Reading: No Longer Fundamental
Author: Ed
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31 May 07
A Protest
Tom Wayne, owner of Prospero’s Books in Kansas City, Missouri, loves books. Recently looking to reduce his used book inventory, he found he couldn’t even give them away. So he got a permit and burned them in protest (see the Yahoo article).
Read a Book? LOL!!!
Apparently the 18-34, web 2.0, GenMe, millennials just don’t read books much anymore.
According to a recently released study on The Arts and Civic Engagement by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), 18-34-year-olds have the lowest literary reading rate among all adults at 45.2%. In 1982, the rate for the same age group was 61.1%, the highest among all adults at the time.
Burning Issues
The Internet is one likely cause in this behavioral swing. With the web’s seemingly infinite supply of information and the finite number of hours in a day, books are becoming arcane, expensive, and volumetric. Committing to more than a 2-minute video, a podcast sound bite, or a short blog entry is increasingly impractical if GenMe individuals hope to keep up.
Relevancy, Transparency and Brevity
Trying to reach GenMe and other market segments flooding into online social environments is a long-term, long tail play. Consider words like transparency and participation over terms like selling—and above all, keep it brief.
In fact, if you’re still reading this, you may be over 35.
*Download the complete NEA report here:
Civic Engagement pdf | 136 kb
Image source: n8ive
