a study on women and non-fiction book purchases from 2007, and the Pew Internet Study about online influencers of music and electronic purchases. I’m certain that I can piece some handy marketing information from these proposals together but you know what I can’t find? Any sort of research into women and music consumption.
If you come across any links then comment but I wasn’t surprised that my various Google searches didn’t turn up any helpful results – there are no books on the topic of women and music consumption or collecting either, of the fictional or non-fictional variety. There are, however, several titles on the history of women in music and encouraging women to get into music or start a band. Not a one, though, telling women to criticize music or run a record label.
I also image Googled “record collection” and every photo on the first two pages of results that wasn’t a radio station or story about that old guy who’s selling his collection for $3M was some guy’s record collection. So I’ve posted a picture of my own CD collection on this site to try and even it out.
