Every year Pew Research polls the US public on its reading habits, and this year’s results published on 1st September show that Americans have neither sped up, nor slowed down on reading from last year.
The US reading habits for 2016 show that 73% of Americans read at least one book, up slightly from 72% last year, showing that more than one quarter of Americans have not opened a book in the last year.
Of the 73% of Americans who are reading, on average US bibliophiles are reading twelve books a year, and they do that in all formats. 65% of readers say they have read a print book this year, 28% have read an eBook and 14% have listened to an audio book, and it’s clear adding those figures together that readers enjoy literature across different formats, but it is great news for paper lovers as those figures have changed little since 2015.
In fact for those who worried that there would be a decline in print books may be surprised as reading printed books actually increased last year, while sales of eBooks declined slightly. However, these figures are complicated as adult colouring books are lumped in with this data and they have seen a boom this year.
Another figure to be taken into consideration is the self-pub figure, as the mainstream industry data only includes books from publishing houses, so while the Pew results collate public opinions, book sale figures come from publishing houses only.
I doubt very much any of our readers are part of the 27% of Americans who haven’t picked up a book in the last year, and chances are, most of you have pushed the average out!
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