It’s a glass half-full, glass half empty thing. I love how the media enjoys focusing on dramatic statistics devoid of any context.
Regarding the Amazon Kindle, Steve Jobs commented, “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore.” When considering other tools of entertaining, Jobs’s remarks lose steam quickly.*
Let’s start with the books. A 2007 Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that 25% of Americans didn’t read a single book in the previous year. On the flip side, that means 3 in 4 Americans did.
Forty-one percent reported reading up to five books, 31 percent read between six and 15 books, and 27 percent read more than 15. The [average] number of books read rises to seven when you eliminate those who sad they had not read any books. (Associated Content)
Consider other types of content. . .**
Per the MPAA, in 2006, 26% of survey respondents hadn’t seen any movies in the past year, which means just like books 3 in 4 Americans did hit the theaters. Reads familiar, yes? The average movie goer saw 7.6 movies. So reading is about on par with movie attendance.
Next, the Online Reporter covered an Ipsos study, TEMPO: Keeping Pace with Digital Music Behavior, published last spring, which concluded that “the average number of CDs purchased in the past six months is just fewer than three (2.8)” To keep our math consistent, we’re looking at around 5.6 CD purchases in the past year. People purchase more books than CDs on average. And more people are buying books than are buying CDs. “Half (51%) of US consumers aged 12 and older purchased a physical CD in the past six months,” whereas we say that 75% of Americans bought a book in the past year.
Additionally,
Just over half (51%) of US downloaders aged 12 and up have purchased individual digital tracks.
Arguably, while Gen Y and younger are integrated with technology like fish are with water, Boomers and older will possibly never fully embrace the technological lifestyle that is increasing taken for the norm. 3 in 4 Americans probably won’t be downloading for another 15 to 20 years; I just don’t see my grandma downloading heavily in her lifetime.
Don’t you agree that when compared to other entertainment experiences, books hold their own?
If you stumble across average DVD purchase rates, post them in the comments section; I had trouble finding those through a free resource. But I suspect it’s about 10 DVDs/year.
*Let’s give Jobs some credit and note that he was using a 2004 study that may or may not have had some credibility issues of its own.
**As a disclaimer: I presume the buy rates published for each product is posted as average bought among people buying 1+ of that item; I have not seen the original data sets for these studies. From my experience in market research, we generally took out the non-buyers from the buy rates. It A) buoyed the numbers and gave the client a false sense of security and B) more realistically represented buyers.
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honestly, i constantly feel like less and less people are reading….i can’t imagine substituting DVDs/TV for a book.
Ashley,
I imagine it’s not about substituting; perhaps it’s more of a separate but equal thing. Given multi-tasking allows individuals to squeeze well more than 24 hours of anything into one day, maybe books are read while watching TV or listening to music. Young people are at the very least reading textbooks, which the study didn’t seem to exclude from what I saw. . . a book is a book.