
Rumors of the Demise of Books Greatly Exaggerated - samclemens
http://www.gallup.com/poll/201644/rumors-demise-books-greatly-exaggerated.aspx
======
gnicholas
I was struck by the first line: _" 35% say they read more than 11 books in the
past year"_

It turns out my surprise was warranted — this is the number of books that
respondents _started reading_ during the year. It doesn't mean they finished
any of the books.

From the linked survey: _During the past year, how many books did you read,
either all or part of the way through?_

Setting aside the question of self-reporting bias, this is a material omission
from the article. Putting this as one of the "highlights" at the top is very
misleading. I think "read more than X books" is generally considered to refer
to the number of books finished, or at least substantially completed.

~~~
bigtunacan
I don't find it to be a surprisingly high number. I wouldn't consider myself
an avid reader; these days though I try to track everything I read on
Goodreads. This lets me get recommendations for other things I might like, but
more importantly serves as a reminder of things I have read in the past so I
don't re-read the same thing, or can locate and refer back to something I read
in the past in the case of non-fiction materials.

According to Goodreads I completed 10 books in 2016 and read roughly 3500
pages.

~~~
gnicholas
I'm not surprised that there are some people who read this much, but 1/3 is
not in line with other statistics I've seen.

According to a literacy foundation, 45 million adults, or roughly 20% of the
US adult population, are functionally illiterate (read below a 5th grade
level), and in another survey 44% of US adults said they did not read a single
book in a year [1].

I work in literacy and see stats like this regularly. I've never seen anything
indicating that 1 in 3 US adults reads (and finishes) a book nearly every
month. I am even a little surprised that 1/3 report starting at least 11 books
a year, based on the basic illiteracy facts I've seen elsewhere. I'm certainly
interested to see if anyone has seen other relevant stats.

1:
[http://literacyprojectfoundation.org/community/statistics/](http://literacyprojectfoundation.org/community/statistics/)

~~~
philipkglass
1/3 surprised me too, but the stats you cite don't say anything about the
people who _do_ read regularly, only those who don't. They don't say anything
about the whole distribution. Lots of activities have skewed distributions
where a particular individual is more likely to do something often or very
rarely than once-in-a-while.

~~~
gnicholas
That's right—illiteracy stats typically focus on that end of the spectrum.

My point was that if it's true that 44% of American adults don't finish a book
in a year, it would be very surprising if 35% read 11+ books a year. That
would be a shockingly bimodal distribution, at least to me.

~~~
philipkglass
On re-reading both sources, the more direct contradiction is that Gallup says
that 16% of Americans read 0 books per year and the Literacy Project
Foundation says 44%. The Literacy Project Foundation unfortunately cites names
for the stats at the bottom of the page but does not link numbers to specific
reports those numbers came from, so I can't dig further into the discrepancy.

~~~
gnicholas
It's actually not a contradiction — they just have different definitions of
"read a book." If both are true, then it means that 84% of Americans started
reading a book, but that only 56% finished at least one.

But yes, it would be good if the Literacy Project Foundation linked to
publicly-available sources.

------
sharkweek
I think books, actual physical copies, will see a resurgence as more people
recognize how difficult it is for the human brain to handle the constant
firehouse of information the digital age overwhelms us with.

Books are often times consumed at a leisurely pace, typically don't feel like
a bombardment of spastic information, and offer a sense of accomplishment
after completion. They let the mind explore, they make us think, they make us
feel all sorts of emotions, but all at a far more reasonable pace.

I have the hardest time imagining that the constant stream of news and social
updates modern technology provides is actually healthy for us, I simply can't
imagine we've evolved fast enough to keep up.

~~~
ng12
> actual physical copies

What does that have to do with anything? I agree with the rest of your post,
and I actually think that's magnified by my Kindle since I always carry it
with me so I can zone out on the subway or during lunch.

~~~
sharkweek
I think the point I was suggesting was that actual physical books will have a
sudden appeal versus any technology at all. E-readers are pretty great, but my
guess is people will turn back to physical books as an act of escapism from
holding a tech device.

~~~
lb1lf
I think you are onto something. I work in tech and am a recovering gadget
addict; my hobbies (notably photography and ham radio) includes lotsa tech,
too.

Picking up a book (of the dead trees variety, not on my Kindle) makes me
relax, free from interruptions. (When I sit down to read, I leave my phone in
another room).

A quiet, interruption-free hour in the company of a good book works wonders
for my well-being. (I then run back to my phone to see what I've missed, alas)

~~~
MontanaBrown
Eh, I enjoy a physical book (especially the smell of one), but it's easier for
me to read on the kindle as I get older, since I have the backlit one, I don't
even need to be in a heavy lighted area. Even in bed, if I have a physical
book, I have to get additional lighting on my book (hook light on bed frame)
as the light above the bed is shadowed by the book itself when I'm sitting
back in bed. The back lighting itself is a large part of the appeal, to be
honest.

~~~
lb1lf
>The back lighting itself is a large part of the appeal, to be honest.

That is understandable. Personally, I still love my (non-backlit, but with an
integrated reading light in the cover) Kindle; however, I suspect this is in
large part because I spend the better part of my workday staring at a backlit
display and so would do just about anything to avoid having to do so on my
time off.

My wife got a backlit one for Christmas and now call me a luddite for sticking
with my backlit-less one.

Imagine being called a luddite for using a thingy with a 3G modem in it... :-)

------
DelaneyM
"Books" is also not a static category.

Just like the way we consume movies has changed to adapt to technology and
taste (3D, lux theatres, etc.), the book business has innovated as well.

Amazon is printing books at the edge for rapid delivery, printing presses are
featuring 4800+ DPI films and 1200 DPI standard text, old companies are
embracing what it means to be enhance the reading experience and promote
emerging authors (I'm biased, but check out:
[http://www.bookofthemonth.com](http://www.bookofthemonth.com) as an example.)

------
Koshkin
10-pound textbooks should definitely go.

To be honest, I have a hard time singling out the kind of book that cannot be
adequately (and attractively) represented in a digital format.

Being able to zoom images/diagrams in and out, search, translate, etc. all
seem like a big thing.

~~~
canadian_voter
Well the market apparently disagrees with you. Ebook growth is flat or
falling. People buy 5 traditional books for every ebook sold.

Ebooks have their place. People tell me they like to take them on vacation as
backup. I figure half our customers have dedicated ebook readers, and almost
all of them have devices that have the capacity to read ebooks.

Yet our sales are up, and we're hiring.

I'll switch to ebooks when Soylent becomes the primary source of calories in
this country. In the meantime I have a nice organic salad to eat and a stack
of books to read.

Source: I own a bookstore.

~~~
lb1lf
My experience echo the trend you describe above. I have a Kindle. Love it to
bits; it has replaced all the paperbacks I used to buy when traveling (Which I
do. A lot.) Can't be beat for its compact size and instant gratification -
within seconds of deciding I'd like a new book, it is downloaded.

Absolutely terrible for anything but clean text, though - add illustrations to
the mix, and it looks like it is rendered without any thought given to
aesthetics whatsoever. Most photos are just greyish muddles which had better
been left out.

However, one (unexpected) change occurred after I'd had the Kindle for a while
- I realized how much I missed holding an actual book while reading. During
the six or so years since I bought my Kindle, I've bought (and mostly read!)
3-400 books; most of them hard covers and quite a lot from what one could call
the anti-Kindle - publishers like The Folio Society.

(For those not familiar with it - they go the extra mile to make every title
they publish a small piece of art - good paper, proper smyth sewn bindings,
more often than not an illustrator is commissioned, slipcases - still
surprisingly affordable, at least to someone from Norway _)

_ ) Norwegian bibliophiles suffer from the fact that just about every
bookstore is owned by one of the larger publishing houses - guess what that
does to prices; a new novel costs some US$45-50 on release. They even got a
law enacted which makes it a crime to sell a book at too deep a discount!

~~~
canadian_voter
The Folio Society, Franklin Library, Limited Editions Club and other very nice
editions are super popular. We'd sell more, but some people are shocked at the
thought of paying $30-$80 for a single (second-hand) book.

Some people are satisfied with video games about trains. Other people build
model railways. Points on both sides really. :)

(And some people go nuts and buy actual trains, but that's another story and a
whole different price point.)

------
wu-ikkyu
I'm not surprised ebooks still haven't taken over the printed book in
popularity, considering the purposefully horrid user experience of most/all
ebooks. As it stands ebooks are still constrained by the mores of the age of
the printing press, namely the prohibition of copy/paste which is one of the
primary advantages to digitizing information.

~~~
burkaman
What ereader does not allow copy/paste? I don't think I've ever run into that.

~~~
valine
Both kindle and iBooks have their own implementation of copy paste that
prevents you from copying too much at a time, and auto inserts citations into
your clipboard. The kindle copy functionality feels particularly sluggish and
hard to use.

------
i_don_t_know
I got really close to buying an ebook reader that's tied to a big book store
chain here in Germany.

A colleague suggested that I check out Hemingway. So I looked for ebooks of
his in the ebook store. They didn't have any German ebooks, just print copies.
They did have English ebooks but they were at least twice as expensive as the
English print copies.

A big international competitor wasn't any better. The ebook versions of
Hemingway novels weren't available in my country. I don't know if I can get
them through another store, but presumably then I won't be able to get German
books anymore (other than Hemingway). Or at least it's going to be a hassle.

tl;dr I'm sticking to print books.

------
zitterbewegung
I think books like comic books or special edition books that would target the
same group of people that like Vinyl records would be a way forward for books.

For instance I read A Killing Joke which is a graphic novel without paying for
it. Once I walked into a comic book store I bought the Hardcover comic.

Typically when I go to a comic book store I will buy graphic novels or at
least story lines that are self contained. Sometimes I will buy individual
comics but most often I gravitate to collections.

------
AnimalMuppet
My eyes don't do fine print very well. An e-book means I get eyestrain, or
else (if the print is big enough) it means I'm scrolling all the time. Books
(with not too small a print) work better for me.

On the other hand, my daughter is in college, and I worry about what her
backpack is doing to her spine...

~~~
jimmaswell
This widespread phonomenon of eyestrain from digital screens has always seemed
so strange to me. I spend over 10 hours a day (sometimes closer to 15) looking
at screens (CRT and flatscreens) and I don't feel any different. Maybe it's
genetic?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I've had cataract surgery. My lenses have been replaced with fixed-focus
lenses. My left eye focuses at infinity (I haven't seen this well at distance
since kindergarten), and my right eye focuses at 20 feet. Of course, I get
some range on either side of that, but it degrades the further away from 20
feet you get. I can read a book with medium-sized print in good light.

With a computer, I can get further away from the screen. But something I have
to hold at arms length, and that has small print because of a small screen
size. That's not so good for me.

------
Mendenhall
Unrelated side note. I went to the local book store yesterday and the
archeology and anthropology section wasn't even one shelf. I should have
checked to see how big the sasquatch and ancient alien section was.

~~~
canadian_voter
Talk to the staff. Tell them what you're interested in. But also buy a book or
two. I listen a lot closer to the customer that complains and buys a stack,
than to the "customer" that tells me I have the nicest bookstore they've ever
seen and walks out without buying anything.

Based on feedback and sales, we axed our romance section (I didn't like it
anyway) and more than doubled the size of philosophy section (and it would be
even bigger if we could keep the damned things in stock).

A handful of customer can drastically change the nature of a bookstore. We
have whole sections like "The Sea" and "Exploration" that exist for the half
dozen people that come in a few times a year and are looking for that stuff.

Vote with your dollar; be the change you want to see. :)

Source: I am a bookstore owner.

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mrcactu5
i can't speak for everybody or for all book consumption. in New York City book
consumption is unevenly distributed.

there are places like Strand Bookstore where thousands of books in carts are
left out in the street. I found a copy of the CLRS Algorithms textbook for $1
or $2.

there are places in the Bronx where book consumption is more limited. in fact
with the close of Barnes and Noble there will be no bookstores in the Bronx.

