Book Sales Are Up. Reading Is Down. Are You on the Side of the Competitive Edge?

David Sable-Mar 29, 2016

28% of American adults say they have not read a book in the past year – book as in words…be it digital, print, whatever. And while I don’t know the matching statistics globally – help me if you can by checking your country’s stats – I imagine most of us are facing the same sad fact.

Sad as in this isn’t a print vs. digital coup or a traditional vs. new triumphor some Luddite vs. leading-edge victory…it plainly and simply means some people are just not reading, and I find this profoundly disturbing and potentially harmful to the future evolution of humanity.

And yet:

According to last week’s New York Times, “Sales at bookstores rose 2.5 percent in 2015 over the previous year, to $11.17 billion, for the first annual increase since 2007, according to the United States Census Bureau.”

And, as I have written before about the increase in sales of children’s printed books…all over the world…a trend I find exciting, powerful and a sign of hope for the future, as parents rediscover the joys of a fully tactile, immersive, interactive experience that involves and benefits both the reader and the audience.

Tell the truth! Have you bought a book recently…digital or otherwise? Read it? Enjoyed it? Experienced it? Immersed in it? Shared it?  Old author or new…makes no difference…

Full confession time – as one who used to haunt bookstores and buy tens of books at a visit, and then, as time moved on, download even larger quantities to my Kindle and then my Kindle App, I find that I have slacked off.

Maybe it was time…I had so much “content” to cover; maybe it was fatigue…how much could I really absorb; maybe it was lethargy…who cares because I’m reading short summaries of everything…

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