When a recent report from the National Endowment for the Arts revealed that people are reading more fiction, few experts stopped to ask why. After all, fiction had been on the decline for twenty-five years and folks were just happy to get a win. In this brief article we are going to attempt to answer that question. Why are people reading more fiction? The good people at the National Endowment of Arts were stumped. As we mentioned, fiction readership has been declining for a quarter of a century. And then suddenly, people are reading the classics again? A careful review of the numbers, however, gives us a few clues. For starters, we discovered that more young people are reading fiction than scheduling Teeth Whitening procedures. The all important 18-24 age group experienced a solid gain in readership. One possible explanation is that fiction is cheaper and more convenient than in the past. The device that is primarily responsible for the affordability of fiction is called the e-book. If you have never used one, the e-book is an electronic device that lets readers download books from the internet. On average, these downloads are only about half the price of a traditional book. According to the world's largest bookseller, Amazon.com, more than a third of all new book sales are e-book downloads. This is more than double last year's sales. And though we cannot say with certainty how many young people are purchasing these devices, it stands to reason that lovers of electronic media would prefer them to traditional books.
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