NEWS FROM
WritersServices.com
20 March 2004
WritersServices
A survey of reading habits
Reading is the paradigm of mobile entertainment. The home, in transit and in
work-breaks are all seized as opportunities to turn a few pages. Alarmingly, a
dozen respondents read in their cars. One must hope they were passengers.
Bedtime reading is clearly popular with a quarter saying they regularly read
just before lights out. The bathroom was proportionately more popular with men
but this might be a problem of transatlantic misunderstanding. Rather than
languishing in the bath with a good book, the males might be attending to
another function.
Some of the older respondents had impressive libraries. Those with a small library had a higher proportion of factual and reference
books. The suspicion must be that it the fiction that is dumped when younger
people move.
Seventeen percent of people were reading a book that was a gift which is good
news for the book business which shifts half its output in the months around the
Christmas festival. However, the publishing houses would be less pleased to
discover that 20% of the annual reading matter consists of re-reading old
copies.
As for the favoured reading environment, loud music, talk radio and TV on did not attract a single vote.
Silence received 70% of the vote with soft music as the only other contender.
"We hope to keep up these snapshots into the habits of the writers who visit
our site" said Chas Jones the WritersServices sit manager. "There were a number
of intriguing indicators such as why men read in bathroom and why women have so
many DIY books. We might pursue these in later surveys."
ENDS
