In reading this I'm reminded of an essay Joyce Carol Oates wrote about 19th century women's literature. Oates speculated that litterateurs such as Melville, Hawthorne & Irving disparaged the most popular authors of women's pulp fiction because they viewed them as competitors. When in reality, these women sold hundreds of times as many books as say Melville (who worked as a US Customs agent most of his life).

In short, "chick lit" might be more of a thing than literature directed at men, which would be what exactly? Mickey Spillane, Louis L'Amour, Raymond Chandler, or Charles Bukowski? It's hard to come up with a contemporary example—but the last two: Chandler didn't make big money till he started writing movies & Bukowski, echoing Melville, worked for the US Postal Service.

I'm willing to bet that Stephanie Meyer, has sold way, way more books than any of the above, at least in their lifetimes.

Extremely popular authors such as Stephen King or J.K. Rowling seem, so far as I can tell, popular among both sexes.