analysis
Reading rates are declining, so why do we keep giving each other books at Christmas we never read?
Ever imagine that your best life involves lots of reading, but you never have the time? (Getty Images: MoMo Productions)
As Christmas approaches, it's time to prepare for a great but undeclared festive tradition: Not reading the many books we'll be kindly given as presents.
While this is certainly not a new phenomenon, it is getting worse.
Reading rates are down. We're generally reading less — all ages, all genders — as we swipe and scroll on screens instead of idly thumbing a page.
Rates are falling so fast among young people, this may be what some people have called "the dawn of a post-literate age".
I read less now, and I read less deeply.
But despite our smartphone-addled brains and our fragmented attention spans, we can't stop giving each other books.
Book sellers say the weeks leading up to the big day account for up to a third of annual book spending.
I predict this Christmas will add more books to our collective, national stack of unread titles.
Why do we do this to each other?
A theory about book gifting
Swept up in the festive spirit and eyeing the holidays, we aspire to be the person we'd like to be; who we would be if we didn't have to be constantly online.
Someone who reads. Someone who casually buys books for others. Someone who, kind of like Santa Claus, spreads the joy of reading to all.
And we wish to give our friends and family a bit of this imagined life as well.
There's a pinch of nostalgia here, a touch of performative identity, and a fair bit of self-delusion.
A typical Australian adult takes 15 weeks to get through a book. (Getty Images: bibikoff)
Although definitions of "reading" vary dramatically (does checking Facebook count as reading?), different surveys appear to tell a common story: Books are increasingly going unread.
In 2016, about half of Australians read a book at least once a week. Four years later, it was about one-third.
Increasingly, teenagers don't read books at all.
A recent national survey of teenagers found 29 per cent had not read a book, or listened to an audio book, in the past year, an increase of 7 per cent from 2017.
Another recent survey, this one out of South Australia, found big changes before and after COVID. In 2019, about 10 per cent of teenagers never read for fun. Three years later, the figure was more than half.
During the same period, everyday use of social media among those surveyed increased from 26 per cent to 85 per cent.
This is a momentous, society-altering change, but as individuals it's also a private, solitary event.
We don't announce a decision to stop reading. The publishing world uses the language of faith: Readers quietly "lapse".
Our book-reading habits are changing
To guide me through changes to the book industry, I turn to Anna Burkey, head of Australia Reads, a non-profit on a mission to get more Australians reading.
"Our really ambivalent readers, our lapsed readers, are looking for more accessible genres and shorter books," Burkey says.
"Tech companies have successfully hoovered up all of the recreational time that was spent on reading, on music, on other art forms.
"We've got a bit of a perfect storm, because that then leads to difficulty concentrating. They're not able to read for long periods of time."
Books can train the brain to deeply focus its attention on one task, while mobile devices encourage us to scan and skim.
Coinciding with the mass-uptake of smartphones, our reading habits have changed.
Popular books are generally shorter, tend to have stronger plots, get straight into the action, and are more escapist.
Readers want to be certain they'll like the book before they commit. Our reading is less experimental.
"We're hearing people are struggling to easily find books they're confident they'll enjoy: 'I don't want to waste my precious time on something that's a risk,'" Burkey says.
Our new fussiness may also be making it harder to pick the right book as a present.
Literary fiction and investigative journalism are in decline. Titles that would have sold 3,000 copies 15 years ago are now likely to shift 300.
Genres like detective fiction, science fiction, romance and fantasy are on the up. Graphic novels and romance with fantasy ("romantasy") are huge.
Australian writers are generally struggling to find readers; Australians are buying American authors, who tend to have the most visibility on social media.
This suggests we're less interested in seeing the world around us in print; in reading Australian stories in order to better understand our lives.
"If you see Australian stories around you, you can envisage what your life can be like," Burkey says.
Book sales are doing fine. They actually reached an all-time high a few years ago, during COVID. Last year was the fourth-highest year for book sales on record.
It's estimated Australians will buy about $1.4 billion worth of paperbacks and hardbacks this year, including about $400 million worth in the weeks before Christmas.
With audio books and ebooks, the total annual sales figure may be $2 billion.
That sounds encouraging, but there may be more to this story.
A core of very dedicated readers could be buying more books and offsetting a general decline in purchases among the broader population, Burkey says.
"It's dispiriting, but we fight on."
A post-literate society?
Asked about their reading, people often respond with guilt, dismay and bewilderment.
Many have noticed their stack of unread books growing higher, and feel powerless to reverse this change. Formerly avid readers feel alienated from themselves.
Their brains have changed.
"I'm struggling to pick up anything that isn't a rom-com," an agent who represents literary fiction authors tells me.
"I have to sort of trick my brain into picking up anything more than that."
Audio books are more popular than ever, but do they count as reading? (Unsplash: Steinar Engeland)
The idea that books may simply fade away — inconceivable not long ago — is now becoming relatively common.
Times columnist James Marriott in September argued "we are becoming a 'post-literate' society as scrolling and short-form video rapidly replaces sustained reading".
In a recent interview with ABC Radio National's The Book Show, UK writer Jeanette Winterson wondered if we will be reading books at all in the future.
"The evidence is pointing the other way," she said. "Maybe it's going."
Mass literacy is only about 300 years old. Our culture of reading is about as recent as the invention of spaghetti bolognese.
Maybe book-reading will eventually become an anachronistic hobby, like calligraphy, stamp collecting or ham radio.
A complicated relationship with reading
And so we mark the end of a year spent online and dual-screening TV shows by wrapping paperbacks in paper.
We celebrate authors and their craft while tech companies take their work without compensation and use it to train AI models.
Many of us use these AI tools to automate writing and to summarise documents, meaning less reading.
In theory, automation gives us more leisure time, except we never have time for books.
Teenagers are banned from social media and told to read more, but socials are a big part of literary culture — of getting young people excited about reading.
Algorithms drive sales. BookTok (the book reading community on TikTok) decides bestsellers.
Scrolling and vertical video may be driving a decline in reading, but it also increasingly determines what books we hear about, how we buy them, and how they're reviewed.
As this trend continues, our relationship with books and reading seems to be growing more complicated and tortured.
Maybe we give books to perform reading without having actually sit alone with a book.
Or maybe we're hoping to keep a much-loved pastime on life support.
As the demands on our attention increase, we yearn for a book's respite.
"The data shows Australians want to read more," Burkey says.
"Our problem is they have this behaviour-intention gap where they're like, 'I remember how much I love reading. It's just I'm easily distracted into doing something else.'"