U.S. Readers Are Getting Less Voracious

The mean number of books read per U.S. resident per year, including e-books and audiobooks, has gone down from 15.6 in 2016 to 12.6 or roughly one book per month in 2021. While this result of a recent Gallup poll might be a cause for concern on the surface, our chart shows that the book industry has nothing to worry about in the United States.

83 percent of respondents to the poll claimed to have read at least one book in the past year, a percentage similar to previous polls from 2016 and 2005. This indicates that reading, be it on paper or in digital form, is still very much one of the favorite pastimes of U.S. residents. The drop in mean number can be explained by fewer people reading larger amounts of books per year. Still, the percentage in this bracket is pretty sizable: 27 percent of respondents finished or started more than 11 books in 2021, with 6 percent even tackling more than 51 tomes of knowledge and entertainment. When taking demographic indicators into consideration, the past year's numbers have largely been propped up by college graduates and young adults, of which 35 and 31 percent, respectively, read more than 11 books.

Overall, the printed book industry in the U.S. has experienced considerable growth in 2021 in terms of volumes sold. According to data by research firm NPD, U.S. publishers sold 825.7 million books this past year, an annual increase of 8.9 percent. Still, the revenue of the United States printers has remained largely steady at an estimated $25.7 billion since 2018 according to the AAP Statshot Annual Report.