This excerpt is from BookBrowse's July 2015 white paper on book clubs. You can download the full research report for free at bookbrowse.com/wp
National surveys confirm that men tend to read less than women. For example, a 2013 Pew Research Center
survey of 1000 adults ("A Snapshot of Reading in America in 2013") found that 69% of men read at least one
book a year compared to 82% of women. This white paper focuses in on frequent readers, defined as those who
read at least one book a month - that is to say, people who read sufficiently to belong to a book club, whether
they choose to or not. Even among frequent readers, it will come as no surprise that far fewer men report being
in a book club than women.
To explore the topic of men in book clubs in more detail, and to minimize the bias from our own members
(who were a minority in the survey but represented a disproportionate percentage of those in book clubs), we
conducted a follow up qualitative survey of 130 men to ask about their experience and opinions of book clubs.
The great majority of these were not BookBrowse members and 50 had not visited BookBrowse at all, having
been randomly selected from a national sample of men aged 35+ who read at least one book a month.
