Mapping Europe’s Favorite Reading Materials

Are you into romance, sci-fi or biographies? According to research published by Studying in Switzerland, your answer is likely to vary based on which country you live in. Where fantasy is most popular in Europe, horror is the genre of choice in Latin America, while poetry is most popular in Asia.

As our map shows, reading preferences vary from country to country. Where English speakers in the UK and Ireland are more likely to have the classics at home, Norwegians seemingly opt for crime fiction and Dutch speakers in Belgium and the Netherlands lean towards a good thriller.

With the global book publishing industry hitting a revenue of $112.5 billion in 2022, this kind of oversight is valuable for knowing which books and authors may flourish in a given country. Data was collected by searching the number of times each book genre was Googled in different countries around the world, in both English and the native language.