Reading barometer: indices drop a couple of tenths for the second consecutive 12 months | EUROtoday

The share of Spaniards who determine themselves as frequent readers (who learn books at the very least as soon as per week) fell throughout 2023 for the second consecutive 12 months to 52.0% of the inhabitants, in line with the survey by the Reading Barometer ready by the Federation of Editors' Guilds of Spain. The drop is just not extreme, since, in 2022, the share of readers was 52.5% and within the two earlier years, 52.7%, the historic most in additional than 20 years of barometers. The authors of the research converse of “consolidation” in studying ranges after the massive enhance within the 12 months of the pandemic, 2020. According to the editors' unions, the pattern that have to be addressed is the medium time period. Since 2012the share of Spaniards who’re frequent readers has elevated by 4.8 share factors.

Also the overall variety of readers (those that learn a e-book per quarter) reached 68.3%, tenths beneath final 12 months. 64.1% of them did so of their time as a leisure choice. Oscar Chicharro, the director of the research, highlighted that the share is 5 factors larger than in 2012. “We thought that the figure would decrease after 2020, that there would be a rebound effect but the percentage is stable”.

The Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun. The common director of the e-book, María José Glvez, and the president of the Federation of Guilds, Daniel Fernández, defended that interpretation on the presentation of the e-book. Barmetro. “In recent years it has given us satisfaction. We always said that Spain was at the bottom of Europe, but we have increased five points in reading rates. We have tried to show that it was not just the pandemic, that Spain continues to progress. There is still a stubborn third of Spaniards who never open a book. “I'm afraid it's the identical third that by no means goes to museums.”

Minister Urtasun, for his part, considered that the Barmetro It shows that in Spain it is read. “It is learn increasingly. But we aspire for it to go a lot additional. We need it to be learn much more. We need impartial bookstores to be a privileged channel and for studying to serve to beat gaps, to struggle for territorial cohesion“. Urtasun spoke of reading as a measure of the “equality in all its dimensions, gender, territorial and financial and entry” to which his Government aspires.

Almost all magnitudes of the new Reading Barometer are on the same line, they show a very slight downward tie from 2022. The percentage of Spaniards who never read goes from 35.2 to 35.9%, but that represents five points below that same index in 2012. In this group, the most cited reason is the lack of time (44.3% of non-readers), ahead of disinterest (31.1% of non-readers).

There is a slight increase in the percentage of respondents who bought at least one (non-school) book during the last year: 53.2% compared to 52.8% the previous year (and 12.9 points more than in 2012). Traditional bookstores continue to be the sales channel with the most demand (45%), although digital sales have advanced them among consumers between 25 and 34 years old. Reading in digital format has remained stable since 2018, always close to 30%. 65% of the books read digitally are free to download, whether legal or not. Audiobooks attract 6.9% of those surveyed, more or less double that of 2020. Their audience is younger than average.

If you ask the public, there are data that are more or less known but equally relevant: 86% of children between six and eight years old read in their free time, the cohort with the best reading rate. Among those over 65 years of age, the percentage drops to 53.7%. The correlation that explains this data is the one that indicates that the higher the educational level of the respondents, the the higher the probability that they are readers. In 20th century Spain, higher education was less common than today.

There is another correlation that remains to be explored: that of the per capita income levels and reading. Madrid (73.5%), Catalua (68.2%), Navarra (68.1%) and Pas Vasco (67.8%) are the communities with the highest reading percentages. Murcia, Andaluca, Castilla-La Mancha, the Canary Islands and Extremadura (all below 60%) appear at the bottom of this statistic. On one side are the rich communities and on the other, the poor and that classification is more or less stable. “Reading societies are probably the most affluent, probably the most inventive and those who create probably the most patents,” said Fernández in the presentation of “Reading inequalities are social inequalities.”