Leave a comment and I'll gift you one of my novels or a subscription to my Wellness Ezine.

Leave a comment and I'll gift you one of my novels or a subscription to my Wellness Ezine.
Follow me by email, below right

Friday, October 8, 2010

What fiction are people reading these days?

Yes, yes, I know you're reading erotic fantasy, but what is the rest of the world reading?

According to a new Harris poll, here's what happening...

*Mysteries, thrillers, and crime novels beat out chick-lit (no surprise) and romance novels (big surprise!) by a large margin

*More women than men read mysteries, thrillers, and crime novels; no surprise, more women read books...and buy books

Let's see how that breaks down...

*Almost half (48%) of fiction readers said they read mysteries, thrillers and crime novels

*A quarter read science fiction (26%) and another quarter (24%) read “literature.” One in five said they read romance novels (21%) and one in 10 have read graphic novels (11%) in the past year. Chick-lit (8%) and western (5%) books are less popular

(Bear in mind this was an online survey of 2,000+ people who may not represent everybody who reads books)

*Among those who read nonfiction, 31% read histories, 29% read biographies, and 26% read religious and spirituality books.

*Although politicians garner huge advances for their books, lesser numbers have read political books (17%); so who's buying all those books? What's you guess?

*Self-help books came in at(16%); does this mean people already know what to do to help themselves or does it mean something else?

*Current affairs came in at 14%; are we tired of knowing what next bad thing is around the corner?

*True crime (12%) and business (10%) came in at the bottom; I'm surprised about true crime, but that may be part of the "wish to escape from reality" that books bring; and, business books, well, just try to read one...

*42% of respondents aged 18 to 33 said they were more likely than other age groups to read “literature”; is that because they're more apt to be in school and required to read such books or is that, "I'm refined and read only high level writing," or is it something else? You tell me.

*of course, this age group was more apt to read graphic novels (what we used to call comic books now called) graphic novels (18%).

*Readers 65 and older are more likely to read mystery, thriller, and crime novels (61%) and westerns (9%)

*As mentioned, women are more likely than men to read mysteries, thrillers, and crime novels (57% versus 39%), romance (37% versus 3%), chick-lit (12% versus 4%), and religious books (30% versus 21%).

*But men are no slouches; they're more likely to read science fiction (32% versus 20%), history books (40% versus 23%), political books (25% versus. 10%), and business books (16% versus 4%).

So that's it...If you're a writer, what does it mean for you? If you're a reader, what does it mean?

I know what it means to me...it's back to the thrillers and mysteries, and forget about writing those westerns, graphic novels, and business books.

Leave a comment and let me know what these findings mean to you!

For Fiction Writer...

That's all folks.

Oh, oh, I almost missed a chance to plug our MYSTERY AND CRIME books...You can get the e-books at the Kindle store on Amazon. com (That's ARMED AND DANGEROUS and CANDY, MURDER & ME). To read a chapter, in case you're not ready to ante up the $2.99, stop by my web site and read the first chapter, that's http://www.carolynchambersclark.com/id146.html.

No comments:

Post a Comment