Apparently, 75% of ebook readers are women.
(Back in the days when I first started teaching about writing, the early 90s, the stat was 60%. That is, 60% of readers were women .)
Back to the Kobo study:
Of that 75% of readers who are women, 77% are 45 and older.
The largest single group (30%) are 55-64 years old. (I now fit in that age group. Curses.)
The reports states that the typical prolific reader (that would be me) buys on average 16 print books a year and 60 ebooks.
For all you math types, that's a total of 76 books.
Back up to my college class two weeks ago. I ran a quick poll. "How many books do you read in a year?" I asked.
The poll was confidential. I ripped up pieces of paper and had them write down their total. They dropped the anonymous slips on a table on the way out.
The results were shocking. Let me state first that this is a college credit continuing education class, so we have students of all ages in it. Crafting a Novel is at the top end of the Creative Writing Certificate - most people take it last, because it is rigorous. (You have to write a full synopsis and many chapters of your novel by the end.) So these aspiring novel writers would be avid readers, right?
Books Read in a Year:
Most number of books read: 26
Average number of books read: 7
Least number of books read: 1
Yes, in a writing class of 20, only one person reads 2 books a month.
And one fellow manages to read one book a year. But he wants to write a novel.
By now, if you are a writer, you should be hitting your head against your desk.
So who is reading books out there?
Women
Aged 55-64
And what are they reading?
Romance
General Fiction (whatever that is)
Mystery
(But twice the number of romance books as the other two categories.)
I have 20 students in my Crafting a Novel class.
No one is writing romance.
No one is writing mystery.
Almost everyone is writing a Hunger Games clone. (Not the exact title. You know what I mean.)
Stephen King said it best. "If you want to be a writer, you have to do two things: read a lot and write a lot."
If you are an established writer, reading is part of your professional development. Every published novelist I know reads several books a month. I read an average of two books a week. That's over 100 books a year. (One hour a night, people. That's seven hours a week. Not unreasonable.)
I weep. I weep for the waste of time, effort and paper. Can somebody please tell me why anyone would set out to write a novel when they don't read and read and read as a hobby?
(Bad Girl isn't usually this grumpy. But it's marking time. I may just kill someone. I may kill myself...)
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