A few years back, I made a simple graphic that cataloged all the many excuses my friends (and husband) gave me for not reading books.
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Then the other day, while out with friends, the conversation turned to the hot topic du jour: “I’m swamped!,” a topic about which people (Arianna Huffington) are writing whole books these days.
One friend said, “Write a blog post? I don’t even have time to write a comment!”
Another said, “I don’t even have time to read comments.” This was said while staring intently at a text that had just come in on her smartphone (yes, while we were in mid-real-life conversation. I thought).
I realized that things have devolved greatly in a mere 4 years, due to the rise of the smartphone & various social media. Read a book? A twice-a-year luxury, for most. And people admit this blithely in the context of “being swamped.”
I work with a lot of authors and bloggers, and I wonder if they realize how badly challenged their livelihood and audiences are (unless your name is Huffington, with her #1-selling Thrive). In a mere few years, long-form readers have dropped their book and blog-reading habits (except perhaps when traveling) and chosen the path of least resistance—quick dopamine hits via their smartphones and tablets.
And that’s what led to my rather satirical animated video “I don’t have time to read a book”—The Slippery Social Media Slope.” It’s only ~2 minutes long but I won’t be surprised if you feel too swamped to watch it. If you do find the time, let me know what you’ve observed about long-form reading and smartphones/tablets these days.
“Muchisimas gracias por la info… estaba buscando en Google hasta que por fin encuentro lo que busco”
I wonder how audio books factor into this equation. I find that my eyes hurt after a day of staring at a screen but I enjoy listening to books on CD when I’m driving, or at the gym, or before I go to sleep. I imagine most people listen on their phones or other listening devices; libraries are offering more and more books to download for different platforms. So I’m not quite as pessimistic as you are. But then I’m of the reading generation!
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Because you can multitask while listening to a book I bet we’ll see a surge of books being listened to rather than read (no time!) The last two I tried to listen to were horrible duds because of poor narration, but when you get a good narrator, it’s the best. The audiobook world would be smart to be doing some marketing to time-stressed would-be readers right about now….