I have been under the impression that book sales is on the decline in the U.S and that reading books is going out of fashion. I was wondering how many people read. I forget why I asked the question, but I was under the impression that I was the only one reading more than a book a week. I Googled for answers and I was surprised.

I found that surveys show that about 60% of the population reads a book or more a year and that fully half the population of the U.S reads four books a year or more.

The book industry publishes about 3.1 billion books a year and that number is steadily rising. Considering that there are more than 300 million people in the U.S. that’s 10 books published for every soul. As to how many of the 3.1 billion are read, the publishers would not publish books unless they were pretty sure they were going to be bought and people would not buy books unless they were pretty sure they were going to read them.

3.1 billion includes all kinds of books, including text books, romance novels, best sellers and obscure how-to books that I won’t be reading, but the important thing is that the numbers are on the rise. There has been a steady rise in books published each year for a long time.

As an amateur writer, I was under the impression that there are not many people reading. I was wrong. There are a huge number of people reading and many of them are buying books. There is a growing need for books and that would imply a growing need for writers. I chose a genre out in left field and Spec-Fic, like my choice in music – blues, is not very profitable, but I think there is still a growing need for speculative fiction. (Blues on the other hand is slowly dying).

So if you read somewhere that written Spec-Fic is fading away, just remember that a rising tide raises all ships. Genre fiction is growing along with all types of books, although slowly, and is far from dead. People read. People read books. People even read Science Fiction.