75%
of U.S. adults read a book in the past year
Pew Research Center’s October 2025 survey includes books read in any format, in whole or in part.
Source: Pew Research Center, 2025A reader and writer reference
Book reading & creative writing statistics
Current, sourced U.S. figures for writers, readers, reporters, and anyone following how people make time for books and stories.
Last updated September 28, 2026. Every figure below links to its original source.
At a glance
How people are meeting stories now.
Books still reach people in more than one way. Print remains a familiar companion, while e-books and audiobooks give readers other ways to carry a story through a busy day. The figures below gather the latest reliable national measures in one place, with the survey year kept beside each number.
These sources measure different things, with different methods. They are presented side by side as a useful reference, not as interchangeable totals.
64%
read a print book in the past year
Print remains the most widely used book format in Pew’s 2025 survey of U.S. adults.
Source: Pew Research Center, 202531%
read an e-book in the past year
The same 2025 survey found that nearly one in three U.S. adults had read an e-book in the previous 12 months.
Source: Pew Research Center, 202526%
listened to an audiobook in the past year
Audiobook listening has more than doubled since 2011 in Pew’s long-running format survey.
Source: Pew Research Center, 202517 min
is the average daily time spent reading for personal interest
Americans age 15 and over averaged 0.28 hours a day reading for personal interest in 2024.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024 data6.9%
of U.S. adults did creative writing in 2022
The federal arts-participation survey defines this as fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or plays.
Source: National Endowment for the Arts, 202237.6%
read a novel or short story in 2022
This was the share of U.S. adults reporting that kind of literary reading in the NEA’s 2022 survey period.
Source: National Endowment for the Arts, 2022A note for writers
Stories still find their way to people.
The numbers do not tell us which book will stay with a reader, or which memory will become a first draft. They do show that readers choose books across formats, and that many people are still making room for writing of their own.
Read Johnnie’s memoir-writing guideMethod and sources
How to use this page
This is a curated reference page, not original research. Each statistic links to the organisation that collected or reported it, and each is labelled with the relevant survey or data year. When citing a figure, use its individual source link for the underlying research.
Cite this page
Johnnie Hogg Beatty, “Book Reading & Creative Writing Statistics (2026),” updated September 28, 2026, https://johnniehoggbeatty.net/reading-statistics.
Primary sources used: Pew Research Center’s 2025 reading survey; the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2024 American Time Use Survey; and the National Endowment for the Arts’ 2022 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts.