Here are some numbers s/he uses to back up the claim:
1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
57 percent of new books are not read to completion.
70 percent of books published do not earn back their advance.
70 percent of the books published do not make a profit.
If this is indeed the case? why are all these bookshelves on all these bookstore monopolies filled with all these books? I sometimes wonder about that. If nobody is reading these books, then what are all these books doing here.
I also seem to notice a "trend" as it were , in the types of books printed. Before the Iraq war, it was ra-ra-ra.. then it was all the anti-bush-junta stuff that filled the shelves and now it is all about the "new threat", namely, Iran and the new geo-politial wars being fought.
Maybe it is my own bias towards books on politics etc which makes me notice these things, but sometimes I wonder if books are actually printed these days to be actually read or just to be browsed in the bookstores. Their catchy, "sound bite-ish" titles seem to indicate to me that to some extent, they also serve as subliminal messages.
Walk through a bookstore and you get the idea what the boys up in the capitals are upto.
