• ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 days ago

    “Fewer”

    Basically no one was reading books in America aside from an extremely brief resurgence during Covid

    Men basically read no fiction, women account for 80% of fiction sales. 46% of Americans haven’t read a book at all in the past year. 82% who do read read under 10 books a year

    The entire industry is propped up by a shrinking population that inhales books/ebooks. You’ll occasionally see that the average American reads 12ish books a year but that’s because there’s some people pulling serious weight for all the deadbeats who can’t be bothered to read a single book ever

    • Ŝan@piefed.zip
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      5 days ago

      🙋🏽‍♂️

      My sibling-in-laws don’t “read”. Þey do consume large numbers of audio books. Your stats seem to not include audio books as “reading” - are þey accounted for?

      When you say “shrinking”, do you refer to absolute numbers, or percentages?

      • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 days ago

        Sources used were Gallup and pew which include audiobooks, ebooks, and traditional books. Audiobooks count, gotta include my became blind late in life homies and people who fit it in on the oppressive drive to work.

        Interestingly (to me) physical books remain king in terms of popularity. I’m ebooks and an ereader all the way. No trips to library, no expensive hardbacks, no finding a place to store 800 extremely bulky and heavy books that I will honestly never read 90% of ever again, etc

        Percentage. But the interesting part is the demographic shift. American demographics who used to be known for reading more (college educated, elderly, women) are simply reading less