AMERICAN READERS

As a writer I thought it might be interesting to get an overview of what my fellow Americans are reading. The first statistic is that 24% of Americans haven’t read a book or play in a year. Most of these folks are low-income workers, high school equivalent or less, or immigrant Latinos who can’t afford the money or the time for books. Gutenberg must be writhing in his grave. Of the remainder, only 30% buy their books from brick-and-mortar bookstores. Older classics like Tolstoy’s War and Peace or Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers are seldom seen in bookstores. These tomes are well over 1,000 pages and take up too much space on bookstore shelves. The rest of us buy our books online. Electronic books are popular, and 28% of us own an e-reader device, although the demand for print books is coming back.
Most Americans don’t read fiction, but younger people and women do. The Holy Bible has always been a best seller, but no one dares to classify it as either fiction or not. Men tend to read non-fiction and biographies, tales of travel or discovery are popular.
Fiction, primarily novels, is characterized by genre or sub-genre such as Chicklit, Westerns, and at least seventeen others. The most popular are Fantasy e.g. J.R. Tolkian’s Lord of the Rings, Sci-fi e.g. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling, Children’s Fiction e.g. other Harry Potter books, Suspense-Thriller e.g. The Davinci Code by Dan Brown, and Romance e.g. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James. The Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer is popular with young women.
Poetry is not a big seller, however a surprising number of small presses offer volumes of verse.
Having considered all of the above, I might decide to take up rock climbing or skydiving.