Now that the holidays are in full swing, I see lines practically out the door at bookstores. The great last-minute gift of Christmas is, of course, a book. Whether or not anyone will actually read the book is irrelevant - the important thing is that a book is given.
Does anyone have any statistics? I asked a manager of one of the big chains and he had no idea other than a top-of-the-head guess.
I understand and appreciate the question, however I think a “threshold” needs to be defined.
I bought andread the first two pages of Atlas Shrugged, then gave up. Does this count as a read book?
What if you manage to read all but the last page?
What if you read someone elses book, does this weigh in anywhere?
I’m not sure there is a hard answer for this. I’m thinking it’s going to be opinion mostly. And speaking of that, here’s my tiny little data point, and a bit of opinion.
I‘ve been given hundreds of books over the years, and except for one or two, I’ve read them all
The one or two were things like religious books aimed simply at preaching, or reference books in fields I’m not interested in.
Speaking of reference books, they can be a little different, as you don’t always read them cover-to-cover like a novel, but just keep them around to use as needed. However even with those I usually kind of thumb through them at least once (and sometimes many times) to get a feel for the contents.
So for me, the percentage of gift books that are read is near 100%. Talking with the people in my family and circle of friends leads me to believe that for most of them the same is true.
I do know people who don’t read much, but they don’t seem to receive many books as presents either.
I’ve been a professional for 30 years and I’ve never seen anything that would even lead to a WAG on this. The publishing world is essentially unique as an industry that does no surveys of its customers. They’re just beginning to get some data on book buyers through BookScan, but readers are a different issue.
And I don’t think you CAN get a meaningful response set of ‘readers’ anyway.
In the magazine business I’ve had many surveys run. And they’ve averaged about 50% ‘always or most of the time’ read.
Now magazine’s are on hell of a lot more disposable than books so I can’t imagine that it would be lower.
As for me, almost every book in the house has been read and re-read. Just the nature of the beast here with Lady Chance and I.
And your response, presumably, is from people who are actively subscribing to your magazines. The OP asked about books given as gifts, to an audience who may or may not have any interest in that book, or any book for that matter. I don’t even read books given to me as gifts much of the time, either because I’ve already read the book or I have no interest or I have several thousand books on my to-be-read shelf, er, bookcases.
It would be hard even to survey this. When would you? You would need to give people time to read the books, but not so much time as to have forgotten what they received and did with them. Do you remember what books, if any, you got last year and whether you read them or not? Would non-readers remember?
Other than tacking such a question into a general social trends kind of much larger survey, which would lessen the applicability, I can’t see this question ever being asked of a representative sample. And it’s hard to think of anyone in whose interest it would be to pay for even that much of an inclusion, let alone a separate survey. The book is sold, the money made. Who cares if it got read or not? Other than the author, who doesn’t count for anything.
Wow. I consider myself a bibliophile and a heavy reader – especially durring the decade when I didn’t have a TV. But I read maybe half of the books the I buy. Many are reference books (like a wonderful ebay (/jon steward/ Dann you ebay /jon stewart/) buy on the tensor properties of solids in case I am ever called to teach such a class). Of the fiction books that I buy, well…If they are well written nearly 80-90%. If they are poorly written, I sigh, point them out to the Eiren and they gather dust.
I will agree that the threshold is a valid question. The publishers know what percent are sold (the others destroyed). Maybe the better questions are how many books does the average X$ person buy in a year and how many books does an average X$ person read in a year. Division and demographics could give a clue.