Who Is Reading What and Why
Quick look at a recent poll about how many Americans read (not many) and what they're reading
Yesterday, I saw an interesting if expectedly depressing survey of America’s reading habits in the Washington Post. The expectedly depressing part is that few Americans read many books. “46 percent finished zero books last year and 5 percent read just one,” Andrew Van Dam writes. “So, if you read more than two books in 2023, congratulations! You’re in the top half of U.S. adults.”
Of course, the “death of reading” has been written about my entire life and there’s nothing new to say. We live in a time of maximal distraction, maximal entertainment options, and minimal attention spans. The only thing this data reminds me is that people who blame the decline of reading on “MFA fiction” or “literary snobs” or whatever other grudges they have are a bit silly. Most Americans aren’t reading much of anything. They likely aren’t reading whatever small press literary fiction novel recently annoyed you and then swearing off books forever.
I never get too sad about this kind of data because, bluntly, I only care about the kind of books I think are good. Those books have always tended to have a small audience. “Books” is a broad category encompassing everything from Sudoku puzzle books to self-help books to ghostwritten campaign ads for politicians to, yes, soul-shattering and life-altering novels of sublime beauty. The decline of overall reading doesn’t necessarily say much about the sales of great novels. If Americans are reading fewer books today than 10 years ago, it probably means they’re reading fewer Dan Brown novels or celebrity memoirs. I can’t really get worked up about that.
Anyway, the poll—by The Economist/YouGov—has a lots of data points but the most interesting graph to me was the breakdown of genres. I imagine some of the rankings here will surprise people:
Much is expected (low ranking of Poetry, high ranking of Crime), but I imagine many will be shocked by the relatively high placement of “literary fiction” and the low ranking of YA. I’d speculate the latter is down to two factors. First, the poll surveyed adults so is missing teen readers. But also in recent years we’ve seen massive sales from genres marketed toward a similar set of readers: New Adult fiction like Colleen Hoover and Romantasy (Romance + Fantasy) novels like Rebecca Yarros. Hoover and Yarros combined for 5 of the top 10 bestselling adult fiction books in 2023.
In book-centric social media, it’s common to hear claims that “literary fiction” is niche and unpopular and in fact Romance fiction or else YA fiction or else genre fiction in general keeps the industry afloat. As someone with a foot in the SFF and literary fiction worlds, I’m often surprised at how common it is for SFF authors in particular to say they write “popular fiction” while literary fiction authors just write stuff for snooty professors that real people don’t read.
While granting the usual caveat that “literary fiction” is a vaguely defined and easy-to-critique label, literary fiction sells quite well. Look at the NYT bestseller list in any given week. By my count, about 50% of the current NYT hardcover list would get that label. Publishing isn’t giving huge advances to the Jonathan Franzens, Sally Rooneys, and Donna Tartts of the world for giggles or because of a CIA-MFA conspiracy. They do it because those books can make a lot of money. Publishers make bad bets, surely. There are plenty of famous big money literary flops. But there are plenty of big money flops in YA and other genres too.
Which genres are selling well fluctuates. YA might be the biggest trend one year, then Romantasy the next. Westerns used to sell bonkers, but sell little now. In recent decades, adult fiction has mostly been dominated by Mystery/Crime/Thriller books. But Literary Fiction is up there. Part of this is because Literary Fiction—well the kind that sells well—is marketed to the general book buyer while genre books are marketed towards readers interested in that specific genre. There are more general book buyers than X genre buyers.
The poll above is self-reported and it’s impossible to know exactly what books were placed where. Did readers of All the Light We Cannot See (a breakout literary bestseller from a few years ago) count the book as Historical or Literary? Did the aforementioned Romantasy books get placed in Romance or Fantasy? Were science fiction short story collections listed as Science Fiction or Short Story?
Still, I’ve seen the sales breakdowns from major publishers before and they mirror the poll above. More specifically, the largest sales of adult fiction are “General Fiction” (basically literary, historical, and women’s fiction combined) followed by “Mystery/Crime/Thrillers.” “Romance” is a distant third and “Science Fiction/Fantasy” a very distant fourth. Sales of Westerns, religious fiction, and other genres are minimal relatively speaking.
(Another sales myth in non-fiction: that “celebrity memoirs” keep the industry afloat. It’s actually Self-Help and Business books.)
Anyway, I know this has been a somewhat dry post. I’ll get back to some angry rants or (hopefully) inspiring craft advice soon. To circle back to the original poll, as depressing as the data might be perhaps it is good to remember that there are a lot of Americans. If 46% aren’t reading any books, that still means over 150 million Americans are. Publishing is still publishing lots of books in all genres, including whatever genres you like. Some of them are quite good. I’m going to go back to reading one now.
If you like this newsletter, consider subscribing or checking out my recent science fiction novel The Body Scout that The New York Times called “Timeless and original…a wild ride, sad and funny, surreal and intelligent.”
Other works I’ve written or co-edited include Upright Beasts (my story collection), Tiny Nightmares (an anthology of horror fiction), and Tiny Crimes (an anthology of crime fiction).
This is a really nice corrective to the usual declinist narratives (literature is dead, literary fiction is dead, everyone is reading YA).
I tend to be pretty optimistic about people, and optimistic about their intellectual ambitions. 12% of the surveyed adults report that they’re reading literary fiction…compared to 6% YA, 11% romance. Honestly, not bad
Why is Horror or at least Weird Fiction always ignored? Is it thrown in with "Thrillers" or "Fantasy" or "Suspense". It's all of those things, but it has become my favorite genre, even though it seems to be overlooked.