Is reading a niche hobby?

[UnquietDad]

Not a nice hobby, a niche hobby.

Just following on, really, from my little bitching session about Meg Mathews and thinking of other slebs like Posh who seem proud not to be "readers".

Is it?

I suppose it's odd to think so when just about everyone you know reads books for pleasure. 95% of my friends read, and not just now and then, but often. They have packed and heaving bookshelves. If I walk into a house with no books, I feel it looks weird.

Some people actually pack ALL their books away so that they look more "tidy". I find this completely weirdo-shit behaviour.

But when you think about it, even the bestselling book this year (and I think we all know what that is) will probably top about 6 million copies. That's just a tenth of the UK population. Even assuming 2 people read every copy, that still means 80% of the country is immune to JK Rowling. And most writers dream of her sales.

Meanwhile, a TV programme which gets 6 million viewers - say "Casualty" or "New Tricks" - is thought to be doing quite well. Not amazingly, brilliantly, slack-jaw-with-wonderment well, but just quite well.

For a book to get a tenth of the sales of the last HP - 600,000 in hardback - would be beyond the dreams of avarice for most writers of popular fiction. That's just 1% of the UK population. Most writers sell a couple of thousand copies, sometimes fewer. Have a look at this article about the current Booker faves.

I suppose my question is, if you enjoy reading and socialise mainly with people who also do, does it skew your impressions of how popular it actually is? Is it, in fact, a minority pursuit?

I am ignorant of the vagaries of fashion, but actually quite proud of the fact - maybe some people who live and breathe fashion and know all the designer names, etc., would be as snotty towards me because of that as I am towards them for "not reading". I don't know.

I love reading as does my DH and it seems my children (being read too) although they are only small.

I am also a member of 2 bookclubs. These "clubs" seem to be popping up all over the place encouraging us to pick up a book and dive in. I wonder if that has ahd any impact on the amount of readers that are now among us?

I also gave up on HP after about book 3 [yawn]

On the JK thing - it's interesting to compare her experience properly with that of the average writer.

I know people know she sells vastly more than her nearest rivals but maybe readers are not quite aware of just how much more.

By the end of the year, HP7 will have sold about 6 million copies in hardback in the UK alone. Let's call this figure 1 Rowling (1R).

A tenth of this - 0.1R - would be 600,000 copies in hardback. To say your publisher would be pleased with this would be a vast understatement. Six figures in hardback and they will be genuflecting at your feet. You're in Stephen King or John Grisham territory.

A hundredth - 0.01R - takes us to 60,000 copies. This is still seen as very, very good, and a book selling in these amounts, or expected to, would be prominently placed in a bokshop. If you are selling in these quantities you'd be seen as what they used to call a Hardback Hero, a known name, a solid seller with confident expectations for the paperback - someone like Robert Harris or Joanna Trollope, maybe.

A thousandth - 0.001R - and we are in the realms familiar to most members of the Society of Authors. 6000 hardbacks is still at the very good end of respectable. Unless they had shelled out a very big advance, a publisher would be pleased with this. And a book would need to have pretty prominent placing on tables and shelves to get even this kind of sales figure.

And then we are down to one ten-thousandth - 0.0001R - and 600 copies. This, sadly, is the fate of an enormous number of novels, especially literary ones - always assuming they even get into the bookshops in the first place. Because 1/3 of published books don't. A writer selling in these quantities would be hard pressed to clear a taxable income at the end of the year, and it's likely the book wouldn't even be picked up for paperback unless it got some other kind of recognition, e.g. a prize.

The vast majority of writers fall somewhere between the last two examples.

Hope that puts things into some kind of perspective!

Have never thought about it like that before, just assumed that because I read books, as does dh and ds, that everyone does.
And I love browsing in second hand bookshops, you can always find something interesting if you rumage hard enough.
Having said that I do buy books from shops and amazon aswell. Currently reading Blue Monday; Fats Domino and the lost dawn of rock and roll by Rick Coleman and really want to read that book about the Delta blues which was mentioned in the Grunaid last year.

See on the JK thing, I wouldn't say I'm snobby about it but, it is a media thing, isn't it. Plus there's the whole 'single mother in a cafe' backstory aswell, which I suppose makes it more sellable.
Susan Cooper (and Philip pullman)are imo much better story tellers.

what an interesting thread. i think that reading per se is not a "minority sport" (look at the anount of shitey "real-life" magazines there are!). i do think though, that while there are many people who read actual books, a lot of them are "fashionable" readers, who will read the latest Richard and Judy recommendation, the latest chick-lit, the latest horrifying childhood memoir, because, like clothes, they are the latest thing and so must be had. i don't for one second imply that such readers don't enjoy the books, i'm sure they love them. i have read Richard and Judy bookclub books that i have thoroughly enjoyed. what i think is a minority niche though, is people that pursue literature for literature's sake and read a bit further afield than the Waterstones top ten.

sorry is rambling and rushed, heard dd wake up just as started typing.....bad mummy emoticon

Interesting point evilreturns. I agree with you and I would probably go so far as to say that some publishers probably only publish books with the Richard and Judy thing in mind. Am not sure if that's a good thing.

Interesting thread. I read widely but don't tend to buy books as we're on a budget. Instead Dh and I go to the library almost every Saturday to stock up for the week ahead. We don't have a television which I think makes a difference. I think of England as being more bookish than New Zealand (my home country) because I actually see books advertised here and there seems to be a lot more bookshops.

I USED to have time to read. Not with 2 under 5s. If I do read, it must be a page-turner due to braincells being wasted by relentless childcare and mind-numbing school run.

One of my retirement dreams is just to sit down and read and read and read

And my next house (fantasy) will have bookshelves overflowing with books ...

so which is more important when you read do you think? quantity or quality?

Hmm, well I've read some trash in my time and I've read acclaimed literary works aswell. So not really sure how to answer that one.

Interesting to compare the situation in France, where "literature" is taken much more seriously by the media as something the population as a whole should be interested in. A late-night chat-show is as likely to have a writer or philosopher on as the star-guest as it is to have a singer or actor.

They just don't get the whole "sleb for the sake of it" culture at all, and the vacuous books that come out over here are a source of constant horrified fascination for my French friends and colleagues - you just don't get them over there.

Ahh yes but, I do think that readers over here do (sometimes) vote with their feet. Look at the failure of Rooney's and Ashley Cole's biography. The nearest I've been to a star's biography is Sheila Hancock's book about her life with John Thaw.(sniffs snobbishly)

theres something about sustained attention for me....i can do flicking mags and reading cereal packets with the best of them (and sometimes have only got the brain spare for that!)....it's quite differnt for me when i can read a novel and get lost in it....i hope my dd will have that experience rather than just being able to read

I do have friends who don't read ,am constantly trying to make them read with no success.
Lewis-I loved Disgrace aswell.

I think I saw a recent survey that 40 per cent of adults NEVER read a book.
My book has been my constant companion all my life. I can't ever remember a time I didn't have a book 'on the go', sometimes even two, right back to the Famous Five.
I will read ANYTHING. And I go back and re-read things constantly.
My taste has changed over the years, now I no longer enjoy the horror/sci fi genre as much as I did in my late teens/early 20s. But I love real life tales of adventure now. A friend with a large carrier bag full of books to pass on is a friend indeed.

That sounds terrible, but I suppose you can turn it on it's head and say that 60% of adults do read, which would hardly make it a minority activity.

I think reading is becoming a more niche hobby. I love reading as do all of my fmaily, in fact at Christmas somehow we all seem to end up with books.

My Dh family however, consisting of eight children of various ages and two parents do not read at all and cannot remember the last book they read, most of them prob when they were "forced" to read at school.

I absolutely love having my books on display and when we moved DH tried to convince me to either put the book shelf in the bedroom or give them away, but cxouldnt bear it and insisted on them being in the living room.

I am awful in a bookshop, never come out with less than 3 books, which makes shopping for said xmas presents difficult.

I think reading is more popular than (say) ten or tewnty years ago. Since the ending of the Net Book Agreement, prices for popular books have dropped. There are always "3 for 2 offers". Books are sold in more outlets than they were, eg supermarkets, and there are far more charity shops than there used to be, plus car boot sales etc.

I get through 35 - 45 books a year (and have done since Uni),and my kids read many more.

I do think it's hard, as a voracious reader (at least 3 books in an average week, as I read extremely quickly) to understand houses without books. But, sadly, I know from discussion with my pupils, that many of them live in homes in which there is not a single book. And they have never been to a library either.

I don't think this is a class thing - my very working class parents still read extensively and across a wide range of literature, non-fiction and more "popular" titles - but it's hard to know how to go about breaking the cycle for families where this is not the case.

The Literacy Strategy in primaries makes matters worse too, I believe. For many children, their only experience of reading in school is in small bites, mostly of non-fiction. They therefore gain no experience of the beauty of enagement with characters who they can empathise with (or even not), no sense of the delayed gratification of waiting for the end of something magical, and no ability to reflect on this experience with anybody afterwards.

Libraries are now trying harder I think, or certainly in Birmingham where I am, to encourage children and their parents, and to offer schools opportunities to take pupils, but membership of a library requires planning to get books and take them back, and therefore needs a routine, which unfortunately many families in inner-city/deprived income etc areas can lack. Do they still have mobile library vans? Maybe that would be one way to encourage more people to use them?

I wish I had the answers - any magic wands out there?!

Hmm, just reading some of the replies, I do wonder if the amongst people who read (and I mean books here), how many had parents that read books. My mother always has her nose stuck in a book, as do I, as does ds and dd (nearly 5) loves books and we regularly go to the library.

Have not read all this thread, but I have to out myself as a compulsive reader of ANYTHING (and DS1 has caught it too, sadly)
we have a garage full of books (I even have a secret lock-up full of books that DH does not know about - please don't tell him Willow - or anyone who knows me in RL ) - and I spend my bonus on books... I don't buy designer clothes - just NEED books...