Leisure: But How Many Readers?

Reading is an arcane art. Nobody but a man, his conscience and possibly his wife can ever know whether he has opened the books that line his shelves. But publishers are interested in sales, not consumption, and any market researcher can tell them who buys what, when and where. The latest survey of book-buying habits, printed in Publishers’ Weekly and based on interviews in New York, Washington and San Francisco, confirms some old publishing assumptions and springs a few mild surprises. Among the findings:

>The most inveterate book buyers, by age, belong to the 18-to-34 age group, known in market-research jargon as “the age of acquisition”; roughly half of them bought at least one book in the past month.

>40% of the total population questioned bought one or more books in the past month, and men bought as many as women.

> Hardback and paperback sales were evenly divided.

> An erudite 9% of the population (representing upper income and education brackets) bought 54% of all the books sold.