Riddle: What’s more important than the battle between e-books and p-books?
“Reading as a primary activity varied greatly by age. The oldest age group averaged an hour of reading per day, while the youngest averaged about 8 minutes.” - News release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics., via Bill Janssen’s post to the eBook Community List.
The TeleRead take: Keep in mind that the stats are for recreational reading and do not include school-related time. Regardless, the 8 minutes is shockingly low.
Based on the above, I’d say the real battle isn’t between e-books and p-books. It’s getting kids to read, period. The 8 minute figure is for both sexes in the 15-to-24 range. In case you’re curious, the category of “Playing games and computer use for leisure” is 48 minutes for teenaged boys and around 25 minutes for the girls.
TeleRead, anyone? Putting thousands of free copyrighted books online–with fair compensaiton for writers and publishers–could go a long way. What’s the point of trying to maximize profits, through copyright gouges when books for recreational reading are in such little demand anyway among typical young people?
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