Barbara J. Hamby

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Could This Be Why Writers Drink

You Think?

“1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
57 percent of new books are not read to completion.
70 percent of books published do not earn back their advance.
70 percent of the books published do not make a profit.?"(Source: Jerold Jenkins, [url=http://www.JenkinsGroupInc.com]http://www.JenkinsGroupInc.com)[/url]

Granted, more books may be purchased on line than in bookstores these days, and it’s not clear from these statistics whether e-books are included in the figures quoted. Even so, this information is depressing.

The fact that 57 percent of new books are not read to completion is quite understandable. I?ve given up on a few “bestsellers” lately, myself. The term bestseller is bandied about lightly when a writer can organize enough supporters to put a one-day run on a book on Amazon.com, giving it a so-called bestseller status.

Slightly off this subject, it"s occurred to me to wonder how long it will be before abbreviated text-messaging “words” will creep into our dictionaries. Microsoft Word already informed me with a little red line that ebook is not a word; it’s e-book.

No wonder sign painters can’t spell and some high school or maybe even college graduates read at a low grade level. Several years ago in Vancouver, I tutored high school grads who couldn’t read well enough to get a driver’s license.

Perhaps literacy is no longer the litmus test of the degree of civilization of a society. If not, what is? I fervently hope that skill at electronic games is not a criterion. No Student Left Behind?