Publishers Killed the Paperback, Then Blamed Readers
- It seems every week a new piece about the decline and fall of the American reading habit goes viral.
- The idea that we’re entering a literary apocalypse that threatens to destabilize our democracy is perhaps overstated, but nobody is denying the book-reading trend is grim.
- In the most recent international assessment of adult skills, conducted in 2023, 28 percent of American adults scored at or below the lowest level of literacy — up from 19 percent just six years earlier.
Unverified
- It seems every week a new piece about the decline and fall of the American reading habit goes viral.
- The idea that we’re entering a literary apocalypse that threatens to destabilize our democracy is perhaps overstated, but nobody is denying the book-reading trend is grim.
- In the most recent international assessment of adult skills, conducted in 2023, 28 percent of American adults scored at or below the lowest level of literacy — up from 19 percent just six years earlier.
Sources: Jacobin