Writers Tricks of the Trade Volume 5, Issue 6 | Page 19

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WHO IS READING BOOKS THESE DAYS (CONT’D)
In reviewing several years of Pew Research Center survey data, it appears there
has been little change in the share of adults consuming e-books or audio books.
The new survey does show a 10% increase of Americans who read an e-book in
the past 12 months – up to 27% from 17% in 2011. However, that figure isn’t
that much different than the size of the e-book reader population reported in a
Pew Research survey in 2014.
Audio book consumption has remained stable, with 12% of Americans saying
they listened to a book that way.
One surprising revelation according to the survey was a generational pattern in
book reading. Young adults – those ages 18 to 29 – are more likely than their
elders to have read a book in the past 12 months. Fully 80% of young adults read
a book, compared with 71% of those ages 30 to 49, 68% of those 50 to 64 and
69% of those 65 and older.

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Also, those most likely to be book readers included women; young adults (those
ages 18-29); those with higher levels of education and higher household income;
and whites. These patterns largely hold for overall book reading and for the
different reading platforms – printed books and e-books.
The average woman read 14 books in the past 12 months, or a little better than
one a month, compared with the nine books read by the average man, or a little
better than one-an-a-half times as many.
Those with higher levels of education were more likely to have read multiple
books than those with high school diplomas or less. The typical college graduate
or someone with an advanced degree read an average of 17 books in the
previous year, compared with nine for high school grads and three for those
who did not graduate from high school.

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Supporting the opinion of those who favor print books, maybe while they are
not immune to the constantly changing market due to technology, they will
weather the avalanche of digital books which continue to increase in numbers.
We previously featured some of the E-book subscription services, modeled on
companies like Netflix and Pandora, but some have struggled to convert book
lovers into digital binge readers, and some have shut down like the recent
closing of Oyster. Also, sales of e-reading devices have fallen because many
consumers migrated to tablets and smartphones.
Here is the real surprise, though. According to some surveys, young readers,
who are literally digital addicts, still prefer reading on paper.
Information in the referenced report is based on research funded in part by the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation, but do not necessarily reflect positions or policies of the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation.

WRITERS’ TRICKS OF THE TRADE

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NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2015