American's Reading Habits

According to a story in this morning's Seattle Times, a quarter of American adults have not read a book in the last 12 months! As outlined in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll published yesterday, the most avid readers were women and older Americans. The most popular types of books were popular fiction and religious works.

As a nation, we're not massive consumers of books. A 'typical' reader in the survey said that they read just 4 books during that past year. If you take out the respondents who said they'd not read a single book, those who claimed to have read, half read more than 4 and half read less and, over all, the typical number of books read in the last year by those who participated was 7.

Good god - and they procreate and vote.

As cited in The Associated Press story by Alan Fram, the 27% of Americans who hadn't read a book in that past year consist of 'older, less educated, lower income, minorities, from rural areas and less religious' adults - one third of men and one quarter of women make up that slice.

The article detail that those who do claim to read dozens of books a year tend to be 'from the West and Midwest...Southerners who do read, however, tend to read more books, mostly religious books and romance novels, than people from other regions. Whites read more than blacks and Hispanics, and those who said they never attend religious services read nearly twice as many as those who attend frequently... Democrats and liberals typically read slightly more books than Republicans and conservatives.'

1003 adults were surveyed, and the variance is plus or minus 3%.

What does it mean? Well, it is pretty easy to see why independant bookstores have a hard time, why most authors have a hard time making any kind of living from their writing, why the major publishers have gutted their lists of the mid-range authors - there is a good chunk of the population that isn't reading much - or at all - and that means fewer sales and less money for the book world to chase.

It would be nice if the study told us what percentage of the American populace reads, say, a dozen books a year or 20 books a year. Are they more than 27% ? If the typical interviewee read just 4 books a year... YESH

JB

Comments

[Ron Franscell]

Americans’ reading habits are just more evidence of our laziness, which seems to grow boundlessly. We prefer the simple, passive processes of information consumption, and are willing to sacrifice a little bit of imagination for the convenience. Our much-vaunted American obesity isn’t just physical, but it’s apparently intellectual and spiritual, as well. I blogged on this one, too, at http://underthenews.blogspot.com