In a recent Los Angeles Times essay, David Shelley, CEO of Hachette Book Group and Hachette UK, put a stark exclamation point around a problem the book industry has been facing for years, and that is the decline in reading for pleasure.
It is not a soft cultural concern. It is an existential threat to publishers, but also to children, public health, and the kind of society we are becoming. Shelley links the sharp fall in children’s leisure reading to the smartphone era, and the data is hard to ignore. U.S. smartphone ownership rose from 35% of adults in 2011 to roughly two-thirds by 2015 and 91% by 2025.
Publishers already face plenty of structural pressure: AI companies scraping copyrighted work, the flood of self-published content, rising costs, retail concentration, and the constant battle for discovery. But the deeper issue is more fundamental: what happens if fewer people become readers at all?
Children are more likely to read when they see their own lives reflected in books. Yet PEN America has documented 22,800 book bans across 45 states and 451 school districts, disproportionately targeting books by authors of color and LGBTQ+ authors. The result is that many children, including children of color who now make up a majority in the U.S., are losing access to stories that reflect their own experiences.
A 2025 University of Florida and University College London study, based on more than 236,000 Americans in the American Time Use Survey, found that daily reading for pleasure in the U.S. fell by more than 40% between 2003 and 2023. The decline was not evenly distributed; it was steeper among Black Americans, lower-income groups, people with less education and rural communities.
Federal data tells the same story. The National Endowment for the Arts reported that in 2022 only 48.5% of U.S. adults had read at least one book in the past year, down from 54.6% in 2012. Among 13-year-olds, the share of daily readers fell to 14% in 2023, down from 27% in 2012. Among 9-year-olds, the figure fell from 53% in 2012 to 39% in 2022.
Screens are not the only cause, but they are impossible to leave out. Common Sense Media found that children age eight and under, now average about 2.5 hours of screen time a day, with 40% owning a tablet by age two and nearly one in four having a personal cellphone by age eight. The American Academy of Pediatrics cites older youths use media at far higher levels, with teens averaging more than eight hours a day of screen media, (excluding schoolwork.)
The issue is not that digital media is inherently bad. It is that reading requires time, quiet, attention and emotional immersion.
However, the return on that investment is clear, Research from Cambridge, using data from more than 10,000 young adolescents in the U.S., found that children who began reading for pleasure earlier performed better on cognitive tests and showed better mental wellbeing in adolescence, including fewer signs of stress and depression and fewer attention and behavioral problems. OECD PISA data also shows that reading for enjoyment is positively associated with reading performance even after accounting for socioeconomic background and gender.
So, this is not just a publishing problem. It is an equity problem, a mental health problem and a future-workforce problem. Children who do not read widely shed vocabulary, empathy, imagination, and concentration. Adults who stop reading lose one of the simplest tools we have for reflection, perspective, and emotional regulation.
What can publishers do? Publishers are not only content businesses; they are reader-formation businesses. That means investing in campaigns that make reading visible, social, and habitual. Hachette’s Raising Readers initiative is a good model: it encourages ten minutes of daily reading, funds classroom libraries, supports Little Free Libraries in book “deserts” and partners with schools, libraries, and community organizations.
Second, publishers should meet children where enthusiasm begins. That includes graphic novels, series fiction, audiobooks, fan-driven communities, BookTok, school visits, author videos, and low-friction library discovery. The goal is not to shame children into reading “better” books. It is to help them become readers first.
Third, the industry should use its data intelligently. We know which communities are underserved, which formats attract reluctant readers, and which books create repeat engagement. That insight should inform pricing, sponsorships, donations, school partnerships, metadata, marketing, and backlist strategy.
Government has a role. Public libraries, school libraries, and trained librarians are essential reading structures. So are book-access programs in low-income communities. The American Consortium for Equity in Education estimates that 45% of U.S. children live in “book deserts,” while the American Library Association reported 4,235 unique titles challenged in 2025 and 5,668 books banned from libraries. Reducing access while children are already reading less is exactly the wrong direction.
The future of publishing will not be secured only by defending copyright, improving metadata, or competing with self-publishing. Those things matter. But the industry’s long-term health depends on a bigger mission: rebuilding the reading habit.
A society that reads less may buy fewer books. More importantly, it may become less patient, less empathetic, less informed and less able to think deeply. That is the real crisis. And it is one publishers, educators, parents, libraries, and governments must confront together.