Notebook: Where the Readers Are
A generation resists isolation and alienation through books
DJ Johnson, the founder of our current bookselling partner Baldwin & Co, joins a reading group with young artists from the Eternal Seeds project in New Orleans
Amidst the funereal gloom about the state of reading in America (students don’t read books, leaders scorn learning, literacy is giving way to orality), there have recently been some counterintuitive reports of hard-nosed business types detecting a market out there among readers. A few months ago Shein, a “fast fashion” and lifestyle shopping concern based in Singapore, announced a bookselling partnership with the used-book outfit Alibris. The collaboration was reportedly “driven by growing demand from its community,” mostly young women, “among whom analog media is making a comeback.” They cited an internal survey of over 11,000 US adults, one third of whom said they read books daily or weekly. A Bain & Company annual Media Consumption Survey released last fall found that 60 percent of US consumers would like to read more books and a similar percentage “devote their full attention to reading” when they do, with respondents seeking the authenticity of “a flesh-and-blood writer.” Bain argued that the data suggest “people are looking to try to break their obsession with digital media,” urging the publishing industry to capitalize on a “real grassroots momentum right now” for getting off screens. A 2021 Pew study found that people then aged eighteen to twenty-nine had the highest rate of reading of any US generation, with almost 70 percent preferring print. And a 2023 American Library Association survey found that they use the library more than any other age cohort.
Accordingly, the production studio A24, as part of an expansion that included opening an in-person theater in Greenwich Village featuring screenings and series curated by Jodi Foster, Spike Lee, and Sofia Coppola, recently announced a partnership with Barnes and Noble that would bring events and merchandise to kiosks in bookstore locations around the country. In December book-club doyenne Reese Witherspoon launched a “Gen-Z focused” book club under the auspices of her “media and lifestyle brand” Hello Sunshine. Hello Sunshine’s research showed that “reading is now one of the top five leisure activities among Gen Z women, with 74 percent reporting they regularly read books.” “VP of Brand” Mukta Chowdhary said, “What we’re seeing—and what our research made clear to us—is that Gen Z women are hungry for community,” and that “reading is now one of [their] top five leisure activities,” with more than one in three saying they “find community through book clubs.” The program’s intended audience is “one that blurs the line between readers and lifestyle consumers,” aiming “to engage its members at the ‘cross-section’ of their interests through partnerships like the one with Coach—which at a recent Sunnie event hosted a ‘Book Nook’ featuring some of the company’s handbags.” In other words, growing readers out of non-readers. In a 2024 New York Times profile of Reese Witherspoon, the first author featured in her original book club, founded in 2017 for women somewhat older than “young,” said “when I was on book tour, a lot of women would tell me, ‘I haven’t read a book in four years, but I trust Reese.’” Four years later, on tour for her second novel, she “met women who were reading a hundred books a year.”
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