I was listening to an audio book by Earl Nightingale the other day and in his book he said that the top 5% of wealthy people have a strong command of language. He said these people tend to read many books each year and to have a strong vocabulary. He went on to say that if we find ourselves in the 95% of people not independently wealthy, one tactic we can use to better our position is to read more books. He said that if a person were to read just 15 minutes a day, he or she could finish 10 books a year.

This reading 15 minutes a day, by the way, is what I do and he’s right. I generally read 10 to 15 books a year, mostly fiction. I like to read fiction prior to sleeping and I can usually only get through a few pages each day, but I get through a lot of books. Last night I finished Ernest Hemingway’s, For Whom The Bell Tolls. Lately I’ve also been getting through one to two audio books a month just listening while driving around. When I’m driving, I prefer non-fiction audio books. But while I’m getting through a lot of books, I’m not in the upper 5% of wealthy people yet so I’m not sure if Mr. Nightingale’s correlation works yet. But I’m going to keep reading just the same.

Why I’m writing about Mr. Nightingale’s assertion that to get wealthy people need to read books is to refute the arguments lately that people are not reading, or if they are reading, they might be getting through only one book a year. While this statistic may be true, it may also be misleading. As authors, we need to look at the market carefully and not be discouraged by statistical polls. Here’s one way to look at it:

We have 280,000,000 million adults in the United States. 5% of 280 million is 14 million readers. Now, how many of the 95% of non-wealthy Americans are reading books to improve their position? Let’s say it’s 10%. There’s another 28 million people. If these people read 10 books a year, that’s 420 million books they will read. And my guess is that this number is probably double.

The point is that a significant portion of the population does read, despite the doom and gloom reports you might read in the news. The key for authors is knowing who reads and how to find them. In this post, we’ve identified two demographics, the already wealthy and people who know that to get wealthy they must read. Another strong demographic is the pre-teen and teen market. If you don’t believe me, just ask Stephanie Meyers, author of the Twilight series, and of course JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series. These authors have found plenty of readers.