My google-foo is weak. I’m sure this information exists somewhere, but I can’t find it.
What percentage of people who have seen the movies have read the books first? A majority on these boards, I would guess (here in Cafe Society at least) but I’m talking general movie-going population…is the Professor getting a whole new audience?
I can’t imagine any way to accurately answer this question, since no one polled viewers of the LOTR films. Hope they found more readers - they sure deserve to.
You could make a poll…
Well, he certainly got some new readers, at least. One of my classmates saw the first movie, and by two weeks later, had read all three books, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion, and was asking me where he could find more. And I was amazed when I learned that our very own Skald the Rhymer was introduced to the books through the movie.
Depends on age? I know I read the books (also Silmarillion) many years (okay, 2-3 decades) before the movies existed.
I thought I remembered hearing that of the nine actors who made up the film Fellowship, three had not read the books before landing the role, including Viggo Mortensen.
I reckon a lot more people started the book than finished it.
Say what you like about the silly changes in Jackson’s film, but it is a lot more approachable than the book.
Well sales of the books are estimated at 150 million. Of course you can borrow someone else’s book so total readership will be some multiple of this.
Each of the movies sold more than 52 million tickets. And then there’s DVD and TV viewers to add on as well.
How you use those numbers to answer your question beats me though.
I first read the whole Lord of the Rings I think right after I got out of high school which was quite a few years before the movies came out (or at least the ones by Peter Jackson. Some of you might remember one that came out in the late '70s that was part animation, I think, but that effort was never finished and I never saw it before I read the actual books, anyway). I remember sitting in the back yard on summer days reading the story and enjoying some fine Scotch while doing so. Good times.
There are people who haven’t read the books?
FWIW, I had read the books before the 1978 Bakshi film.
The back of my edition says, “The world can be divided into two groups. Those who have read the Lord of the Rings and those who have not.”
I didn’t properly read it until I was 20. I guess as a 7th grader(my first attempt), I just wasn’t good enough a reader. I’d read the Hobbit and adored it, but had a hard time with Lord of the Rings after Gandalf fell.
I think LOTR is college-level reading. But that doesn’t stop kids who want from reading it.
“…and those who have yet too” is the usual form of that quote, and makes a bit more sense as a blurb. The form you gave is something of a meaningless tautology.
I’d hope most people would read the books before, at least, seeing the third film, so it doesn’t get ruined for them…
I made it through The Fellowship but I got less than halfway through The Two Towers before getting bored and giving up - and I’m a huge fantasy fan and voracious reader. I read Raymond Feist’s Silverthorn when I was seven and I think I was nine when I tried the LOTR books.
In fairness, I had seen the Ralph Bakshi film before I read the books which might have made them more boring.
I don’t think those numbers tell us anything because the books saw a massive sales spike after the movies came out. Houghton Mifflin sold two million copies of the one-volume paperback in one year after the first film was released.
for the record, I read the books for the first time in jr high, I think. It was a long time ago (late 60s or early 70s). I think the books are quite approachable - it’s just that no matter how much I love them, I know they are not for everyone.
I read a lot, but I find some books unreadable (or approachable). For example, I’ve read & reread “One Hundred Years of Solitude” but couldn’t make it through any of George R.R. Martin’s books that “Game of Thrones” is based on.
With the exception of The Hobbit, which I didn’t enjoy very much, I didn’t read the books until long after the extended-play DVD boxset was released. According to the thread I started about my reading the series, I read the three books from April 14th-April 26th, 2009. I would have been 42.
To be honest, I don’t think I could date anything else I read with that much accuracy. 
I read all of the books after being introduced to The Lord of the Rings at the movies. I was ten years old, and the movie was the 1978 Bakshi version.
I remember the books were a bit of a slog the first time I read them at that age, especially the segment with Tom Bombadil, and most of the non-Hobbit bits in The Two Towers. I got a lot more out of the books when I re-read them at 12 years old, and still more at 14.
This is humorous to me, because I find the HOBBIT BITS in Two Towers to be the slog.
I can’t tell you how many times I wished the Orcs had just killed Merry and Pippin, the annoying fuckers.