Writing Up, Reading Down

A recent New York Times article quoted stats from a National Endowment for the Arts report that stated 53 percent of Americans who participated in the NEA survey did not read a single book in a year’s time. As the NYT reporter Rachel Donadio writes, this is “a state of affairs that has prompted much soul-searching by anyone with an affection for (or business interest in) turning pages.”

The article continues with some interesting stats about the book business, such as an increase from 300,000 titles published in 2006 to 400,000 titles published in 2007. The bulk of the article is about the self-publishing phenomenon and how it is affecting the publishing industry.