How Many Books Do
People Read Per Year?
While
reading some 2012 research about
the rise of e-reading
I came across the following statistics: 78% of Americans aged over 16 years had
read a book in the past year. Of those 78% they read on average 17 books (mean)
or 8 books (median) in the previous year. Now if my maths is right that means that
if the 22 per cent who didn’t read books is added back in, than on average
Americans over 16 read 13.2 books (mean) and who knows what the median average might be. (Note: I changed this bit of the post because my maths was wrong.)
Last
year, I read only 13 books. So I only reached the mean average of books. As a writer I reckon I should be reading a lot more
than the average person reads in a year. (Note: I had a look for Aussie
statistics but could not find any – if only I was looking for stats on
something important like sport or beer drinking).
I
immediately thought up excuses for not reading much more than the average person.
Excuses like, I spend a lot of my reading time on newspapers. I write all day
(well occasionally) and I am therefore too-tired to read at night (I only read books
at night). I was frequently too tired to read because of illness. I read really
big books (well I do, one I am reading at the moment is 1450 pages).
Ebook Readers Read
More.
The
survey then divided those 78% of Americans into those who have read an ebook in
the past year and those who hadn’t. A person who had read an ebook in the past
year read on average 24 books (mean) or 13 (median). A person who had not read
an ebook read 15 (mean) or 6 (median).
So
does that mean that ebooks have lead to a lot more books being read? Not
necessarily. The article says that people who read ebooks are naturally bigger
readers of books anyway.
I
read ebooks, so last year I just made the median average, and was well under
the mean.
I Need to Read More.
This
year I have read 16 books (some of them have been really big too), so I am getting
closer to the ebook reader mean average.
Please
feel free to embarrass me by leaving a comment with details of the huge number
of books you read per year.
5 comments:
Sounds about right to me. If we read too much, we don't get any writing done.
I've got a young family too which takes up alot of my time, plus work. I'd be lucky to read 10.
Gillian Pollock, who I think judges the Aurealis awards, said on my twitter feed that she reads 300 books a year.
Are you serious? Then she can't have much of a life. I assume she doesn't work. I'd say she's probably talking shit.
And before Gillian is insulted, her surname is Polack.
I am pretty sure she teaches at a Canberra University. And she writes fantasy with a couple of novels published.
Makes you wonder what she does in her spare time doesn't it.
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