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It’s a commonplace sneer to portray Australians as uncultured louts – and completely false.
More Australians visit galleries and museums every year than go to the football and cricket combined. Australians are also avid readers, ranked seventh in the world for the number of books read annually (sorry, Good Oil readers, New Zealand comes in at 35th – although on reading literacy, NZ pips Australia by one point, to come in third).
According to new research, though, Australians are supposedly reading less. Remember my Third Law of the Media, though: when a headline claims, ‘study finds’, always treat its claim with scepticism.
Recent international research shows Australians are buying and reading fewer books than people in many other countries. But why?
More importantly: is it true?
One thing to look out for in any study is selection bias and sample size. The sample may be too small to give an accurate result and a non-randomised selection will bias the result.
In the study referred to, the survey only encompasses 19 countries – out of 195 in the world. That is, less than 10 per cent of countries. It also surveyed only European and a handful of Anglophone countries, as these are the countries covered by the survey’s commissioners, the European and International Booksellers Federation (EIBF).
A report by the European and International Book Federation found that only 64% of Australians bought a book in the past year, compared to an average 72% of people across 19 countries.
Similarly, 80% of Australians read a book in the past year, slightly below the international average of 85%. These differences are slim, but as book buyers and readers, we are among the lowest in the sample, alongside New Zealand, Finland, Latvia and the United States […]
Local research also suggests reading rates in Australia are falling. Back in 2017, a Macquarie University study found 92% of us read books at least once in the previous year. By 2021, in the Australia Reads national survey that figure had dropped to 75%.
Reference to the Australia Reads survey brings up another issue. The Australia Reads survey, unlike the EIBF one, acknowledges its limitations.
Please note the 2021 National Reading Survey is only indicative of the impressions each respondent has about their own reading habits, bookshop visits, book purchases, and library use, and therefore may not be an accurate reporting of what they actually did, as it relies on respondents’ abilities to provide accurate estimations. For example, we asked them to estimate how many books they had read in the past 18 months, but we did not ask them to journal this, nor track their actual purchases.
This is an important admission. I’m a voracious reader, but I simply couldn’t tell you how many books I’ve read in the past year. I can say that I’ve completely read at least three in the past couple of weeks, but that doesn’t take into account the fact that I usually read at least three books simultaneously, so there’s at least another two unfinished.
Australians are also much more likely to buy books online (12 per cent) than, say, France (five per cent). Significantly, France imposes a tariff on online book sales, in order to favour bricks-and-mortar shops. (Which might, by the way, suggest an angle that’s influencing the EIBF’s report.)
A more reliable figure might be national sales, divided by population, which places Australia in the top 10 per cent of reading countries.
One interesting and objective finding of the survey is that books in Australia are relatively inexpensive.
There’s a general perception that books cost too much in Australia. But they’re not necessarily more expensive here than elsewhere. Competition from online retailers like Amazon and increases in production costs globally have levelled prices internationally.
In fact, Australians often pay similar or less for books than readers in Canada, New Zealand and the US.
Another tantalising finding is the impact of public transport on reading habits.
Interestingly, countries where more people use public transport – like the UK, France, Germany and Spain – tend to have higher reading rates. It’s easier to read a book on a train than in a car, and these countries often have bookshops in train stations, creating a culture of reading while commuting.
In contrast, car-dependent countries like Australia, the US and New Zealand show lower reading rates. Our reliance on cars might explain why audiobooks are more popular in Australia than in many other countries.
Then there is the impact of e-books and per-page services like Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited. As an independent author, my income is fairly evenly divided between sales (of full books) and page reads (on KU).
So, rather than declining readership, what the survey results may well be showing is a decline in physical books and bookshops.
