One in Five Americans Have Listened to an Audiobook, One in Four Have Read an eBook
After a two-year pause, the Pew Research Center has at long last conducted a new poll on media use in the US.
A total of 2,002 adults were polled in the first week in January, and the report found:
About three-quarters (74%) of Americans have read a book in the past 12 months in any format, a figure that has remained largely unchanged since 2012, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in January. Print books remain the most popular format for reading, with 67% of Americans having read a print book in the past year.
And while shares of print and e-book readers are similar to those from a survey conducted in 2016, there has been a modest but statistically significant increase in the share of Americans who read audiobooks, from 14% to 18%.
Overall, Americans read an average (mean) of 12 books per year, while the typical (median) American has read four books in the past 12 months. Each of these figures is largely unchanged since 2011, when the Center first began conducting the surveys of Americans’ book reading habits.
This is of course a survey on reading habits, not buying habits, a detail worth remembering when these stats are misused when someone proclaims (once again) that ebooks are dead.
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