How many books does the average American read?

US reading statistics at a glance

The typical American adult read 2 books in 2025, and Americans aged 15 and over averaged 16 minutes a day reading for personal interest:

Why the average and the typical number of books read are so far apart

Most headline figures are a mean, and the mean is pulled up by a small group of people who read a great deal. In YouGov's poll, the 4% of adults who read 50 or more books in 2025 accounted for 46% of all the books read. The top 19%, everyone who read ten or more, accounted for 82%.

So "the average American read 8 books in 2025" is true of the mean and misleading as a picture of a typical reader. The person in the middle read 2. When a page quotes "the average" without saying which one, it is worth checking.

Why surveys disagree about how many people read

Three recent surveys put the share of adults who read no books at anywhere from 17% to 40%:

They are measuring slightly different things. Pew asked whether people had read "all or part" of a book, so a book started and abandoned counts. The samples are also drawn differently: Pew's respondents come from its American Trends Panel, and YouGov's from an opt-in online panel weighted to match the population. The safe way to read a trend is within one survey series over time, not across different surveys.

How many Americans read 50 books a year?

About 4% of Americans read 50 books a year: that is the share of US adult citizens who told YouGov they read 50 or more books in 2025. Pew's categories stop lower: 14% of adults said they had read more than 20 books in the past 12 months.

Fifty books is roughly a book a week. With 300-page books, it takes about 42 pages a day, and the reading goal calculator works it out for any goal, book length and reading speed.

How much time do Americans spend reading?

Americans aged 15 and over spent an average of 16 minutes a day reading for personal interest in 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' American Time Use Survey. They spent 2.6 hours a day watching TV.

That average includes everyone, and on any given day most people don't read at all. In the time-use survey, only 16% of people read for pleasure on the day they were asked about in 2023. The 1,747 who did read that day averaged 1 hour 37 minutes, with a median of 60 minutes. Fewer people read, and the ones who do read for a long time.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes hours to two decimal places. The minutes are our conversion, rounded to the nearest minute.

Is reading declining?

Reading is declining in the US within each long-running survey series.

• Gallup's mean fell to 12.6 books in 2021, lower than in any earlier Gallup survey back to 1990, when it was 15.3. In 2016 it was 15.6.
• In the American Time Use Survey, the share of people reading for pleasure on an average day fell from a peak of 28% in 2004 to 16% in 2023, a decline of about 3% a year. That comes from an analysis of 236,270 respondents by Bone and colleagues, published in iScience in 2025.

YouGov's 2025 mean of 8 is lower than Gallup's 12.6, but they are different surveys with different questions and samples, so the gap between them is not a measure of decline.

Do Americans read print books, e-books or audiobooks?

Print is still the most common way Americans read books. In Pew's October 2025 survey, 64% of adults had read a print book in the past 12 months, 31% had read an e-book and 26% had listened to an audiobook.

What reading surveys can and can't tell you

Reading surveys have three limits worth knowing before you quote them:

• They are remembered, not recorded. The book counts ask people to recall a year of reading. The time-use survey asks about a single day. Tracking as you go, in a notebook or in an app like Chaptify, replaces an estimate with a record.
• They count books differently. Pew counts reading "all or part" of a book. Not every survey says whether an unfinished book counts.
• They describe adults in the United States. Pew and Gallup surveyed adults, YouGov surveyed adult citizens, and the time-use survey covers people aged 15 and over. None of these figures describe children or other countries.

How these reading statistics are kept current

Every figure links to the survey that produced it, and the list of sources at the end shows when each was last checked. The page is updated when a new edition of one of these surveys is published. The American Time Use Survey comes out every summer.

Sources

1. YouGov, David Montgomery (2025). Most Americans didn't read many books in 2025. Checked 22 September 2026.
2. Pew Research Center (2026). Americans still opt for print books over digital or audio versions; few are in book clubs. Checked 22 September 2026.
3. Gallup (2022). Americans Reading Fewer Books Than in Past. Checked 22 September 2026.
4. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Economics Daily (2026). Americans age 15 and over read for an average of 16 minutes per day in 2025. Checked 22 September 2026.
5. Bone, Bu, Sonke and Fancourt, iScience 28 (2025). The decline in reading for pleasure over 20 years of the American Time Use Survey. Checked 22 September 2026.