RE: Thinner!

> From: Booth Martin
>
> Americans are ceasing to read.

I so hate generalizations.

Americans are ceasing to read what?  Magazines, perhaps.  Trade magazines
and mail order catalogs are slumping badly.  On the other hand, juvenile
softcover sales are soaring.

The compound annual growth in sales of all categories of published material
has actually been a positive 4% in the last ten years.  That's a slight
decline from the same period two years ago, but still a far cry from the
statement that "Americnas are ceasing to read".

What's interesting is that reading is continuing, even WITH the Internet.
So, while we are obviously taking in a large amount of information from the
'net, it is still not supplanting our inherent desire to read the printed
word, especially among our youth.

And while we are not the most well-read country per capita (Sweden and
Iceland are typically the leaders in that area), we are far from a literary
wasteland, focused on tabloids and TV Guide.  In fact, the largest category
after trade publications is professional publications, including business,
law, medical and scientific texts.

You might want to consult these figures some time.  They come directly from
the Association of American Publishers.  You can either order them or get
them online.

Interestingly enough, there WAS a fairly significant downward spike in 2001.
This was primarily juvenile hardbacks (which might be related to lowered
Christmas sales after 9/11) and mail order, but the third hardest hit
category was technical journals, which showed a decrease in year-to-year
spending for the first time in a long time.

So, even though your statement was somewhat inaccurate in a general sense,
you may have actually been somewhat on the right track when it comes to
technical publications.

Joe