What DO people do with books?

Book sales went up by 8% in 2020. Guess we were cooped up in the house enough to drive us to read, and stir crazy enough to drive MORE of us to read, or as a recent study says, “engage” with books.

An article on OregonLive.com highlighted the 2020 survey done by Portland State University that challenged our assumptions about who uses books and how books are used. Noting that, “Data just about reading ignores a large portion of the things people do with books.”

The Immersive Media & Books Study surveyed 4,314 people who had “engaged with” at least one book during 2020, and provides new insight on what people do with books.

The study defines “engage” as buying, borrowing, reading, giving or subscribing to all or part of a physical, digital or audio book. That's a pretty broad definition, but it certainly covers the territory.

The conclusions of the study were as most would assume and, in some instances, a surprise.

Books are more than entertainment.

Not surprising, books serve as a resource for self-improvement, projects, gifts, textbooks, or something we read for work.

Media leads us to books.

Not surprising, watching a drama on Netflix based on a book led the audience to engage with that book. Books favored are digital (read Kindle) and audio books. Of course, there is still a place for word of mouth. The study notes that 20% of those in the survey reported that recommendations from others piqued their interest and led to engaging with a book.

Okay, now for the interesting and surprising parts.

These newly defined Book Engagers skew younger and more diverse!

Black and Latinx millennials “proportionally out-consume other age- and race-demographics,” and get this -- men engage at a higher rate than historically assumed.

Gamers love books.

People immersed in video gaming are one of the highest categories of engagers with books. That blows out all previously held biases.

Summary.

There's room in the book world for everyone, everyone's interest, and everyone's choice on how they prefer to consume books: reading on paper, listening, digital reading.

Well, almost everyone. Seems like there should an option to have the characters leap off the page as holograms. I think I'd like that.

Source: this study was funded by libraries, study groups, independent book publishers, and OverDrive. Read full study here: Immersive Media & Books 2020 Consumer Survey

Photo: Perfecto Capucine

You may also enjoy, How I got here and why it matters by Carol Doane.

Comments

How I got here and why it matters by Carol Doane

When I learned to write complete sentences I had one goal, to write a book. Somewhere in the youthful march through grade school, in some secret place long forgotten, is the book I started. I was seven-years old. I wrote prose, neatly in pencil, on blue lined notebook paper and added tiny illustrations at the top of my chapters. I drew my brother's birthday, bunny cake that celebrated his arrival at the terrible twos with frosting smeared onto his nose by my mother before she took his picture — with a film camera. I wrote about my uncle's visit from the distant country of Texas. I wrote about the way the world hurt and how small I felt. As I raced through school and ploughed down the writing path, I wrote stories and essays that high school teachers returned, scratched with red grammar corrections and tantalizing notes, such as, "This would make a good book." When I graduated college, my reward was to take a break, stop writing, and read what I wanted to...

Review: Everything I never told you by Celeste Ng

“Everything here reminds her of what Lydia could have been.” Lydia, a high school student has died and her mother drifts into her room to experience the smells and sensations of the girl who used to inhabit the space. Across town, Lydia’s father has dropped into another woman’s bed and sleeps tranquilly. Nothing in life has happened as it should. Love gets lost in withheld touches and unspoken thoughts. Parents’ expectations are driven into successive generations and serve as baggage rather than inspiration. Words hurt: “ this,” referring to Lydia’s parent’s marriage, “isn’t right.” Words are avoided: mixed, interracial, mismatched. Words that could reassure lay stagnant and not vocalized. Words are smithed to cope: “disappeared, fell in the lake, drowned.” The family’s search to understand the daughter who died, their search for a killer to pin their grief on, the destruction of trust, and the slow melting away of relationships show a family on the brink. The sprint ...

Review: Bride of the Sea by Eman Quotah

“And the word divorce is whispering in his ear, a secret no when else knows.” Muneer, a 23-year-old journalism student from Saudi Arabia attending university in the United States, is considering divorcing his 19-year-old wife, also from Saudi Arabia, who is pregnant and about to give birth. He has this thought when she is shoveling snow without a jacket, scarf, or gloves. She seems to like the cold. Before the baby is born, she strips down to her underwear and walks into a lake in winter. Is this a suicide attempt? It’s hard to grasp that concept –a young woman so unhappy she walks into a lake pregnant, a couple who doesn’t share, has no team goal, with divorce thoughts shortly before their child is born. The couple divorces. The wife, Saeedah, or Sadie as she is later known, flees with their daughter and spends the next seventeen years hiding from Muneer, his family, and her family. How is this life of hiding, that Sadie has taken her daughter Hannah on, different from a c...

Book Convos with Carol Doane

Search This Blog