This is a really nice corrective to the usual declinist narratives (literature is dead, literary fiction is dead, everyone is reading YA).
I tend to be pretty optimistic about people, and optimistic about their intellectual ambitions. 12% of the surveyed adults report that they’re reading literary fiction…compared to 6% YA, 11% romance. Honestly, not bad
Why is Horror or at least Weird Fiction always ignored? Is it thrown in with "Thrillers" or "Fantasy" or "Suspense". It's all of those things, but it has become my favorite genre, even though it seems to be overlooked.
Nothing wrong with dry! (Think martini.) Thanks for a quick, Interesting read and also a needed reminder for me that, yeah, a lot of people don’t read. So what. A lot of people do, and lots of people love books, even novels. And, most important, people who love fiction will never run out of an endless choice of books to read.
I'm just eyeballing the numbers here, but at a glance the 30-44 y/o demographic seems to read more than people in older demos, which is... not what I would have expected.
I think much of the downcast messaging is because of where books are in the popular culture overall. Perhaps readers/writers expect books to be more central than they are. There are certainly places where books are a part of the general conversation. But those places are rare.
Counter argument: more people are reading and writing than ever before. You cannot negotiate modern life without interpreting texts and responding in texts. Decline in reading **books** is not the same as not reading.
And while I do think reading is the superior way to consume stories, more people all over the world consume more and more stories every year through various forms of media. Any data that cannot account for this is skewed.
I'm curious if/how these rankings would change if the poll asked "What is your MOST READ genre?" vs. (as I understand it) "Did you read ANY book in this genre?"
My hunch is that lit fic is genre more likely to be *common* to different types of readers, which would make it higher on the list. Put another way: If someone reads multiple books per year, I'd think there's a solid chance ONE of those books is lit fic, even if it's not their go-to genre? That feels less true for some other categories. (For example, it's easier for me to imagine the person who reads mostly History with the occasional Lit Fic thrown in than it is to imagine the person who reads mostly History with the occasional Romance thrown in.) Does that seem right?
Related: If readers of literary fiction buy a higher VOLUME of books than other readers (I suspect they do?) then it could theoretically be true that both a) lit fic does well on NYT bestseller list and b) lit fic is "in decline" in that the median reader doesn't like it very much.
Still, all in all a heartening picture and really interesting to dig into these numbers! Agree with Brian's "nothing wrong with dry" comment—always my favorite type of Counter Craft post :).
That chart was truly surprising. I too expected to see literary fiction near the bottom. No doubt, it's the result of collusion and interference between the CIA and the MFA
There is the point that I think always needs to come up here that "death of reading" is not synonymous with "not reading books". By other measures, it's possible that people are reading more text in total than they might have thirty years ago. In terms of the history of reading, we don't get hung up on the thought that the explosion in reading overall and the growth of a literary frame of reference in the first half of the 18th Century in England didn't necessarily involve books but instead newspapers, pamphlets, commonplaces, and printed ephemera of various kinds.
I remember in John Updike's RABBIT series when the main character reached a certain age and suddenly he was reading about historic naval battles. I thought: that will be me someday....
I can relate to your lamenting... If one grows up as a kid with bed time stories read as a daily ritual, one becomes a book reader. It starts at a young age. It’s a shame that people don’t read books anymore in the USA. I live in Europe and read a lot, I buy those books but sometimes I go to the library and read there as well just to focus better. In 2023, I’ve read 17 books of which 3 nonfiction, 1 poetry, 1 anthology of short stories 1 memoir (read the same book twice) and 1 true crime and the rest were literary fiction. Right now I’m in the middle of my first book of year 2024 and it feels wonderful to have the time at least half an hour after a hard working day to be able to read. Reading books is the best pastime when you’re alone and if it is a well-written book I turn off my phone and just get lost in the book. Oh, I don’t own a TV which is a conscious decision and I make time to read. It is a matter of choice and priority.
I am rather confused by this poll and what it’s counting as literary fiction. Does literary fiction here include general fiction or is that under “other fiction”? Does it include Colleen Hoover? In 2023, Hoover’s unit sales alone represented 8.5% of the top 200 titles in the print fiction market; I do not consider her literary. Other bestselling authors of 2023 include Ana Huang, Rebecca Yarros, Sarah J. Maas, and Emily Henry. Hoover & Yarros alone sold more than 1 million copies each in 2023. I don’t consider any of those authors as literary. So I guess I’m wondering: what can we take away from this poll if we agree these books are not literary fiction? Are respondents considering them as such? This may be a poorly designed poll given the genre and category choices offered. (That's my guess given that romance is not on top; men are more likely to read history, mystery/thriller/crime; women represent most romance readers and from a commercial standpoint, romance wins every time.)
So interesting and shocking! That's a lot of people not reading books. Lately, I've noticed young kids (3-6-year-old) everywhere starring at iPad screens. I can only imagine how many people will read in 10 years. However, there are still avid readers out there. They read up to a 100 books a year. That's an astonishing amount. ~ In terms of genre, I believe the terms Literary Fiction and General Fiction are used more broadly now. For example, I write Upmarket Fiction = Book Club Fiction. It's a very broad term as I cross over into different genres. Happy reading and writing!🤗
This is a really nice corrective to the usual declinist narratives (literature is dead, literary fiction is dead, everyone is reading YA).
I tend to be pretty optimistic about people, and optimistic about their intellectual ambitions. 12% of the surveyed adults report that they’re reading literary fiction…compared to 6% YA, 11% romance. Honestly, not bad
Why is Horror or at least Weird Fiction always ignored? Is it thrown in with "Thrillers" or "Fantasy" or "Suspense". It's all of those things, but it has become my favorite genre, even though it seems to be overlooked.
Nothing wrong with dry! (Think martini.) Thanks for a quick, Interesting read and also a needed reminder for me that, yeah, a lot of people don’t read. So what. A lot of people do, and lots of people love books, even novels. And, most important, people who love fiction will never run out of an endless choice of books to read.
I'm just eyeballing the numbers here, but at a glance the 30-44 y/o demographic seems to read more than people in older demos, which is... not what I would have expected.
I think much of the downcast messaging is because of where books are in the popular culture overall. Perhaps readers/writers expect books to be more central than they are. There are certainly places where books are a part of the general conversation. But those places are rare.
Counter argument: more people are reading and writing than ever before. You cannot negotiate modern life without interpreting texts and responding in texts. Decline in reading **books** is not the same as not reading.
And while I do think reading is the superior way to consume stories, more people all over the world consume more and more stories every year through various forms of media. Any data that cannot account for this is skewed.
I'm curious if/how these rankings would change if the poll asked "What is your MOST READ genre?" vs. (as I understand it) "Did you read ANY book in this genre?"
My hunch is that lit fic is genre more likely to be *common* to different types of readers, which would make it higher on the list. Put another way: If someone reads multiple books per year, I'd think there's a solid chance ONE of those books is lit fic, even if it's not their go-to genre? That feels less true for some other categories. (For example, it's easier for me to imagine the person who reads mostly History with the occasional Lit Fic thrown in than it is to imagine the person who reads mostly History with the occasional Romance thrown in.) Does that seem right?
Related: If readers of literary fiction buy a higher VOLUME of books than other readers (I suspect they do?) then it could theoretically be true that both a) lit fic does well on NYT bestseller list and b) lit fic is "in decline" in that the median reader doesn't like it very much.
Still, all in all a heartening picture and really interesting to dig into these numbers! Agree with Brian's "nothing wrong with dry" comment—always my favorite type of Counter Craft post :).
That chart was truly surprising. I too expected to see literary fiction near the bottom. No doubt, it's the result of collusion and interference between the CIA and the MFA
There is the point that I think always needs to come up here that "death of reading" is not synonymous with "not reading books". By other measures, it's possible that people are reading more text in total than they might have thirty years ago. In terms of the history of reading, we don't get hung up on the thought that the explosion in reading overall and the growth of a literary frame of reference in the first half of the 18th Century in England didn't necessarily involve books but instead newspapers, pamphlets, commonplaces, and printed ephemera of various kinds.
Fascinating! And a little wave from us at the 5% kids table hehe.
Fascinating.
I remember in John Updike's RABBIT series when the main character reached a certain age and suddenly he was reading about historic naval battles. I thought: that will be me someday....
I can relate to your lamenting... If one grows up as a kid with bed time stories read as a daily ritual, one becomes a book reader. It starts at a young age. It’s a shame that people don’t read books anymore in the USA. I live in Europe and read a lot, I buy those books but sometimes I go to the library and read there as well just to focus better. In 2023, I’ve read 17 books of which 3 nonfiction, 1 poetry, 1 anthology of short stories 1 memoir (read the same book twice) and 1 true crime and the rest were literary fiction. Right now I’m in the middle of my first book of year 2024 and it feels wonderful to have the time at least half an hour after a hard working day to be able to read. Reading books is the best pastime when you’re alone and if it is a well-written book I turn off my phone and just get lost in the book. Oh, I don’t own a TV which is a conscious decision and I make time to read. It is a matter of choice and priority.
I am rather confused by this poll and what it’s counting as literary fiction. Does literary fiction here include general fiction or is that under “other fiction”? Does it include Colleen Hoover? In 2023, Hoover’s unit sales alone represented 8.5% of the top 200 titles in the print fiction market; I do not consider her literary. Other bestselling authors of 2023 include Ana Huang, Rebecca Yarros, Sarah J. Maas, and Emily Henry. Hoover & Yarros alone sold more than 1 million copies each in 2023. I don’t consider any of those authors as literary. So I guess I’m wondering: what can we take away from this poll if we agree these books are not literary fiction? Are respondents considering them as such? This may be a poorly designed poll given the genre and category choices offered. (That's my guess given that romance is not on top; men are more likely to read history, mystery/thriller/crime; women represent most romance readers and from a commercial standpoint, romance wins every time.)
So interesting and shocking! That's a lot of people not reading books. Lately, I've noticed young kids (3-6-year-old) everywhere starring at iPad screens. I can only imagine how many people will read in 10 years. However, there are still avid readers out there. They read up to a 100 books a year. That's an astonishing amount. ~ In terms of genre, I believe the terms Literary Fiction and General Fiction are used more broadly now. For example, I write Upmarket Fiction = Book Club Fiction. It's a very broad term as I cross over into different genres. Happy reading and writing!🤗
i'm pessimistic of american literacy.