Turning the page on reading

Reading is on the decline. We read plenty of social media content, but actual reading is at its lowest level in years. 

There are many reasons why: schools assign fewer books, our collective addiction to screens has left us with the attention span of a tsetse fly, AI can short-circuit our quest for deeper knowledge, and more entertainment options compete with reading than ever before.

But a small pro-reading countermovement is bubbling under the surface. Here are three organizations that have, whether they are aware of it or not, used marketing and behavioral science principles to get more books into readers’ hands.

• The Laundromat Library League. Byron Sharp talks incessantly about the importance of availability. If a brand is unavailable, either physically or in your mind, you aren’t going to buy it. The Laundromat Library League makes books available to kids who might otherwise lack access by putting them where kids have time to kill—namely, laundromats. Little kids often tag along to the laundromat with their parents and sit there for a couple of hours staring at a screen. But now about 200 laundromats have installed small libraries of children’s books to foster an early interest in reading while kids wait for the spin cycle to end.

• Little Free Libraries. If you ban a book, you typically increase the number of people interested in that book. In behavioral science, it’s known as the Streisand Effect. Little Free Libraries are taking advantage by stocking (and advertising) banned books on their shelves.

• Silent Book Club. The social facilitation effect results in people becoming more engaged with a task (even a solo task) when in the presence of others. Silent Book Club encourages people to bring a book of their choice, meet up with others in their community, and sit and read. Some schools in the UK have established silent reading clubs. Sixty percent of kids who participate say they are more interested in reading than before.

Reading probably could benefit from a large-scale, organized rebranding. In the absence of that, it is encouraging to see these quieter but nonetheless effective efforts to get books in the hands of more people.