My current “to read” stack from Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park and Gramercy Books in Columbus.

As an aspiring author, I made a resolution at the start of this year to read more. In particular, I wanted to read more fiction, having overdosed in the non-fiction political aisle over the previous four years. Emboldened by my additional free time during COVID, I set a fairly ambitious goal I call “52 in 21”—to read 52 novels, one per week, in 2021.

I’m pleased to say, I have reached the halfway point toward that goal—26 books read so far. Unfortunately, I didn’t hit that milestone until the end of August. With only 4 months left in the year, I’m pacing about 8 books behind schedule. (To see what I’ve read, share titles, and read my reviews, connect with me on Goodreads!)

As I hunker down with my “to read” stack in an effort to close that gap, I realize that I’m already an outlier in my book consumption. Most of us don’t read much at all. According to a 2019 survey by Pew Research, 28% of American adults admit they have not read any books in the past year. Zero. Although this may have improved during COVID, it is a significant deterioration from the 19% who read no books in 2011.

When you slice it by demographic, our book reading achievements are even more pathetic. Though I hate to admit it, Pew's survey showed men read less than women—only 68% of men crack the spine of a single book in a year, vs 77% of women. The numbers are worse for lower income, older, and rural Americans. But the biggest determinant of reading is education level—only 45% of people without a high school degree read any book of any kind in any format in a year. And that's a self-reported number—meaning the reality is likely much worse.

If about a quarter of the population reads nothing in a given year, how are the rest of us doing? Pew's survey found that the median American reads only 4 books in a year. So . . . not much better. The average (mean) number of books read in a given year is 12—one per month. But with such a discrepancy between the median and the mean, it is clear one book per month is not a “typical” reader. That average is pulled up by a small number of so-called “whale readers” at the opposite end of the spectrum, who read at least one book per week—right at my goal. So I guess you could say my goal this year was to be a whale, in the literary sense, hopefully not the BMI sense.

Of course, the biggest challenge to reading more is finding the time. If you assume it takes about 8 hours for the average reader to finish a 300-page novel, then you need to find one full working day worth of time per week to become a whale reader. Not easy to do. I’ve been able to carve out some additional time by reducing my TV and online time, but the biggest boost to my reading has been new formats.

E-books and audiobooks have enabled me to find little windows of time to make progress on my book stack—popping open my phone while waiting at the carwash or at school pick-up; plugging in an audiobook while I'm driving my son to soccer or exercising. Even though, like most people, I prefer a physical book, it’s hard to read while you’re running, not to mention dangerous. At least half my reading progress this year has been one of these other formats. Almost 20% of Americans have listened to an audiobook in the last year, up from only 11% a decade ago. And 25% have read an e-book, up from 17% in 2011 (though down slightly over the last few years). And while whales may love their e-readers and Kindle Unlimited subscriptions, most of us are reading e-books on our phones or tablets—with their nearby temptations of games, social media, and Netflix to pull you away from that novel.

The net is that even though these new formats have grown, they are not nearly enough to stem the overall decline in reading that has been such a boat anchor to the publishing industry. Overall book sales in the US have been declining 3% per year on average. The entire global market for fiction books is expected to drop to only $12.2 billion in 2021. To put that number in perspective, Google—just that one company alone—makes more revenue in a single month than the total revenue worldwide for fiction books in a year. Depressing.

These market trends raise an interesting question: which market is bigger? The revenue from readers (i.e. traditional publishing revenue) or the revenue from writers (i.e. authors paying for everything from proofreaders to publicists). With the explosion of self-publishing and cottage industries catering to aspiring writers like myself, I suspect more money is generated by the latter. But I’ll speculate more on that in a future post. I have a stack of books to get back to.

Reading in America