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View submission: Where Is All the Sad Boy Literature?
The publishing world tried "sad boy lit" a while ago. It was given the genre title of "ladlit" and authors like Nicholas Hornsby of High fidelity and About a boy fame wrote some good books.
Mathew Norman has a number of really good stories. We are all Damaged is a wonderful story about a guy going through the aftermath of a break up and he acts badly to get through and grow. Not on purpose but because that's where his emotions him until he has healed enough to see himself.
Right now publishers are not interested in new Ladlit authors. It has been my experience that if you want "male centric emotional fiction" you have to look to the self publishing world. And in particular romance novels for men. There is a whole subreddit r/romance_for_men where this stuff can be found.
Like most romance literature it's a mixed bag. They may be cringy to the general public. (Romance usually is) And the covers by and large are probably cringy, but at its core the stories are addressing male emotional needs. (And like all authors some do it better than others).
But the literature and writing *is out there,* and people are reading it, though it may not look like what you expect from literature (litrpg perhaps). Ita simply that the big 5 publishers are just not interested in it.
There's nothing here!