Reading is in trouble … what are we going to do about it?

Reading is in trouble. How deeply? There’s evidence it may be in a death spiral.

A new study published in the journal iScience found that daily reading for pleasure plummeted 40% over the past 20 years. The data was taken from a study of more than 236,000 Americans, no small sample size. Study co-author Jill Sonke called it “a sustained, steady decline” and “deeply concerning.”

Another study found if you read or listened to only one book in 2023, you read more than 46% of Americans. 

Another 20 years like this and we might have to turn out the lights. Books will be viewed like Laserdiscs or a Betamax tape, a curious and dead relic.

I’m disappointed … but not surprised. Anecdotally the data checks out; half the people I know or hang out with don’t read. A few that do read a lot. This steep decline may not be apparent if you spend all your time in insular groups. I belong to a couple sword-and-sorcery Discord groups and another S&S watering hole on Reddit where people love talking about reading and their favorite books and showing book porn.

But these places aren’t normal. If you’re reading this you’re probably like me, not “normal” either. I’m what’s known as a whale, I’ve got 1200 books or so in my library and that’s not counting digital titles and comics and the like. But we don’t need whales, a whale might buy a shit-ton but a whale is only going to buy one copy of a work (maybe super deluxe collector’s editions too, but you see my point). 

For reading to grow we need lots of people buying books and enjoying reading for pleasure. It needs to become ubiquitous and normal. People used to do this. They used to buy mass-market paperbacks off wire spinner racks. They read magazines with circulations in the hundreds of thousands or millions that supported the authors who wrote for them. 

Today they’re watching television and watching YouTube and scrolling social media. 

I do these things too but I carve out time for reading. It’s a habit like exercise that must be cultivated. Phone scrolling is unfortunately 10x easier. YT videos have 400x the views of blog posts (this is me griping).

Reading is never going to go away entirely, but it may never again hold a prominent place among pleasure activities. 

What are the consequences of this relatively recent shift?

A loss of knowledge, paradoxically at a time when we’re drowning in information. All the information you seek is readily available by asking ChatGPT … but you’re never going to remember it. Reading generic machine output about the importance of community and bravery and faith is not going to transform you like reading Watership Down.

Information does not equal understanding. We might absorb data but we make sense of it by telling stories.

I learn through sustained attention and absorbing multiple perspectives. Reading and then writing about what I’ve read. Lose that ability and we risk losing our future to others.

We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.

— E. O. Wilson

But beyond utility and understanding the loss of reading also means a loss of a unique form of entertainment. As I’ve noted before books offer a different experience and reward than movies or other visual media. I hate to think of a future where no one walks the labyrinthine halls of Xuchotl with Conan, sword in hand.

What do we do about it?

If you have children, read to them, study authors say. “Reading with children is one of the most promising avenues,” said Daisy Fancourt, Ph.D., a professor of psychology and epidemiology at University College London and co-director of the EpiAtrts Lab. “It supports not only language and literacy, but empathy, social bonding, emotional development and school readiness.”

Get creative with marketing books. Here’s an example of a $1M kickstarter for a book that put its backers in its stories. 

Recommend books. Support authors that continue to write, outlets that promote writing and reading. Promote old books too.

Write. If you can master its craft and discipline you’ve mastered a skill fewer and fewer possess. Good writing requires you to read. No way around that. Hey at least your stuff might get ingested by an AI and live on that way.

And above all don’t give up. We are the hopelessly outnumbered defenders on the walls of Minas Tirith, fighting against the dark and praying for the dawn. Perhaps we will hear the unexpected sound of horns.

TL;DR, Keep reading and sharing what you love. Support other writers. Keep writing. Fight on.