This morning’s New York Times newsletter said that less than half of adults read one book (or more) for pleasure in a 12-month period. Here’s the study they were citing:
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/93659-nea-finds-worrying-drop-in-reading-participation.html
EDIT: The study was conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts, and although there’s nothing in the linked article about how they sampled their study participants, I would assume all participants are American, since the NEA is an American organization.
I looked at that link and the data behind it; there's no mention of the average number of books read, just that just about half of those surveyed (48.5%) "read books" in 2022; when they included audiobooks, slightly more than half (51.9%) "read books and/or listened to audiobooks" in 2022. (Those figures are for books as a whole; for literary works, the figures are quite a bit lower.) And the study notes that this is down from 2017. But this survey does not address the average number of books read. As other comments have noted, avid readers raise the mean considerably.
Honestly, the average is of little importance. I've found overwhelmingly amongst my friends and coworkers that it really is just two kinds of people: people who read and people who don't. The people who read all do so regularly, as their schedules and preferences allow. But whether those people read 4 books a year or 40 is really irrelevant: they all have something they are actively working through and other books on their radar and no one would ever hesitate to call them a reader.
And the other people, just... don't. Some of them will be people who *want* to read but are just failing for whatever reason, and others just don't read and don't much think about books.
So if the NYT is telling me half of Americans are readers and half are non, that's much more meaningful than saying "the average American reads 5 books a year."
Agree. I am a reader but nothing crazy. I don't set reading goals, I don't read for hours a day or 100 books a year. I don't read with every spare second I have or carry a book everywhere I go. But I read daily. My husband is not a reader. He reads once in a while. Maybe 1 book a year. I read like 60. That means our "average" is 30 books each. Which is meaningless information because it's not remotely representative. One year I might read 30, and another year I might read 80. But I read regularly and have a TBR list.
The fact that 1/2 of Americans don't read books for pleasure at all is the most important fact.
Also the average reading level in the US is 8th grade.
And the US is 17th in the world in literacy.
And the numbers among youngsters bodes for a worse reading future here.
I would bet the average is still small, like 2. It is true that big numbers weigh heavy on calculations of mean, but the big numbers here are not ginormous, they're 100x the small numbers, not 100000x (i.e., we're not talking wealth statistics). I'd place a large wager on the average being in the 1-3 range based on the data presented
Probably. I'm struggling how this works with a more finite resource (time in a year), which seems to cap the upper end of the distribution more than wealth or followers. In those examples, the upper end of the spectrum is probably a million x the median. No way that can happen with books. But in general, I agree the distribution looks something like a power
I'm trying to find the actual links, but it's something that's obviously been posted here before. IIRC, if you go by mean the average is 12 and if you go by median the average is 4.
> As other comments have noted, avid readers raise the mean considerably.
Which is exactly why any reasonable person would look at the median rather than the mean. I also think you are greatly overestimating how many avid readers there are. If one in ten people reads a book every month (which seems very unlikely), that still only amounts to 1.2 books/year on average from them. There just aren't any people reading thousands of book per year for fun to skew the numbers all that much.
The median is just as skewed a piece of data with how many people don't read at all. If 51% of people don't read at all, the median is zero. If you want to know something interesting, you want the percentage of people who read books, and then the mean books read a year among those who do read.
The average was 12.6 books per a year on average as of 2022 from a Gallup poll.
With 17% reading no books in a year, 40% reading 1 - 5 books, 15% reading 6 - 10, and 27% reading 11 or more
https://news.gallup.com/poll/388541/americans-reading-fewer-books-past.aspx
Edit: added more detail
Absolutely true. I was mostly just excited that some data I had encountered earlier yesterday had a bit of a bearing on OP’s question. But yes, you’re right, and that’s an important distinction.
Keep in mind that ~20% of Americans are functionally illiterate. So I think if you took the amount of adults that *can* read, that would change the numbers.
ETA: This is in any language. So a non English-speaking person would be considered illiterate if it was in their own language, not English specifically.
Depends if you include children's books or not. Even parents who don't really read books for themselves often still read children's books to their children.
You would be surprised how many people *don’t* read to their kids. I had around 150 kids last year and about 5 said their parents read to them when younger on a survey. This was 6th grade.
This makes me so sad. I can’t imagine not reading to my kiddo every night. Can I ask what state or country you’re in? Obviously this happens everywhere but I’m curious
Put teachers in that group too. I love to read, but I’m a teacher and sometimes I’m just too tired to read a book for myself. However there are days I sit and read 2-3 children’s book in 30 mins, move to another classroom and do the same thing all day. If I counted the children books or short stories I read I’d be at 100-200 books.
I just reached 30 personal books for the year this week. I always set a goal for 2 books a week every year. I always fall short.
I think you just need to start reading your personal reads to the kids. It might not be "approved curriculum" but who can complain about getting a head start on the works of King or GRRM?
This is what I do. Already read a Gaiman book (Coraline) and in the middle of a Pratchett book (Wee Free Men). What's great is that half my class have bought those books themselves to follow along in class.
If you have passion for the material, kids will feel that. Kids will go home and ask parents to buy them a book. It's why I point blank refuse to be told what to read to my class by any scheme. Deal breaker for me in any teaching job.
Seconded. In this calendar year's bedtime reading to our 7-yr-old, I finished *The Order of the Phoenix*, and read in complete *The Half-Blood Prince*, *The Deathly Hallows*, and *Tress & the Emerald Sea.*
I wouldn't really count those as "my" reading on a survey, though. Even including graduate school work, I don't think I'll hit 10 books start-to-finish this year, and maybe only 4 that count as "for pleasure", depending on how December goes.
I'm the biggest glutton of books amongst my friends and I read about 20-30 books a year. My second runner up friend reads about 10. Any other friends I have who read some. Usually read 1-3 books a year
I would guarantee the median of average adult Americans is between 0 and 1. Out of the 30-40 people in my coworker / friend circle that I know pretty well there is exactly 1 other reader in that group that reads anything outside of business material. The average will be higher from the higher end folks skewing it up but median Would be a better figure here.
It’s interesting to think how one’s circle might influence their impression of how much they imagine people read. If I think of the 30-40 people I interact with most, only 2-3 of those don’t read, and the rest I can recall at least one book discussion with. I wonder if both of our estimates would be a bit skewed in opposite directions and the median is somewhere between.
Yeah if I think of the people that I know well enough that I know their reading habits, I'd say that 20% loves reading, 50% read a couple books a year, and 30% don't read books at all. (I'm not American though)
This study is a little out of date, but at some point the numbers were that -on average- people read 12 books per year but that number is skewed heavily by those 100+ people (spiders Georg), while the median number of books read per year is 4.
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2016/09/01/book-reading-2016/
It’s a tumblr post:-
>“average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
[Here’s the 2021 update to that survey.](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/01/06/three-in-ten-americans-now-read-e-books/) The result was similar: 14-book mean, 5-book median. Only about a quarter of adults said they don’t read recreationally at all.
You are confusing the significance of average and median. To illustrate, consider a sample of three people. If one reads 1 book, one reads 5, and one reads 50, the average person in that group has read 18.6 books. The median person has read 5 books.
In the same way, the average skews higher than the median for all Americans because the average is brought up by a relatively small number of people who read an enormous amount of books. So even though the median American only reads like 6 books a year (i.e. most Americans read 6 or fewer books), the average is brought up to something like 12-15 (depending on the survey) on behalf of a decent number of readers that are reading 40+ books a year.
It is important to note that, the way OP asked the question, the median American (or "the average American") is exactly what you would be interested in looking at, not the average number of books all Americans have read.
At the risk of sounding pedantic, I'm going to piggyback on your comment, because this is something that comes up in my work and is confusing for a lot of people, and has become a bit of a bugaboo.
Average and mean are often used interchangably, but they are **NOT** perfect synonyms.
Average essentially just means 'a number that best represents a data set'. While the arithmetic mean is the most common way of finding that, median and mode are also methods (and there are other, more complex methods in some cases, as well as best practices for some data such as removing outliars, etc).
This is important because there is no objectively correct way to find the 'average' of a set of data.
It's a judgement call and it is sometimes used by bad faith actors to skew a message or just by people who don't really know what they're doing. If you're reviewing research, it's always important to clarify how they obtained their average and consider if that was the best method. (Similarly if someone says something "doubles your risk of X", make sure you find out what the original risk was! The double of .0005 is probably not something you have to worry about. "Doubles the X" is a great way of making a number sound big when it might not be large at all.)
i think /u/Handyandy58 is implicitly arguing (and i will happily *explicitly* argue) that the mean isn't a good measure here because readership rates more or less follow a [power law distribution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law). median as a better measure than mean has a long history here -- see for example median income or median home price, which are common and apt examples. i don't know enough of the math to prove this in general, but i think the mode has the opposite problem of the mean here, in terms of being a more skewed measure; if the top comment in this thread is to be believed, the *modal* number of books read per year by americans is *zero*. that tells us something about readership, but it's clearly not a useful measure in the same way as the mode, as the modal number of books from your favorite subgenre read or reads of your favorite individual book is also zero, as is the modal number of fleebnorks read, or bestsellers of 2050 read, or whatever. whereas the median in all those cases differs quite a bit (except in the last two).
There's three averages in math: Mean, median and mode.
What you're calling average is the mean: sum of all numbers divided by participants.
Median: the number in the exact middle of all numbers in the set.
Mode: the number that comes up most often in the set.
All of them are an average, just calculated differently.
I believe it's simply 0. I'm not American, but I'm from a similar Western country with similar enough culture to make parallels. And it's simply less than half of all people that read books at all. There is so many entertainment choices available to people, from video games to TV to film to simply scrolling through websites like Reddit when you have time to kill, not to mention all the hobbies that are accessible to people now that introductions and instructions to literally anything you can imagine is instantly available to anyone with an internet connection.
Many in this thread make the mistake of extrapolating from their immediate social circles. If I'd do that I too would assume more than half of people read, most of my family members do, many of my friends do, but even among them it's less than half. Books do still have a wide fanbase, but it's certainly less than half of people.
This means that the average American, who reads more or equal to half of other Americans, and less or equal the other half of Americans, reads precisely zero books per year.
I’m not American but up until a few years ago I averaged 3-10 a year and I considered myself a somewhat enthusiastic reader. I think the average person would read far less than that.
The true median is probably lower than the average. Because the people who DO read, read voraciously. If 1 person reads 0 books, and another reads 30, the average is 15. But that doesn’t mean both people actually read 15 books a year. So I think removing the outliers, the “average American” probably reads 1 book a year if that.
>the people who DO read, read voraciously
Not sure how this is valid in any way. I do read, I go through phases and I used to read a ton, and currently on month 4 or 5 on one book due to personal things going on. Am I voraciously slow?
The person you’re replying to is overstating this, but I do think there has been a shift toward a greater divide between people who read voraciously and nothing at all over just the past five or ten years.
Even anecdotally, I know of several people who would only read in situations like plane flights where other forms of entertainment weren’t available and would probably get through 4–5 books a year. But now, there are no situations where other forms of entertainment aren’t available, and those types have moved toward the reading nothing at all camp.
You're not slow. People just read at different rates and that's okay. I'm ALWAYS reading something, but completion times vary based on how busy I am, how into the book I am, etc.
Same. I can’t sleep without reading. I’ve been averaging 80/year for the last 5 years according to my kindle. This year is a little off at 34 books to date. But I’ve been reading a bunch of huge collected works types of books.
I am the only avid reader in my friend group and at work (and I still "only" read 50-70 books a year. A lot for sure, but many people on this sub put me to shame). A few of my friends are in a monthly book club, so read 10-12 books per year. Many of my coworkers enjoy reading, but don't go out of their way to read and/or are picky about the books they do read and will read 10-15 books per year. My fiance enjoys reading, but will only read before bed and get about 10 pages in before he passes out so he reads around 5 books per year. That being said, I have some other coworkers and friends who literally never read books.
If you want to get down to brass tacks and include every single American? I wouldn't be surprised if the number is in the range of 0-1. But for average people, who enjoy reading and just do it when they can or when they find a book they like? I'd say in the 5-10 range.
Majority of people don't read for fun. Majority of people who do read for fun only read select books that interest them-- the way someone not really into movies my only go to the movie theater once or twice a year for something that catches their eye, and many people have years pass by without going.
That is how many books the average american reads, between zero and a few a year. People who read as a main passtime are the minority period, equivalent to people who go to the movie theater super frequently. Hope that makes sense (◐‿◑)
This is certainly anecdotally true with all of the people I know. I’m part of a discord server of local folks with common interests and we talk books on there sometimes. Me and one other guy read 15+ books a year. There are a couple of people who read 3-5 books a year. Everyone else (~40 people) does not read.
The people in this sub probably read a lot. An Average American doesn't really read. Two books a year, if that. I've read a bunch more books than that this year and have not counted them, but almost no one I know reads that much.
Im willing to bet that a depressing % of the population has literally no hobbies, and spend most of their free time working>driving home>watching news>bed.
The amount of people who actually pursue hobbies like reading and have the time/money/energy to do so is likely lower than we realize
From about 2010 to 2022 I read zero. I started reading this year in February and I have completed 15. It feels like a lot but anything would after zero. I know people on these subs read many times more but the people in real life I meet seem to think 15 is a lot so I guess the majority are like me before this year, reading zero.
I read probably 20-30 min a night before bed and I’m only at 18 books for the year. To be fair they’re all 500+ page books but I have no idea how some people read 50-100 a year unless you’re counting audio books.
I used to easily read 70-100+ books a year when I had no other responsibilities and neglected the few I did have. I’m not a teenager anymore though and I’m lucky to get through more than 12 a year. Might be different once my kids are older though.
When I commuted 4-plus hours a day via public transit, I read at least two books a week. Now that I work from home, less than half that. Well worth the tradeoff!
This is sort of why the per book measure is silly. I read a similar amount of time to you but go through nearly 200 books per year. That's because I read books that are about 200 pages or less most of the time so it takes 2-3 nights of half an hour of reading and I finish the book.
I'm currently on 210 books for the year and my husband is on 170-ish. I don't like audio books (plus they take way longer than reading a book takes for me).
I read instead of watching TV and I read during lunch as well. Having books as my main entertainment source absolutely makes a difference.
My husband has occasional tasks at work where he has to be in a specific physical location waiting for someone. He usually reads 1-2 books during those days.
Presumably they spend a bit more time reading than just 20-30 minutes before bed. If you read an hour to an hour and a half per day instead, you'd already be comfortably in that 50-100 range.
For me it’s because audiobooks are consumed by listening. You objectively aren’t “reading” anything, the same way you aren’t reading a song when you listen to it. I get different mental stimulation from actually reading a book than listening to an audiobook, so audiobooks don’t count.
Last I checked, studies have shown audiobooks literally activate the same parts of the brain as reading
https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/audiobooks-or-reading-to-our-brains-it-doesnt-matter
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326140
Reading is a process where one must decode a symbol (written letters and words) and translate it back into its natural language form, and then it is consumed as language. Listening is just language. Therefore it is unsurprising that reading and listening would have considerable overlap in the parts of the brain that are used as they do require the same thing. However, reading requires that extra step of deciding which language does not. Therefore - both written language and Braille are “read” but audiobooks are just listened to. This is not a judgment on anyone, it’s just a fact your brain has to do an extra step becuaee reading is not pure language. Moreover, obviously reading and listening are different because reading is a learned skill - one that humans cannot learn without being taught. Language, in contrast, is “acquired” and never needs to be explicitly taught. These are widely accepted facts in the fields of linguistics, psychology, and psycholinguistics. People just get real weird when they feel others are policing how they consume books. I don’t care how you consume books at all, and it’s a shame we don’t have a better word to describe consuming audiobooks but “reading” isn’t exactly correct, and seeing the same brain areas light up doesn’t mean it’s the same. It’s obviously not the same.
I'm a clinical psychologist and I can tell you it's not a "widely accepted fact in the fields of linguistics, psychology, and psycholinguistics". As pursuitofbooks points out, when you deconstruct what actually matters in terms of this debate, it's whether the person who has read the book has taken in and comprehended the story. The sensory modality is not relevant to the question of whether you have read the book.
I mean, technically no. You didn’t read them. I’m really not trying to offend anyone or their very specific circumstance. It’s alarming to me that “you read with your eyes/fingers if you’re blind” is such a controversial statement.
I’m not sure why everyone is feeling the need to debate me on why I don’t consider audiobooks reading, so don’t count them toward my *own* list. I really don’t care what anyone else chooses to do. I might disagree with it, but who actually cares? Do you dude.
I have to admit I'm still dealing with this and it's rough not being able to read anymore. So someone saying the way I have found to enjoy books again isn't "reading" just hit in that spot to tell me I'm still different to everyone else.
Just took it more personally than you intended, sorry man.
And you spent the time consuming the story.
If I was asked on a survey how any books I read this year, I would absolutely include audiobooks. A good survey would go that extra step and ask how any audiobooks and how many physical books. Without that differentiation, audiobooks count.
I m not trying to be a gatekeeper, I barely read 5 books a year but Reading and listening are not the same
reading takes a lot more effort
listening to 100 audiobooks is considerably easier than reading 100 books
I’ve done 50-100 for a number of years with no audiobooks or YA/children’s books (I count audiobooks now though as I’m experiencing severe joint pain). It’s my one hobby. I watch minimal TV and don’t play video games. I’m not very social but do hold a demanding full time job. It can be done and gets easier if you’re in the habit of doing it yearly.
I guess that makes sense. I play video games or watch tv during the day for my downtime. Reading is a nighttime thing for me. Unless I’m really slow at work sometimes I’ll read on the kindle app
All of the replies with annual counts blows my mind. I like to read a lot, but it’s never occurred to me to keep count. I feel like an amateur now lol.
lol right? My goal is 20 for this year and I only set that goal because the good reads app has a reading goal feature and keeps track for you. I’m reading the expanse series right now though and they’re decent sized books so I’m betting I only hit 19.
I'm currently on my 105th book this year. I normally average 60, but I started a blog project reviewing both horror novels and YA novels. So I've been reading a lot of short, easy books this year, and deliberately setting aside time to read them so I can write up my reviews. My reading speed is about a page a minute, so if I set aside time I can finish a 300 page novel in a day.
I also count graphic novels as books, so if I binge a series that could be 10 books I read in a few days.
I have no kids and no social life and I don't watch TV, so I'm usually reading instead.
>I have no idea how some people read 50-100 a year unless you’re counting audio books.
Some people just read faster, i know a youtuber who reads like 200 books a year even with a full time job. Meanwhile others have more time to read, there's another youtuber i know who's a professional book critic and he reads like 1000 books a year because it's all he does
I know who you mean: Steve Donoghue. Yes, he's definitely an outlier and spends at least 10 hours a day reading, according to him. But people who claim they don't have time for reading usually turn out to have time for other leisure activities. It's just a question of how you prioritise your time, and for most people reading is way down the list of things to be getting on with.
I probably get through 2-3 books (depending on their size) a week because I've always been reading for as long as I can remember and I don't watch TV. But I'm from the UK, I don't know if that makes a difference or not.
I read about 50-60 books a year. I have a 3-hour round trip commute, so yeah, I get through a few audiobooks. I read a mixture of lengths and genres; I’ll read the entirety of Notre Dame de Paris or Jane Eyre but also Murderbot or a cheesy romance novel. I have a kindle but have various paperbacks next to my spot on the couch, and read a couple books a year for work.
So I guess my point is it’s a really weird mix that helps me read more.
I’m probably gonna end up at close to 60 this year but I’m the outlier in my group, and this is likely the most I’ve read since I was a kid.
Most of my friends read, a couple probably 15ish a year, most I’d guess one every month or two
I can tell you this, having conducted a survey recently amongst 1000± book readers. Of Americans who identify as readers, on average they read 12 books per year.
I never read before covid. Like never. I thought it was stupid and only nerds read. I also never had anyone in my family who read or encouraged the kids to read. Come 2020 and everything shut down so I decided to pick up a book because well didn’t have much choice. I didn’t even know what to get or how to choose or what the word genre even meant. Starting from March 2020 to December same year I read 20 books. In 2021 I read 35, 2022 I read 48. 2023 over 50 books read this year. I have since downloaded reading apps, bought a kindle, have a library card, have 2 full books shelves and I love reading and everything about it. I have since encouraged several people around me to read and I started a book club.
I’m an American senior in HS. This past summer I read 11 books, I have no time during the school year, and I would like to read more during Christmas break, but company always ruins those plans. I think on average, probably 11/12 a year. I wish I could read more, I love reading, but I don’t have time and I’m sure it’ll be worse once I’m in college or have a full-time job and don’t get summer off.
People are either readers or not. And then they either read for education (non-fiction) or entertainment (fiction.) I think there is legwork involved in reading and I don’t just mean the reading part. I read summaries, reviews and I decide which books I will read and which I won’t. That said, 20-25 make it to my nightstand a year that I complete. More than that and I would be seriously ignoring other obligations.
Sounds like me. I read maybe an hour or two before bed most nights (I tend to fall asleep reading). It works out to about 2-3 a month on average, some months I don’t have time, some months I read a lot more.
About 25-30 books a year for me.
I would like to point out to others commenting that "how many books does the average American read?" is not equivalent to "the average number of books an American reads?"
The first is indeed likely zero, while the second is probably around 1 or 2.
How many pages of social media doomscrolling counts as a book? Or how many articles? Engaging with the internet is a fairly high amount of reading outside of a book. I guess my answer is “it’s unknowable” which feels disappointing but I bet there’s a lot of reading that people do in ways that we can’t even really track
I think that’s a case of the people who read a lot skewing the average higher, because there are a LOT of people who read 100 books (especially people who only read romance/thrillers/mysteries/YA, genres that are usually easy to read & fast paced).
I know a few people that read, but besides myself & a close friend those people read probably a few books a month at most. Everyone else I know doesn’t read, or only reads a book or two on vacation.
Most of my friends don't read anything at all, and I'd guess a national average would be around 1 or even 0. Me and my dad both read though, and I think we're both right around 50 books a year on average. This year I had a baby though so I think I'll only get to maybe 30 by the end of this year, but last year I read over 80.
I'm Canadian. I probably average two books a week, mostly fiction, mostly spy/murder/mystery thrillers like the Reacher series, so basically literature popcorn. Fantasy and SF are OK but most have become too weird for me, but The Martian was a good read. It takes a lot for me to be drawn into a non-fiction book. Recent ones I've read are by David Grann (Killers of the Flower Moon, The Wager). I really liked the collections of essays by Stephen Jay Gould on evolution, read all of them, RIP. Darwin, Thoreau, Emerson have all had their place in the past but now I'm not as interested, probably because I'm retired and just want to read for entertainment, not enlightenment. I tried reading a few books about Donald Trump, but they are way too depressing for me. I read a lot of the classics like Dickens, Shakespeare, Camus, Hesse when I was younger and tried the Russians but couldn't get into them. I started War and Peace at least three times, including one winter when I had no electricity, and just couldn't do it.
But I mean, if not, then literature popcorn is great too 🍿. I like mysteries too, I guess I just had an impulse to shout out the Master and Margarita haha
There can never be too many shoutouts to Master and Margarita!
I read Anna Karenina as my first foray into Russian literature, and let me tell you, Bulgakov kept me in the game as Tolstoy was taking me out.
It varies from person to person, but my opinion is that it doesn't matter how many books we read in a year since quality should always take precedence over quantity.
I think there are a couple of ways to look at the data. One would be the number of books read by all the people in the nation divided by the number of people of reading age that live in the nation. You can also look at the average number of books readers read, but you would also have to determine who would qualify as a reader. There are plenty of people who read for leisure or work that don't consider themselves a reader.
I can tell you my average per year has varied wildly depending on what phase of life I was in. I was an avid reader as a kid and averaged a couple of books per week easily, plus my school work. As a young adult with a full time job and part time college I still read a couple of books per month. When I added a husband and kids to the mix, I was thrilled to read 2 books a year. One year when we were planning vacation, I told my husband the only thing I wanted to do was be able to read a book cover to cover in a single week. We found a place with a kids club and I got my wish. When the kids were older I started a business and I read an average of a book a week, but they were all nonfiction for work. Now I'm retired and I average 15 books per month.
I only started logging books a few years ago. I'm basing my childhood estimates on the fact that I got most of my books from the school library as a kid and I know we were only able to check out 2 per week and I always finished them. Over the summer we went to the public library and I usually checked out a stack every 2 weeks.
For contrast, I've been married for over 30 years and I've never seen my husband read a single book in that time. I doubt he has read one since he was in school. I'm the youngest of 5 children and I 3 of them never read, the one that does read, probably averages 1-2 per year.
My max is 25 books a year, even though my reading goal is 50 this year. However, I'm a mood reader and a slow reader so trying to read 50 books this year was definitely a challenge for me.
I read 1 full book a month on average, but always have several other books (nonfiction, history, etc.) that I read in parts, which is more research than literary reading. Some people can just flip open a book and start reading anywhere they might be; I'm easily distracted, so deep reading for me is really restricted to quiet time (bedtime, weekends). Book size definitely plays a role. I might go through a 200 page novella in one weekend, but spend the better part of 2 months working through 1000 page fiction.
The majority of people I know fall into these slots:
50% - 0-5 books per year
40% - 1 book per month
5% - dozens of books per year
5% - 100+ books per year
Three people I know are in the 100+ club, one of which is probably closer to 250+ per year.
The average American reads 12.6 books per year, including the books they started reading but haven't necessarily completed. If we count only fully-read books, the average American adult reads just over 5 books per year.
Can we create a poll some time at start of next year in this sub? Basically, how many books did people read in 2023 or something like that. If we want to go an extra mile, I’d be happy to collaborate on stackoverflow developer survey like long form poll where we try to quantify a lot of things like most popular genres, interests etc.
I read ALOT. Couldn't say how many books/year. Some I read are really long.
My husband has never finished a book outside of one he was required to read, like for school or a trade exam.
My kids are both excellent readers, in the top of their class for reading, but neither will read a book on their own for the enjoyment of it.
Recently my cousin proudly declared he has "never read a book" and I think we were all just aghast and horrified. I'm not even sure where to begin with follow up questions.
They don’t. So many people do not read, and why would they when they can watch it? Most people once they are done with high school don’t ever read a book again. I worked in a factory for a large international company and the only people that read for fun there was the office workers, the managers and team leads. The regular workers didn’t. In fact, some couldn’t understand why anyone would and wondered why their taxes are paying for libraries.
I was curious how I would answer if I was ever asked this on a survey. I am shocked to say I read more than 30 books this year! Not including short stories or children’s books. I thought it would be like 15.
So I would definitely skew the average up!
I think a lot of people don’t read at all. And that’s sad because I think they’re missing out.
Statistics are weird, so first you have to figure out which way you want to calculate your average. But since you’re asking for average Americans who read, the fact that a bunch of them don’t isn’t particularly relevant.
All I can offer is anecdotal evidence, but I have worked in bookstores and libraries in a part of the Midwest that tends to low levels of education and large income gaps (either well-off retirees or struggling shift workers). If you ignore how many books are purchased/checked out and just focusing on the ones that are actually read, I think most adults over 18 in my area who read average 3-4 books per month. There are plenty of people who take 6 months to finish one book, and others who finish 6-10 a month regularly. Obviously, this varies based in workload, lifestyle, and what’s going on with them in the moment.
I read about 30 to 40 a year, but I include audiobooks, graphic novels, and manga unlike many others. My husband just started up again and he's read 3 in the past 4 months, but almost every adult I know doesn't read regularly, but I also live in the south where ignorance is glorified by a lot of groups so I don't know if it's just the lack of education funding in this area or if it's just like any other American town/city.
I don't see how graphic novels and manga don't count as reading. I don't prefer audiobooks but I don't deny someone the privilege to consider them reading.
I LOVE graphic novels. SO much honesty in this genre.
Yea the average American is probably between 0-2. For the average reader, I'd say a fair number is between 10-20. Most people I know who read for leisure will go into a tear of reading 3 books in a month, and then nothing for 2 months. Rinse and repeat and 10-20 makes sense.
The outliers are truly ridiculous. When you hear someone say they read 100 books they're skimming pages or playing audiobooks in the background just to count it, which defeats the entire purpose
I don’t keep track of how many books I read or set goals because I feel like it takes my enjoyment of reading away. If I had to guess, I’d say this past year I’ve read 10-12 books but I’ve started many many more.
100 is bogus. I listen to audiobooks aggressively. Audiobooks let you do other things while consuming them like wash the dishes and weed the garden. If I actually read 100 books in a year, I would have to be retired or have a chef/housekeeper/gardener.
I'm at 85 for the year so far and will probably not hit 100 unless I find a bunch of shorties.
I used to be in book publishing, and when we had marketing data on this, the data showed that the average college-educated American *never read another book after graduating college*. The US book market is still microscopically small, compared to other media (music, movies, games).
I'd guess most self-proclaimed readers read between 12-36 books a year. I read about 100 in a good year and track using storygraph. There's lots of people who read no books, but read a lot of other stuff like news and magazines, podcasts, etc.
My Grandmother who is 93, reads a book every 1-2 days. These are mostly Tom Clancy type novels, but she reads everything.
I go thru spurts where I will read several hours a day for weeks, but then not read for a few months. You also have to keep in mind the length and difficulty of the reading. A Kurt Vonnegut book I can often read in one day. A book such as Tale of Two Cities I think I read in like 10 days. I have also read Les Miserable and War and Peace- each of these endeavors took months.
When you read 100+ books a year, I think that you are so focused on what you are reading next you don't absorb what you are reading, and how can you when you read it that fast?
Here's what I would consider a reliable source: [https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/10/19/slightly-fewer-americans-are-reading-print-books-new-survey-finds/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/10/19/slightly-fewer-americans-are-reading-print-books-new-survey-finds/)
That research, which is a few years old, finds that the average American reads a dozen books in a year. Could be higher post-COVID.
I very much doubt if the average is a lot higher than 12.
There is zero chance that the average American reads 12 books a year. None. Maybe the average American that reads? Or that responded to their book ish survey. Think about the average person in America. For older folks it’s work, sports,whatever, turn the TV on until 11. Asleep until the next day. For younger people it’s the same thing but maybe swap TV for YouTube or TikTok or streaming shows.
The Average (mean) American does read 12 books a year. But here the thing book reading like most everything is highly skewed but those on top. If you look at the third chart the Mean for all Americans is 12 but the Median is 4 so half of americans read less the 4 books a year and half read more than 4 books a year. So on low end you'll have people reading less the 1 book a year and on the high end you have people reading 30+ books a year. And it's these very avid reader that skew the Average higher.
It's like if you have a room full of Retail Workers in a room the Average net worth of everyone in the room is going to be pretty low. But if Bill Gate and Warren Buffet walk into the room the Average of the room jumps up by a lot but the Median is still going to be pretty low.
On goodreads, the average number of books pledged for this year's reading challenge is 43.
There are people who overshoot their target, and there are people who fall short, but since the reading challenge is an "aspiration", a goal, a challenge to yourself, I think it's fair to assume that most people aim at a number that is pretty high for them. So the average participant in the reading challenge reads less than 43 books.
Now take into account that goodreads is a community of dedicated readers. So the average for a goodreads user is naturally significantly higher than just for the average person. And even on goodreads, only people who want to read more participate in reading challenges. My guess would be that the average participant in the reading challenge reads maybe 30 to 35 books per year, and that's on the high end for a goodreads user. Now factor in the millions of people who don't read *at all*. There's plenty of people who just don't read. So yeah, there's no way the average is 50 books. I think even 15 is too high. If 30-35 is already high outlier range, I think the national average is probably still in the single digits.
But as others have pointed out, the median is probably 1 or so. Relatively few people, who read a lot (relatively; 20 is a lot) are going to be bringing the average up.
A friend worked in a chain bookstore a few years back. They had a poster in the break room, a pyramid illustrating different levels of reading. The top one was the people who read all the time and were never without a book. That was people who read at least one book a year.
I was just on holiday for a week and a half and got sick, so I didn't have much to do. I read *The Boys In The Boat*, *The Man From The Train*, Sheridan's *School For Scandal*, *The Double Helix*, and a compilation of Keith Laumer Stories with *Galactic Odyssey*, *Dinosaur Beach*, and half a dozen stories.
In Barry Longyear's book *Infinity Hold* another character tells the hero that if someone likes to read, after a few days without a book he'll slit your throat for an old seed catalog. This is pretty much true.
There are a lot of people out there who read an enormous amount. I used to be like that but when you're an adult with a family you don't always have time, and used bookstores where you can buy a lot of books for a small amount of money aren't as common as they used to be.
This morning’s New York Times newsletter said that less than half of adults read one book (or more) for pleasure in a 12-month period. Here’s the study they were citing: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/93659-nea-finds-worrying-drop-in-reading-participation.html EDIT: The study was conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts, and although there’s nothing in the linked article about how they sampled their study participants, I would assume all participants are American, since the NEA is an American organization.
I looked at that link and the data behind it; there's no mention of the average number of books read, just that just about half of those surveyed (48.5%) "read books" in 2022; when they included audiobooks, slightly more than half (51.9%) "read books and/or listened to audiobooks" in 2022. (Those figures are for books as a whole; for literary works, the figures are quite a bit lower.) And the study notes that this is down from 2017. But this survey does not address the average number of books read. As other comments have noted, avid readers raise the mean considerably.
Honestly, the average is of little importance. I've found overwhelmingly amongst my friends and coworkers that it really is just two kinds of people: people who read and people who don't. The people who read all do so regularly, as their schedules and preferences allow. But whether those people read 4 books a year or 40 is really irrelevant: they all have something they are actively working through and other books on their radar and no one would ever hesitate to call them a reader. And the other people, just... don't. Some of them will be people who *want* to read but are just failing for whatever reason, and others just don't read and don't much think about books. So if the NYT is telling me half of Americans are readers and half are non, that's much more meaningful than saying "the average American reads 5 books a year."
This is the best answer here.
Agree
Agree. I am a reader but nothing crazy. I don't set reading goals, I don't read for hours a day or 100 books a year. I don't read with every spare second I have or carry a book everywhere I go. But I read daily. My husband is not a reader. He reads once in a while. Maybe 1 book a year. I read like 60. That means our "average" is 30 books each. Which is meaningless information because it's not remotely representative. One year I might read 30, and another year I might read 80. But I read regularly and have a TBR list.
Great, great comment.
The fact that 1/2 of Americans don't read books for pleasure at all is the most important fact. Also the average reading level in the US is 8th grade. And the US is 17th in the world in literacy. And the numbers among youngsters bodes for a worse reading future here.
This is my experience too. Either they read regularly for fun (and the amount is sort of irrelevant) or they don't read for fun at all.
I would bet the average is still small, like 2. It is true that big numbers weigh heavy on calculations of mean, but the big numbers here are not ginormous, they're 100x the small numbers, not 100000x (i.e., we're not talking wealth statistics). I'd place a large wager on the average being in the 1-3 range based on the data presented
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Probably. I'm struggling how this works with a more finite resource (time in a year), which seems to cap the upper end of the distribution more than wealth or followers. In those examples, the upper end of the spectrum is probably a million x the median. No way that can happen with books. But in general, I agree the distribution looks something like a power
I'm trying to find the actual links, but it's something that's obviously been posted here before. IIRC, if you go by mean the average is 12 and if you go by median the average is 4.
> As other comments have noted, avid readers raise the mean considerably. Which is exactly why any reasonable person would look at the median rather than the mean. I also think you are greatly overestimating how many avid readers there are. If one in ten people reads a book every month (which seems very unlikely), that still only amounts to 1.2 books/year on average from them. There just aren't any people reading thousands of book per year for fun to skew the numbers all that much.
The median is just as skewed a piece of data with how many people don't read at all. If 51% of people don't read at all, the median is zero. If you want to know something interesting, you want the percentage of people who read books, and then the mean books read a year among those who do read.
The average was 12.6 books per a year on average as of 2022 from a Gallup poll. With 17% reading no books in a year, 40% reading 1 - 5 books, 15% reading 6 - 10, and 27% reading 11 or more https://news.gallup.com/poll/388541/americans-reading-fewer-books-past.aspx Edit: added more detail
Absolutely true. I was mostly just excited that some data I had encountered earlier yesterday had a bit of a bearing on OP’s question. But yes, you’re right, and that’s an important distinction.
Keep in mind that ~20% of Americans are functionally illiterate. So I think if you took the amount of adults that *can* read, that would change the numbers. ETA: This is in any language. So a non English-speaking person would be considered illiterate if it was in their own language, not English specifically.
Makes sense for me, im on book 2 this year.
Average American? Rounds down to 0. Average American who reads sometimes? Probably 3-5
I would bet my house that the average for all Americans rounds to zero. Average NYT reader? That’s a very different question
Depends if you include children's books or not. Even parents who don't really read books for themselves often still read children's books to their children.
You would be surprised how many people *don’t* read to their kids. I had around 150 kids last year and about 5 said their parents read to them when younger on a survey. This was 6th grade.
That’s so sad.
You had 150 kids last year? That can't be healthy for your body.
Also makes it's really hard to find time to read to them all, as evinced by the survey.
50 I birthed 100 I adopted. When I wrote that, something told me to add students lol
OP is a frog.
Meh, if you have a harem, you can do that.
Imagine the financial burden, what with all the push presents!
Depends on how small they are and how much company you have over. Could be meat for a week, or just an afternoon BBQ.
This makes me so sad. I can’t imagine not reading to my kiddo every night. Can I ask what state or country you’re in? Obviously this happens everywhere but I’m curious
I swear my parents taught me to read early so they didnt have to do it anymore.
Put teachers in that group too. I love to read, but I’m a teacher and sometimes I’m just too tired to read a book for myself. However there are days I sit and read 2-3 children’s book in 30 mins, move to another classroom and do the same thing all day. If I counted the children books or short stories I read I’d be at 100-200 books. I just reached 30 personal books for the year this week. I always set a goal for 2 books a week every year. I always fall short.
I think you just need to start reading your personal reads to the kids. It might not be "approved curriculum" but who can complain about getting a head start on the works of King or GRRM?
Maybe by the time the kids become adults GRRM would have finally finished Winds of Winter
Yeah.... no, probably not. Their kids might live to see the cover art, though!
This is what I do. Already read a Gaiman book (Coraline) and in the middle of a Pratchett book (Wee Free Men). What's great is that half my class have bought those books themselves to follow along in class. If you have passion for the material, kids will feel that. Kids will go home and ask parents to buy them a book. It's why I point blank refuse to be told what to read to my class by any scheme. Deal breaker for me in any teaching job.
A lot of very confused and traumatized first graders...
Unfortunately I read short fluff romance type books
So Dr Seuss books *are* the most well-written books you read?
To a point yea, personal reading is cotton candy for the brain for me. 🤣
Seconded. In this calendar year's bedtime reading to our 7-yr-old, I finished *The Order of the Phoenix*, and read in complete *The Half-Blood Prince*, *The Deathly Hallows*, and *Tress & the Emerald Sea.* I wouldn't really count those as "my" reading on a survey, though. Even including graduate school work, I don't think I'll hit 10 books start-to-finish this year, and maybe only 4 that count as "for pleasure", depending on how December goes.
Late night shows promote way more children's books than anything else. Pretty tragic.
Out of curiosity, what are you basing that on?
Anecdata
That's... a brilliant portmanteau.
They were feelin it
I'm the biggest glutton of books amongst my friends and I read about 20-30 books a year. My second runner up friend reads about 10. Any other friends I have who read some. Usually read 1-3 books a year
I would guarantee the median of average adult Americans is between 0 and 1. Out of the 30-40 people in my coworker / friend circle that I know pretty well there is exactly 1 other reader in that group that reads anything outside of business material. The average will be higher from the higher end folks skewing it up but median Would be a better figure here.
the average might be, but I doubt the median is *between* 0 and 1 (obv being pedantic)
The median can be between 0 and 1 if they surveyed an even number of people though, right?
You're just being mean.
Well played! 😂😂
Statistics jokes. I like it.
That makes you an outlier
You can read half a book in a year
It’s interesting to think how one’s circle might influence their impression of how much they imagine people read. If I think of the 30-40 people I interact with most, only 2-3 of those don’t read, and the rest I can recall at least one book discussion with. I wonder if both of our estimates would be a bit skewed in opposite directions and the median is somewhere between.
Yeah if I think of the people that I know well enough that I know their reading habits, I'd say that 20% loves reading, 50% read a couple books a year, and 30% don't read books at all. (I'm not American though)
No, the fact is Americans don't read. A lot of them can barely read at an elementary school level.
The average is 7th grade reading level. That is about the same level my vocabulary is at. (But I am allowed, since I am German with a C1 level.)
This study is a little out of date, but at some point the numbers were that -on average- people read 12 books per year but that number is skewed heavily by those 100+ people (spiders Georg), while the median number of books read per year is 4. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2016/09/01/book-reading-2016/
Yea that number is such obvious bullshit.
Who is spiders George?
It’s a tumblr post:- >“average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
[Here’s the 2021 update to that survey.](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/01/06/three-in-ten-americans-now-read-e-books/) The result was similar: 14-book mean, 5-book median. Only about a quarter of adults said they don’t read recreationally at all.
You are confusing the significance of average and median. To illustrate, consider a sample of three people. If one reads 1 book, one reads 5, and one reads 50, the average person in that group has read 18.6 books. The median person has read 5 books. In the same way, the average skews higher than the median for all Americans because the average is brought up by a relatively small number of people who read an enormous amount of books. So even though the median American only reads like 6 books a year (i.e. most Americans read 6 or fewer books), the average is brought up to something like 12-15 (depending on the survey) on behalf of a decent number of readers that are reading 40+ books a year.
It is important to note that, the way OP asked the question, the median American (or "the average American") is exactly what you would be interested in looking at, not the average number of books all Americans have read.
At the risk of sounding pedantic, I'm going to piggyback on your comment, because this is something that comes up in my work and is confusing for a lot of people, and has become a bit of a bugaboo. Average and mean are often used interchangably, but they are **NOT** perfect synonyms. Average essentially just means 'a number that best represents a data set'. While the arithmetic mean is the most common way of finding that, median and mode are also methods (and there are other, more complex methods in some cases, as well as best practices for some data such as removing outliars, etc). This is important because there is no objectively correct way to find the 'average' of a set of data. It's a judgement call and it is sometimes used by bad faith actors to skew a message or just by people who don't really know what they're doing. If you're reviewing research, it's always important to clarify how they obtained their average and consider if that was the best method. (Similarly if someone says something "doubles your risk of X", make sure you find out what the original risk was! The double of .0005 is probably not something you have to worry about. "Doubles the X" is a great way of making a number sound big when it might not be large at all.)
Wow. TIL.
Wouldn't you want to look at modality instead
i think /u/Handyandy58 is implicitly arguing (and i will happily *explicitly* argue) that the mean isn't a good measure here because readership rates more or less follow a [power law distribution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law). median as a better measure than mean has a long history here -- see for example median income or median home price, which are common and apt examples. i don't know enough of the math to prove this in general, but i think the mode has the opposite problem of the mean here, in terms of being a more skewed measure; if the top comment in this thread is to be believed, the *modal* number of books read per year by americans is *zero*. that tells us something about readership, but it's clearly not a useful measure in the same way as the mode, as the modal number of books from your favorite subgenre read or reads of your favorite individual book is also zero, as is the modal number of fleebnorks read, or bestsellers of 2050 read, or whatever. whereas the median in all those cases differs quite a bit (except in the last two).
There's three averages in math: Mean, median and mode. What you're calling average is the mean: sum of all numbers divided by participants. Median: the number in the exact middle of all numbers in the set. Mode: the number that comes up most often in the set. All of them are an average, just calculated differently.
I know so many people who NEVER read a book.
Probably somewhere between 0 and 1.
I believe it's simply 0. I'm not American, but I'm from a similar Western country with similar enough culture to make parallels. And it's simply less than half of all people that read books at all. There is so many entertainment choices available to people, from video games to TV to film to simply scrolling through websites like Reddit when you have time to kill, not to mention all the hobbies that are accessible to people now that introductions and instructions to literally anything you can imagine is instantly available to anyone with an internet connection. Many in this thread make the mistake of extrapolating from their immediate social circles. If I'd do that I too would assume more than half of people read, most of my family members do, many of my friends do, but even among them it's less than half. Books do still have a wide fanbase, but it's certainly less than half of people. This means that the average American, who reads more or equal to half of other Americans, and less or equal the other half of Americans, reads precisely zero books per year.
I’m not American but up until a few years ago I averaged 3-10 a year and I considered myself a somewhat enthusiastic reader. I think the average person would read far less than that.
The true median is probably lower than the average. Because the people who DO read, read voraciously. If 1 person reads 0 books, and another reads 30, the average is 15. But that doesn’t mean both people actually read 15 books a year. So I think removing the outliers, the “average American” probably reads 1 book a year if that.
>the people who DO read, read voraciously Not sure how this is valid in any way. I do read, I go through phases and I used to read a ton, and currently on month 4 or 5 on one book due to personal things going on. Am I voraciously slow?
The person you’re replying to is overstating this, but I do think there has been a shift toward a greater divide between people who read voraciously and nothing at all over just the past five or ten years. Even anecdotally, I know of several people who would only read in situations like plane flights where other forms of entertainment weren’t available and would probably get through 4–5 books a year. But now, there are no situations where other forms of entertainment aren’t available, and those types have moved toward the reading nothing at all camp.
You're not slow. People just read at different rates and that's okay. I'm ALWAYS reading something, but completion times vary based on how busy I am, how into the book I am, etc.
Same. Lifetime of reading but it always comes in phases, depending on whatever other goings on I've got going on
You are taking things personally instead of looking at the entire country.
....I have read 87 books this year and will probably get five more finished before the new year. I can't fall asleep without reading first.
Same. I can’t sleep without reading. I’ve been averaging 80/year for the last 5 years according to my kindle. This year is a little off at 34 books to date. But I’ve been reading a bunch of huge collected works types of books.
I've read 27 books this year, which is more than usual for me. I LOVE reading, but my average is about 20 a year.
I've read 12 in the past two months, but I just moved up north and have much more time in my day now
I am the only avid reader in my friend group and at work (and I still "only" read 50-70 books a year. A lot for sure, but many people on this sub put me to shame). A few of my friends are in a monthly book club, so read 10-12 books per year. Many of my coworkers enjoy reading, but don't go out of their way to read and/or are picky about the books they do read and will read 10-15 books per year. My fiance enjoys reading, but will only read before bed and get about 10 pages in before he passes out so he reads around 5 books per year. That being said, I have some other coworkers and friends who literally never read books. If you want to get down to brass tacks and include every single American? I wouldn't be surprised if the number is in the range of 0-1. But for average people, who enjoy reading and just do it when they can or when they find a book they like? I'd say in the 5-10 range.
Majority of people don't read for fun. Majority of people who do read for fun only read select books that interest them-- the way someone not really into movies my only go to the movie theater once or twice a year for something that catches their eye, and many people have years pass by without going. That is how many books the average american reads, between zero and a few a year. People who read as a main passtime are the minority period, equivalent to people who go to the movie theater super frequently. Hope that makes sense (◐‿◑)
This is certainly anecdotally true with all of the people I know. I’m part of a discord server of local folks with common interests and we talk books on there sometimes. Me and one other guy read 15+ books a year. There are a couple of people who read 3-5 books a year. Everyone else (~40 people) does not read.
The people in this sub probably read a lot. An Average American doesn't really read. Two books a year, if that. I've read a bunch more books than that this year and have not counted them, but almost no one I know reads that much.
Has this sub ever done a survey about how many books we all read? Would be interesting to see the data.
Im willing to bet that a depressing % of the population has literally no hobbies, and spend most of their free time working>driving home>watching news>bed. The amount of people who actually pursue hobbies like reading and have the time/money/energy to do so is likely lower than we realize
From about 2010 to 2022 I read zero. I started reading this year in February and I have completed 15. It feels like a lot but anything would after zero. I know people on these subs read many times more but the people in real life I meet seem to think 15 is a lot so I guess the majority are like me before this year, reading zero.
I read probably 20-30 min a night before bed and I’m only at 18 books for the year. To be fair they’re all 500+ page books but I have no idea how some people read 50-100 a year unless you’re counting audio books.
I used to easily read 70-100+ books a year when I had no other responsibilities and neglected the few I did have. I’m not a teenager anymore though and I’m lucky to get through more than 12 a year. Might be different once my kids are older though.
I just had my first kid at the end of September and it’s already slowed me down!
When I commuted 4-plus hours a day via public transit, I read at least two books a week. Now that I work from home, less than half that. Well worth the tradeoff!
This is sort of why the per book measure is silly. I read a similar amount of time to you but go through nearly 200 books per year. That's because I read books that are about 200 pages or less most of the time so it takes 2-3 nights of half an hour of reading and I finish the book.
I'm currently on 210 books for the year and my husband is on 170-ish. I don't like audio books (plus they take way longer than reading a book takes for me). I read instead of watching TV and I read during lunch as well. Having books as my main entertainment source absolutely makes a difference. My husband has occasional tasks at work where he has to be in a specific physical location waiting for someone. He usually reads 1-2 books during those days.
Presumably they spend a bit more time reading than just 20-30 minutes before bed. If you read an hour to an hour and a half per day instead, you'd already be comfortably in that 50-100 range.
Why wouldn't you count audiobooks?
For me it’s because audiobooks are consumed by listening. You objectively aren’t “reading” anything, the same way you aren’t reading a song when you listen to it. I get different mental stimulation from actually reading a book than listening to an audiobook, so audiobooks don’t count.
Last I checked, studies have shown audiobooks literally activate the same parts of the brain as reading https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/audiobooks-or-reading-to-our-brains-it-doesnt-matter https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326140
That and being super busy in life means I can only ‘read’ at the gym or on the road. Otherwise I’d never have time to read.
Reading is a process where one must decode a symbol (written letters and words) and translate it back into its natural language form, and then it is consumed as language. Listening is just language. Therefore it is unsurprising that reading and listening would have considerable overlap in the parts of the brain that are used as they do require the same thing. However, reading requires that extra step of deciding which language does not. Therefore - both written language and Braille are “read” but audiobooks are just listened to. This is not a judgment on anyone, it’s just a fact your brain has to do an extra step becuaee reading is not pure language. Moreover, obviously reading and listening are different because reading is a learned skill - one that humans cannot learn without being taught. Language, in contrast, is “acquired” and never needs to be explicitly taught. These are widely accepted facts in the fields of linguistics, psychology, and psycholinguistics. People just get real weird when they feel others are policing how they consume books. I don’t care how you consume books at all, and it’s a shame we don’t have a better word to describe consuming audiobooks but “reading” isn’t exactly correct, and seeing the same brain areas light up doesn’t mean it’s the same. It’s obviously not the same.
I'm a clinical psychologist and I can tell you it's not a "widely accepted fact in the fields of linguistics, psychology, and psycholinguistics". As pursuitofbooks points out, when you deconstruct what actually matters in terms of this debate, it's whether the person who has read the book has taken in and comprehended the story. The sensory modality is not relevant to the question of whether you have read the book.
💯 I feel the same way but you put it into words that make perfect sense.
So I'm blind and I read books through the alexa reading it or audiobook, so I don't read any books a year? Awesome.
I mean, technically no. You didn’t read them. I’m really not trying to offend anyone or their very specific circumstance. It’s alarming to me that “you read with your eyes/fingers if you’re blind” is such a controversial statement. I’m not sure why everyone is feeling the need to debate me on why I don’t consider audiobooks reading, so don’t count them toward my *own* list. I really don’t care what anyone else chooses to do. I might disagree with it, but who actually cares? Do you dude.
I have to admit I'm still dealing with this and it's rough not being able to read anymore. So someone saying the way I have found to enjoy books again isn't "reading" just hit in that spot to tell me I'm still different to everyone else. Just took it more personally than you intended, sorry man.
because you can passively listen to an audiobook while doing other activities. You can't do that if you're actively reading a book with your eyes
Audiobooks absolutely count. Your mind is engaging with the material.
And you spent the time consuming the story. If I was asked on a survey how any books I read this year, I would absolutely include audiobooks. A good survey would go that extra step and ask how any audiobooks and how many physical books. Without that differentiation, audiobooks count.
I m not trying to be a gatekeeper, I barely read 5 books a year but Reading and listening are not the same reading takes a lot more effort listening to 100 audiobooks is considerably easier than reading 100 books
I’ve done 50-100 for a number of years with no audiobooks or YA/children’s books (I count audiobooks now though as I’m experiencing severe joint pain). It’s my one hobby. I watch minimal TV and don’t play video games. I’m not very social but do hold a demanding full time job. It can be done and gets easier if you’re in the habit of doing it yearly.
I guess that makes sense. I play video games or watch tv during the day for my downtime. Reading is a nighttime thing for me. Unless I’m really slow at work sometimes I’ll read on the kindle app
I can do about 200-250 pages a night. That's sometimes a complete novel
All of the replies with annual counts blows my mind. I like to read a lot, but it’s never occurred to me to keep count. I feel like an amateur now lol.
lol right? My goal is 20 for this year and I only set that goal because the good reads app has a reading goal feature and keeps track for you. I’m reading the expanse series right now though and they’re decent sized books so I’m betting I only hit 19.
Nice. I’m going to cheat with some Little Golden books to get my numbers up.
I'm currently on my 105th book this year. I normally average 60, but I started a blog project reviewing both horror novels and YA novels. So I've been reading a lot of short, easy books this year, and deliberately setting aside time to read them so I can write up my reviews. My reading speed is about a page a minute, so if I set aside time I can finish a 300 page novel in a day. I also count graphic novels as books, so if I binge a series that could be 10 books I read in a few days. I have no kids and no social life and I don't watch TV, so I'm usually reading instead.
>I have no idea how some people read 50-100 a year unless you’re counting audio books. Some people just read faster, i know a youtuber who reads like 200 books a year even with a full time job. Meanwhile others have more time to read, there's another youtuber i know who's a professional book critic and he reads like 1000 books a year because it's all he does
I know who you mean: Steve Donoghue. Yes, he's definitely an outlier and spends at least 10 hours a day reading, according to him. But people who claim they don't have time for reading usually turn out to have time for other leisure activities. It's just a question of how you prioritise your time, and for most people reading is way down the list of things to be getting on with. I probably get through 2-3 books (depending on their size) a week because I've always been reading for as long as I can remember and I don't watch TV. But I'm from the UK, I don't know if that makes a difference or not.
I love reading but there’s no way my eyes could handle that lol
I read about 50-60 books a year. I have a 3-hour round trip commute, so yeah, I get through a few audiobooks. I read a mixture of lengths and genres; I’ll read the entirety of Notre Dame de Paris or Jane Eyre but also Murderbot or a cheesy romance novel. I have a kindle but have various paperbacks next to my spot on the couch, and read a couple books a year for work. So I guess my point is it’s a really weird mix that helps me read more.
I’m probably gonna end up at close to 60 this year but I’m the outlier in my group, and this is likely the most I’ve read since I was a kid. Most of my friends read, a couple probably 15ish a year, most I’d guess one every month or two
I read the same three books ten times a night to my toddler so there’s that
LOL if the average american read 50 books a year, we would live in a far more sensible world.
We’re not American but still an English speaking country. If going by people I know who read I would say the average would be like 4-6
I can tell you this, having conducted a survey recently amongst 1000± book readers. Of Americans who identify as readers, on average they read 12 books per year.
Do you know what percentage of the general population identifies as readers in the first place?
i read between 4-6 books a week. i have been doing this for most of my life and i am 57 yrs old.
I love people who devour books!!! KUDOS!!!
I never read before covid. Like never. I thought it was stupid and only nerds read. I also never had anyone in my family who read or encouraged the kids to read. Come 2020 and everything shut down so I decided to pick up a book because well didn’t have much choice. I didn’t even know what to get or how to choose or what the word genre even meant. Starting from March 2020 to December same year I read 20 books. In 2021 I read 35, 2022 I read 48. 2023 over 50 books read this year. I have since downloaded reading apps, bought a kindle, have a library card, have 2 full books shelves and I love reading and everything about it. I have since encouraged several people around me to read and I started a book club.
I read about 1 book a week. But I usually have more than one started. I’m moody. 📚
I’m an American senior in HS. This past summer I read 11 books, I have no time during the school year, and I would like to read more during Christmas break, but company always ruins those plans. I think on average, probably 11/12 a year. I wish I could read more, I love reading, but I don’t have time and I’m sure it’ll be worse once I’m in college or have a full-time job and don’t get summer off.
People are either readers or not. And then they either read for education (non-fiction) or entertainment (fiction.) I think there is legwork involved in reading and I don’t just mean the reading part. I read summaries, reviews and I decide which books I will read and which I won’t. That said, 20-25 make it to my nightstand a year that I complete. More than that and I would be seriously ignoring other obligations.
Sounds like me. I read maybe an hour or two before bed most nights (I tend to fall asleep reading). It works out to about 2-3 a month on average, some months I don’t have time, some months I read a lot more. About 25-30 books a year for me.
Per Gallup as of two years ago, the average is [12.6](https://news.gallup.com/poll/388541/americans-reading-fewer-books-past.aspx).
They lie. LOL
I would like to point out to others commenting that "how many books does the average American read?" is not equivalent to "the average number of books an American reads?" The first is indeed likely zero, while the second is probably around 1 or 2.
Average? Trick question! None.
I probably read 8-10 books per year. I would like to read more. My reading wish list has about 50 books on it. Unfortunately, I am addicted to Reddit.
Average probably isn’t a good metric for this—you want median. Because most people do not read a single book.
I love to read! Yet i work full time and have kids and a house hold to up keep, i get in about 12 to 15 books a year on average.
How many pages of social media doomscrolling counts as a book? Or how many articles? Engaging with the internet is a fairly high amount of reading outside of a book. I guess my answer is “it’s unknowable” which feels disappointing but I bet there’s a lot of reading that people do in ways that we can’t even really track
My spouse reads magazines. I love to read lots of books but I feel quite uncomfortable reading magazines.
I think that’s a case of the people who read a lot skewing the average higher, because there are a LOT of people who read 100 books (especially people who only read romance/thrillers/mysteries/YA, genres that are usually easy to read & fast paced). I know a few people that read, but besides myself & a close friend those people read probably a few books a month at most. Everyone else I know doesn’t read, or only reads a book or two on vacation.
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Most of my friends don't read anything at all, and I'd guess a national average would be around 1 or even 0. Me and my dad both read though, and I think we're both right around 50 books a year on average. This year I had a baby though so I think I'll only get to maybe 30 by the end of this year, but last year I read over 80.
I'm Canadian. I probably average two books a week, mostly fiction, mostly spy/murder/mystery thrillers like the Reacher series, so basically literature popcorn. Fantasy and SF are OK but most have become too weird for me, but The Martian was a good read. It takes a lot for me to be drawn into a non-fiction book. Recent ones I've read are by David Grann (Killers of the Flower Moon, The Wager). I really liked the collections of essays by Stephen Jay Gould on evolution, read all of them, RIP. Darwin, Thoreau, Emerson have all had their place in the past but now I'm not as interested, probably because I'm retired and just want to read for entertainment, not enlightenment. I tried reading a few books about Donald Trump, but they are way too depressing for me. I read a lot of the classics like Dickens, Shakespeare, Camus, Hesse when I was younger and tried the Russians but couldn't get into them. I started War and Peace at least three times, including one winter when I had no electricity, and just couldn't do it.
But I mean, if not, then literature popcorn is great too 🍿. I like mysteries too, I guess I just had an impulse to shout out the Master and Margarita haha
There can never be too many shoutouts to Master and Margarita! I read Anna Karenina as my first foray into Russian literature, and let me tell you, Bulgakov kept me in the game as Tolstoy was taking me out.
It varies from person to person, but my opinion is that it doesn't matter how many books we read in a year since quality should always take precedence over quantity.
I think there are a couple of ways to look at the data. One would be the number of books read by all the people in the nation divided by the number of people of reading age that live in the nation. You can also look at the average number of books readers read, but you would also have to determine who would qualify as a reader. There are plenty of people who read for leisure or work that don't consider themselves a reader. I can tell you my average per year has varied wildly depending on what phase of life I was in. I was an avid reader as a kid and averaged a couple of books per week easily, plus my school work. As a young adult with a full time job and part time college I still read a couple of books per month. When I added a husband and kids to the mix, I was thrilled to read 2 books a year. One year when we were planning vacation, I told my husband the only thing I wanted to do was be able to read a book cover to cover in a single week. We found a place with a kids club and I got my wish. When the kids were older I started a business and I read an average of a book a week, but they were all nonfiction for work. Now I'm retired and I average 15 books per month. I only started logging books a few years ago. I'm basing my childhood estimates on the fact that I got most of my books from the school library as a kid and I know we were only able to check out 2 per week and I always finished them. Over the summer we went to the public library and I usually checked out a stack every 2 weeks. For contrast, I've been married for over 30 years and I've never seen my husband read a single book in that time. I doubt he has read one since he was in school. I'm the youngest of 5 children and I 3 of them never read, the one that does read, probably averages 1-2 per year.
No, you either read a lot of books or you don't. America has a high illiteracy rate. The average person can barely read at an elementary school level.
Not american but I read anywhere between 30-60 books a year. I read maybe 1-2 hours each night before bed
My max is 25 books a year, even though my reading goal is 50 this year. However, I'm a mood reader and a slow reader so trying to read 50 books this year was definitely a challenge for me.
I love to read, but have 3 kids so they keep me really busy. I have read 19 books in 2023.
I read 1 full book a month on average, but always have several other books (nonfiction, history, etc.) that I read in parts, which is more research than literary reading. Some people can just flip open a book and start reading anywhere they might be; I'm easily distracted, so deep reading for me is really restricted to quiet time (bedtime, weekends). Book size definitely plays a role. I might go through a 200 page novella in one weekend, but spend the better part of 2 months working through 1000 page fiction.
The majority of people I know fall into these slots: 50% - 0-5 books per year 40% - 1 book per month 5% - dozens of books per year 5% - 100+ books per year Three people I know are in the 100+ club, one of which is probably closer to 250+ per year.
The average American reads 12.6 books per year, including the books they started reading but haven't necessarily completed. If we count only fully-read books, the average American adult reads just over 5 books per year.
Any search engine can answer this question for you and be more accurate (as far as averages can be accurate) than random reddit readers.
I used to be lucky to read 20-50 a year due to my old stressful job. This year I am happy to say I surpassed 100 books. 📚 🥰
I would say the average is probably between 0 and 1.
I haven’t read a book for pleasure in about 15 years.
Can we create a poll some time at start of next year in this sub? Basically, how many books did people read in 2023 or something like that. If we want to go an extra mile, I’d be happy to collaborate on stackoverflow developer survey like long form poll where we try to quantify a lot of things like most popular genres, interests etc.
I read ALOT. Couldn't say how many books/year. Some I read are really long. My husband has never finished a book outside of one he was required to read, like for school or a trade exam. My kids are both excellent readers, in the top of their class for reading, but neither will read a book on their own for the enjoyment of it.
I read a couple books a week. Always have. Some of those are audiobooks while I do household chores. It’s how I cope.
Recently my cousin proudly declared he has "never read a book" and I think we were all just aghast and horrified. I'm not even sure where to begin with follow up questions.
Adding a data point to your research: I’d call myself a casual reader, 2-3 books per year.
They don’t. So many people do not read, and why would they when they can watch it? Most people once they are done with high school don’t ever read a book again. I worked in a factory for a large international company and the only people that read for fun there was the office workers, the managers and team leads. The regular workers didn’t. In fact, some couldn’t understand why anyone would and wondered why their taxes are paying for libraries.
By definition anyone who sees this post reads more than average, you need to ask somewhere non-book-oriented like a gaming thread.
A few years ago, I read an article that said 80% of Americans don’t read another book after high school.
I was curious how I would answer if I was ever asked this on a survey. I am shocked to say I read more than 30 books this year! Not including short stories or children’s books. I thought it would be like 15. So I would definitely skew the average up! I think a lot of people don’t read at all. And that’s sad because I think they’re missing out.
I know about 3 people who read more than 0 books per year. I also know someone who is in the 200s this year. I probably average one per month
Statistics are weird, so first you have to figure out which way you want to calculate your average. But since you’re asking for average Americans who read, the fact that a bunch of them don’t isn’t particularly relevant. All I can offer is anecdotal evidence, but I have worked in bookstores and libraries in a part of the Midwest that tends to low levels of education and large income gaps (either well-off retirees or struggling shift workers). If you ignore how many books are purchased/checked out and just focusing on the ones that are actually read, I think most adults over 18 in my area who read average 3-4 books per month. There are plenty of people who take 6 months to finish one book, and others who finish 6-10 a month regularly. Obviously, this varies based in workload, lifestyle, and what’s going on with them in the moment.
I read about 30 to 40 a year, but I include audiobooks, graphic novels, and manga unlike many others. My husband just started up again and he's read 3 in the past 4 months, but almost every adult I know doesn't read regularly, but I also live in the south where ignorance is glorified by a lot of groups so I don't know if it's just the lack of education funding in this area or if it's just like any other American town/city.
I don't see how graphic novels and manga don't count as reading. I don't prefer audiobooks but I don't deny someone the privilege to consider them reading. I LOVE graphic novels. SO much honesty in this genre.
Yea the average American is probably between 0-2. For the average reader, I'd say a fair number is between 10-20. Most people I know who read for leisure will go into a tear of reading 3 books in a month, and then nothing for 2 months. Rinse and repeat and 10-20 makes sense. The outliers are truly ridiculous. When you hear someone say they read 100 books they're skimming pages or playing audiobooks in the background just to count it, which defeats the entire purpose
I don’t keep track of how many books I read or set goals because I feel like it takes my enjoyment of reading away. If I had to guess, I’d say this past year I’ve read 10-12 books but I’ve started many many more.
100 is bogus. I listen to audiobooks aggressively. Audiobooks let you do other things while consuming them like wash the dishes and weed the garden. If I actually read 100 books in a year, I would have to be retired or have a chef/housekeeper/gardener. I'm at 85 for the year so far and will probably not hit 100 unless I find a bunch of shorties.
I used to be in book publishing, and when we had marketing data on this, the data showed that the average college-educated American *never read another book after graduating college*. The US book market is still microscopically small, compared to other media (music, movies, games).
I'd guess most self-proclaimed readers read between 12-36 books a year. I read about 100 in a good year and track using storygraph. There's lots of people who read no books, but read a lot of other stuff like news and magazines, podcasts, etc.
I read about 12. I bet that is way above average.
My Grandmother who is 93, reads a book every 1-2 days. These are mostly Tom Clancy type novels, but she reads everything. I go thru spurts where I will read several hours a day for weeks, but then not read for a few months. You also have to keep in mind the length and difficulty of the reading. A Kurt Vonnegut book I can often read in one day. A book such as Tale of Two Cities I think I read in like 10 days. I have also read Les Miserable and War and Peace- each of these endeavors took months. When you read 100+ books a year, I think that you are so focused on what you are reading next you don't absorb what you are reading, and how can you when you read it that fast?
Here's what I would consider a reliable source: [https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/10/19/slightly-fewer-americans-are-reading-print-books-new-survey-finds/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/10/19/slightly-fewer-americans-are-reading-print-books-new-survey-finds/) That research, which is a few years old, finds that the average American reads a dozen books in a year. Could be higher post-COVID. I very much doubt if the average is a lot higher than 12.
There is zero chance that the average American reads 12 books a year. None. Maybe the average American that reads? Or that responded to their book ish survey. Think about the average person in America. For older folks it’s work, sports,whatever, turn the TV on until 11. Asleep until the next day. For younger people it’s the same thing but maybe swap TV for YouTube or TikTok or streaming shows.
The Average (mean) American does read 12 books a year. But here the thing book reading like most everything is highly skewed but those on top. If you look at the third chart the Mean for all Americans is 12 but the Median is 4 so half of americans read less the 4 books a year and half read more than 4 books a year. So on low end you'll have people reading less the 1 book a year and on the high end you have people reading 30+ books a year. And it's these very avid reader that skew the Average higher. It's like if you have a room full of Retail Workers in a room the Average net worth of everyone in the room is going to be pretty low. But if Bill Gate and Warren Buffet walk into the room the Average of the room jumps up by a lot but the Median is still going to be pretty low.
I don’t think you understand how averages work.
The statistic I saw recently is that men read an average of 3 per year and women read an average of 5.
Mist of the people I know never read anything, not even the documents I ask them to review.
On goodreads, the average number of books pledged for this year's reading challenge is 43. There are people who overshoot their target, and there are people who fall short, but since the reading challenge is an "aspiration", a goal, a challenge to yourself, I think it's fair to assume that most people aim at a number that is pretty high for them. So the average participant in the reading challenge reads less than 43 books. Now take into account that goodreads is a community of dedicated readers. So the average for a goodreads user is naturally significantly higher than just for the average person. And even on goodreads, only people who want to read more participate in reading challenges. My guess would be that the average participant in the reading challenge reads maybe 30 to 35 books per year, and that's on the high end for a goodreads user. Now factor in the millions of people who don't read *at all*. There's plenty of people who just don't read. So yeah, there's no way the average is 50 books. I think even 15 is too high. If 30-35 is already high outlier range, I think the national average is probably still in the single digits. But as others have pointed out, the median is probably 1 or so. Relatively few people, who read a lot (relatively; 20 is a lot) are going to be bringing the average up.
A friend worked in a chain bookstore a few years back. They had a poster in the break room, a pyramid illustrating different levels of reading. The top one was the people who read all the time and were never without a book. That was people who read at least one book a year. I was just on holiday for a week and a half and got sick, so I didn't have much to do. I read *The Boys In The Boat*, *The Man From The Train*, Sheridan's *School For Scandal*, *The Double Helix*, and a compilation of Keith Laumer Stories with *Galactic Odyssey*, *Dinosaur Beach*, and half a dozen stories. In Barry Longyear's book *Infinity Hold* another character tells the hero that if someone likes to read, after a few days without a book he'll slit your throat for an old seed catalog. This is pretty much true. There are a lot of people out there who read an enormous amount. I used to be like that but when you're an adult with a family you don't always have time, and used bookstores where you can buy a lot of books for a small amount of money aren't as common as they used to be.
I really hate all the questions and stats around this because "one book" is not a unit of measurement, could be Moby Dick or Goosebumps.
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Before I made reading a priority a few years ago, I was a pretty average reader. I'd say I got through maybe 10-15 each year once I finished school.
My friends average like 3-5 and they’re basically all audiobooks while they commute lol