"Searching for the male equivalent of chick lit, but ... frightened when they actually saw what it looked like."

How "fratire" found success:

Many of the books in the fratire genre began online, either organically or out of necessity because mainstream publishers would have nothing to do with them. [Tucker] Max said that despite receiving approximately 60,000 visitors daily at TuckerMax.com, he got "zero interest" when he initially pitched his book.

"Bro, when I say 'zero interest,' I mean zero," he said, taking another slug of beer.

Frank Kelly Rich, the 42-year-old editor of Modern Drunkard magazine and the author of the book "The Modern Drunkard," said that it took the Web to help fratire get around the hang-ups of mainstream publishing houses that professed to be searching for the male equivalent of chick lit, but which were frightened when they actually saw what it looked like.

"The publishing houses filtered out anything politically incorrect or offensive," he said. "It took the Internet to show them what was popular and now they're going after it. Before that, they would just guess."

Well, isn't it that mainstream publishing houses reject pornography, even though it's extremely popular? I don't get this accusation that mainstream publishers are clueless about what men want to read. Everyone knows pornography is popular. Aren't these publishing houses just looking at the big picture for them and seeing that they have to preserve some overall standards?

By the way, Max went to law school (University of Chicago and Duke).