Americans
love lists, statistics, and factoids that reveal some metric that they can
compare themselves by. If the numbers
affirm their views, experiences, and circumstances they are happy. If it appears they are better than average,
they’re even happier. Out of ego, curiosity, or opportunity, we crave to know
how we stack up against others. I recently came across stats on geography-based
tendencies of Americans and wondered what this could mean for the book world.
For
instance, in a recent New York Times
piece that highlighted findings from Facebook data that showed where users “check
in when they are traveling abroad" the last four summers, a map can be
constructed for each state. Looks like
Californians, Texans and a few other states each find Mexico to be the most popular
overseas country. Oregon, Washington, and a few other states up north chose
Canada. But some states chose Liberia,
Somalia, Ireland, Bolivia, Tonga and Marshall Islands. Do these demographics help the book industry
figure out how to market books regionally?
A
very recent Entertainment Weekly
article picked one film per each state that best captures the spirit and story
of each state. New York had Do The Right
Thing while South Carolina had The
Big Chill and Pennsylvania had Rocky. My favorite book-themed movie? Vermont
and Dead Poets Society. Actually, a lot of these films were based on
books, including Missouri’s Gone Girl,
Kansas’ The Wizard of Oz, Colorado’s Misery, and Montana’s A River Runs Through It.
Last
year, Business Insider put together
its list, “The Most Famous Book That Takes Place in Every State” that should’ve
been correctly titled as “Each State’s Most Famous Book.” Alabama had To Kill a Mockingbird, Alaska Into
the Wild, Arizona The Bean Trees,
Arkansas A Painted House, and so on.
We
live in a nation where one in four American adults say they have not read a book in
the past year. One in five haven’t visited
a library or book mobile in that time either. Three in five people in U.S.
prisons are illiterate. These are
stunning stats that show our nation needs to give reading a boost.
Will
books change to meet the needs, abilities, and preferences of a new America,
one that sees other languages besides English growing and one in which free
online content is starting to replace a domain that used to be filled by
books? Should book publishers market to
those who read more books (women average 14 books annually to men, 9) or should
it make an emphasis to reach out to the under-served – ethnic minorities, high
school drop outs, and those who speak English as a second language?
Since
at least half of all new books released in 2017 are self-published and thus,
turning authors into publishers, such writers need to confront the same
marketing questions that big publishers struggle to address. One cannot simply write whatever he or she
desires and then demand the marketplace embrace the book without making a
smart, strategic, and invested effort to reach targeted consumers.
Globally,
the United States, according to World Culture Score Index, doesn’t even rank in
the top 20 nations when the amount of time spent reading books is taken into
account. For instance, India doubles the
US output, with the average Indian reading more than 10.5 hours per week and
the typical American languishes at 5.5 hours.
Russia, China, France, Indonesia, and Hungary are way ahead of us. Maybe selling books overseas or foreign
rights needs more attention.
Perhaps
publishers and authors need to market most heavily to young readers and those
who buy books for them. If we don’t
nurture a new generation of book readers, the industry will die out. The
Guardian reported a Scholastic study from a few years ago showed only 51%
of children claim they love or like reading books for fun -- down from 58% three
years prior to the 2015 study. It was
60% in 2010.
As
the new school year is about to heat up, the book industry will need to not
just sell books to its base of readers.
It will have to grow by reaching beyond its repeat customer and reliable
demographics. Get kids, illiterates, and
people who say that don’t read books often to start buying books. Create new consumers and in turn, not only
will society benefit, but book publishers and authors will be able to reassure
themselves that there is a marketplace for them.
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