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Book Riot - The Podcast
UPDATED The Latest Research on Gen Z's Reading Habits
00:52:40
Rebecca sits down with Portland State University researchers Kathi Inman Berens and Rachel Noorda to discuss the findings in their new book, How Gen Z Discover and Consume Books.
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- [00:00]
Rachel Norda
This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message and it turned
- [00:11]
Rebecca
out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist.
- [00:15]
Rachel Norda
The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew.
- [00:19]
Sponsor Voice
Well, a community cycling group.
- [00:21]
Rachel Norda
The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for from a browse to a bike ride this summer. Find more on Facebook
- [00:30]
Rebecca
right now.
- [00:31]
Kathy Inman Behrens
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- [01:04]
Rebecca
All right listeners, as promised, I'm here with Rachel Norda and Kathy Inman Barons. They are from Portland State University studying media studies and Kathy is a literature professor as well. They are the authors of How Gen Z Discover and Consume Books. It is out now as you're listening from Cambridge University Press and will be available for free download the first two weeks after its publisher publication. So check the link in the show notes and see if you're still in that window. I am so delighted to be having this conversation. I got to read a chapter of the book in the run up. Rachel and Kathy, thank you so much for being here.
- [01:41]
Kathy Inman Behrens
We're thrilled to be here.
- [01:42]
Rachel Norda
Yes, thank you Rebecca.
- [01:44]
Rebecca
And thanks also to our friend Laura McGrath who has appeared on past episodes and first introduced me to your work and pointed me in your direction. So we in publishing are concerned about what Gen Z is doing. Are they reading enough? What are they reading? How is the industry being reshaped by Gen Z's media habits and then what that might portend for generations that are coming after them. The influence of the Internet, like are the kids okay? And will books be okay? Is a really defining set of questions for us as we jump into talking about Gen Z. Y' all had suggested and I think it's a great idea that we ground ourselves in some some broader conversation about generations and how understand those. And I'll say for folks who are thinking about picking up your book, I really appreciated that framework here. How would you like to jump into that with us?
- [02:35]
Rachel Norda
I can start so I'll tell you a little bit. So this is Rachel Norda I'll tell you a little bit about the generation that I am from and then our work, me and Kathy with Gen Z, the ways that I interact with them, mostly as students, but also some of my younger siblings. So I'm a millennial, and I think, like Gen Z, millennials get a bad rap sometimes. You know, a lot blamed on whether it's the decline of breeding or, you know, other things about how the world is changing and what that means for generational categories. So I think some millennials and Gen Z folks have chips on their shoulder because of that. But certainly, you know, most of my life, but not all of it has had the Internet. And that really has shaped me and what I've been able to do in my life. I'm the oldest of six and my youngest sibling. Yeah. Is Gen Z. And it's really interesting to talk to her about her reading habits, especially when it comes to things like piracy, because she has some different perspectives on that than I do. Maybe it's because on the VHS tapes we always watched, you know, there were those warnings.
- [03:54]
Rebecca
They were so scary.
- [03:57]
Rachel Norda
Exactly. Whereas my sister, for example, had recently gotten into Twilight and she had borrowed. She had. We had a copy that we probably bought when. When I first read it as a teenager. And she lent it out to a friend but wanted to read it at the same time. So she thought it was no big deal to pirate the ebook and read that while her friend. And that made sense to her because we'd already bought the book.
- [04:21]
Rebecca
So I'm like sweating just thinking about that.
- [04:24]
Rachel Norda
It took me. I couldn't believe we had, like, grown up in the same house and she thought that. But anyway.
- [04:32]
Rebecca
That's so funny. Kathy, what about you?
- [04:34]
Kathy Inman Behrens
Yeah, I am a Gen X human. I was in the very beginning of graduate school at UC Berkeley when I saw my very first email. And it was a 300 baud connection, which means that a letter out outputted every second. So it was like watching. Yeah, a ticker tape. Almost like it was really a crazy thing. So. So of course, for me, all of my social habits were really well formed before the Internet. I have two kids, both of whom are Gen Z humans, and of course, our students at Portland State, who are wonderfully diverse in many different directions, racially, generationally, in terms of class. So we have a wide range of students at Portland State. But having taught Gen Z people, or having taught people of college age for about 30 years, I am in a perspective to kind of see transformations in time. And I remember when millennials were initially called the selfish. The generation stay mad about that forever. And, and you know, I, I wonder if, if part of that labeling is is a byproduct of some anxiety from older generations watching behaviors that they don't fully understand. And I'm hopeful that our book can help demystify, especially for Gen Z, people who never knew life without the Internet and for whom mobile computing was foundational to their childhoods. I'm hoping that our book can help explain this in a way that allows people to move outside of judgment and instead just examine behavior.
- [06:22]
Rebecca
Yeah, I really appreciated that framework of let's contextualize Gen Z and understand them within the media and the mediums that they are engaging, but also the specific historical context with a real. I mean this is what researchers are supposed to do. So good job y' all of getting us outside of the value judgments. There are no value judgments about their reading habits. It's a very straightforward presentation of curiosity and then your findings about them. Like Rachel, I'm a millennial. I'm on the elder tip of millennial. So I remember the day in 1997 that we got the Internet at my parents house and that you know, like you, you went to a specific room, to the family computer to check your email, you went online. And I still do feel that way that I that going online is a different destination. Feel like a seamless integration of my life life and my online life, which I do believe is the major distinction between Gen Z and all of the generations that came before them. That that's what we're talking about when we talk about digital natives, people who have never known a life without the Internet. And so the separation that we might feel in the older generations is just not there for them. That blend and how seamless it is as y' all write is something that I think I know but I didn' feel in my bones until I was really reading your research about it.
- [07:50]
Sponsor Voice
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- [09:04]
Rachel Norda
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- [09:35]
Rebecca
This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents, but choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks made with whole fruit and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks now made with no artificial dyes. Let's take that as a jumping off point. What does it look like to think about studying a generation whose experience with technology and how the world is put together is different from any generation that came before? And how do you do that specifically with reading?
- [10:22]
Rachel Norda
That's why we wanted to use a survey method. We wanted to listen to readers. We, Kathy and I are in an English department and a lot of our colleagues, you know, some of their methods are thinking about implied readers, for example. But we really wanted to talk to real readers and hear their responses to also fill in some of the gaps based on our interactions with students and other Gen Z folks in our lives. We had some inklings, but we are not from that generation and we really wanted to I'm glad that you mentioned that the book came across as a curious an approach that was driven by curiosity because that really was what we were all about. We were just curious about the complexity that this generation has to Navigate. I was thinking as you were talking, Rebecca, about how I was a little late to the smartphone game. And so it wasn't until after my PhD that I got my first smartphone. And just to have the Internet in your hand all the time, it's wild. It's a step. You know, getting the Internet at all is one thing, but these are folks who have always had the Internet with them all the time. And that just changes how you think about things, but not in ways you might expect, because I think sometimes as older generations, we think, oh, that must mean that digital is what you're most focused on then. But actually that tension creates some intentionality around wanting to detox from the digital sometimes because it's always there.
- [12:11]
Rebecca
Yeah. Maybe, Kathy, you can speak a little bit about the post digital framing that you two offer.
- [12:16]
Kathy Inman Behrens
Yeah, you know, like, to. To historicize this a little. When the Internet happened, there was a lot of theorizing about these two separate spheres, our lives, what, you know, William Gibson might call meatspace, you know, the embodied. But then our lives online, and those things were conceptualized as discrete places. Post digital takes as a foundational assumption that we're always like, we have the option to be on at any moment, and also we are also in physical space. And so no longer are those things distinct. I mean, they are actually distinct, of course. But the option, unlike your experience, Rebecca, heading off to the room to go log on back in the 90s, the option to be on is constant. And then it's also worth noting, and here we're thinking about Shoshana Zabof's work about surveillance capitalism, that the things that keep us online are designed to be addictive. This was what the courts found last March in judgments against both Meta and Google. So these products are designed to keep our attention hooked. So when Rachel's talking about, well, what does a detox look like? What does the choice to have a flip phone? I always ask my students, okay, so let's talk about how we spend our attention and how you access the web and blah, blah, blah. And I had a student this term who's probably mid-20s, who has moved to a flip phone and uses paper maps. Their friends complain that they're not as easy to reach, but I mean, that's the point, right? Indeed. And so people are figuring out strategies for how to reclaim. I mean, I think we've all seen the huge growth in interest in walking in nature and forest bathing, and the idea that we know that the always on pace of life is fast and not actually human. And so to recalibrate, we have to do these detoxes and our survey data captured some of those strategies.
- [14:39]
Rebecca
So interesting. Let's talk about how the survey is set up because we've talked on this show for years about what looks like declining reading habits over the generations. And of course, last year there was the major headline out of the American time use survey. That was the, that was the big clutch your pearls. 40% decline in pleasure reading. Only 16% of Americans read a book for pleasure or read anything for pleasure last year as that survey captured it. And then the Pew survey that came out just a couple of weeks ago, as I recall, had what looked like a rosier picture and more consistency, less of a decline. Y' all have interesting critiques of both of those surveys and in many ways the survey that you used for your research as a response and perhaps a correction to those or an expansion to those, would you talk about what's missing that might be producing those contradictory results and how your data looks makes a difference. Like having read this chapter, I am so much less worried about the kids.
- [15:41]
Sponsor Voice
Yay.
- [15:43]
Rachel Norda
It really depends on how you define reading. And that's what we talk a lot about in. And we thought quite carefully about how we were going, what questions we were going to ask and how we were going to ask them and that we were going to ask about long form storytelling like books, but also ask about their text messages, their chats and games, other types of reading that we don't count as book reading. But that is still because one of our assumptions is that one of the things that we wanted to make clear was that Gen Z are reading, they're just reading differently. And I hope that's part of the hopefully tone that you felt. And sometimes if we're stuck in old ways of defining, you know, one of our criticisms of some of the previous surveys around reading are that they focus on only reading for leisure, especially when we're talking about young people. They're in school, they're working, and so they might be doing a lot of reading for those contexts, maybe nonfiction and textbooks that they don't see as counting as reading. Also, young people are quite engaged in things like fan fiction and comics and those haven't always historically counted as reading. We also feel it's really important to capture partial reading. And actually the latest Pew survey did so reading a book in part or in whole because for example, I love cookbooks and you're never gonna start a cookbook and like, or you're rarely going to read it from start to Finish, you're diving in, in pieces. But that doesn't mean I haven't read it because I'm reading it in that way. So some books aren't meant to be read like that and you know, not meant to be read for leisure. They have a particular purpose, especially when we're talking about nonfiction. So actually I was, I had recently listened to your episode where you were talking about the latest Pew data and, and the Gen Z ish data. So 18 to 29 year olds was their youngest group. And we are defining Gen Z according to the 1997 to 2012 date range. So that's birth dates, so that's 13 year olds to 27 year olds. So a little bit wider swath, roughly the same range. And, and so for that group, 66% from the Pew study said they read print, 41% ebooks and 32% audiobooks within a year span. And ours is very similar. So 65.2% for print, 39.7% for ebooks, 28.4% for audiobooks. What was most interesting is that we noticed in trekking the same group quite a difference in the last three years and a lot has happened in society in the last three years that has impacted that.
- [18:47]
Rebecca
Say some more about that, please, Kathy.
- [18:50]
Kathy Inman Behrens
Well, it's, it's worth going back to think about this because I mean these, these headlines about declines in reading need a little bit of unpacking. And specifically the American Time Use survey which was created in the 19. The method is a very interesting one. In order to prevent recall bias, what happens is researchers will observe like the subjects record their activities for 24 hours and then submit those. And so but the way that reading counts in the American Time Use survey, it doesn't capture digital modalities. It does capture print books, magazines and Kindle like E readers. Right. But it really isn't capturing the broad ways that people might come into some reading. What we found is that Gen Z are particularly omnivorous that they might consume a story in one context and then jump on over into another medium and work with the story over there. And the researchers of the American Time Use survey actually acknowledged that they have a bit of a blind spot around digital modes of consumption. And that means that a lot of the leisure reading that Gen Z would do wouldn't be visible through the criteria that they're using.
- [20:11]
Rebecca
That's super interesting. You mentioned the more than 60% of folks in your surveys identifying as readers saying that they read. I was also really struck by how much they're reading like average or median of more than 100 books per year that they're engaging with. I assume that that means we don't know for sure if they're finishing them, but that is still just an astonishing number of books to engage with. Even if you account for many of those folks being in school. Still it seems to me that a lot of that reading still must be pleasure reading, which is how do we account for this? That is such a high number.
- [20:48]
Kathy Inman Behrens
Well, there's that, but then there's. It's also worth thinking about reader completion data. You know, so there was a company back in 2015 called Jellybooks and Jelly Books was interested. It sent out ARCs, advanced reader copies to readers on the condition that the readers would allow their reading to be tracked. And what they found was that it was actually very unusual for people to read a book start to finish. And typically the industry understands reading from point of sale and they measure sales, but you don't really have a way in part because you know, Amazon and Barnes and Noble with the Nook, I mean folks are not releasing reader completion data. So we don't really know how much.
- [21:32]
Rebecca
The great mystery of publishing.
- [21:34]
Kathy Inman Behrens
Yeah, exactly. Right. So, and so one of the things our data is, is capturing is that, well, maybe people are engaging with a chapter and then, and then they just lose interest and it falls to the side. That doesn't mean they hate the book. It doesn't mean they're never going to pick it up again. But life got in the way or something else happened. And so I think that what's interesting about our data is it gives people permission to tell the, to, to disclose all the types of reading they do as opposed to, you know, like, I mean traditionally surveys from the National Endowment for the Arts, for example, were very interested in completion and you could only kind of count the book if you'd finished it. But as Rachel was suggesting, there are any number of books that we engage with regularly that are not even intended to be read. Start to finish.
- [22:23]
Rebecca
Yeah, go ahead, Rachel.
- [22:25]
Rachel Norda
I would also add that the current landscape is very subscription based and platform based specific. And a lot of Gen Z, for example, are reading on webtoon or other comics. Yeah, exactly. And so it's even more important in those contexts to make sure that we're counting partial reading as well and different kinds of reading because it's, it's not looking, it's, it's scrolling on their phone in a different way and they can dive in and out in a different way way to kind of sample new writers and New things than you might in other, you know, traditional books.
- [23:05]
Rebecca
Yeah, the true multimodal nature of Gen Z's reading was something again like I knew but had not really felt the knowing of until I was reading the examples from your chapter and understanding about like that they are doing things like reading an ebook but than they want the physical copy of the collector's edition or listening to some on audio and then bouncing over to the ebook. And that as you were saying Rachel, sometimes piracy comes into this, that like in a digitally native generation access to digital material doesn't feel the same way to them. It doesn't feel like the walled garden or going to a different destination as it might feel to those of us who are older. So they have more of an attitude of like having bought one and then no big deal to pirate the other. Also that a lot of things that folks started off by pirating they later on went and paid for in a different format. I found really interesting and just like vindication for Brandon Sanderson and insisting on the.
- [24:05]
Kathy Inman Behrens
Absolutely. I mean the multifamily bundle he's really dialed in and he's also participating in something that Gen Z are really moved by which is kind of a values based ethical consumption. And I mean Sanderson believes, hey, if you've bought my book in, in one format, if you've bought the hardback, you should have that ebook bundled in. And Macmillan didn't agree at all. And I know that the American association of Publishers wouldn't agree with that. But you know it, if you think about how publishers have cleverly responded to gender, people getting digital access to books and then wanting materiality. Just think about the beautiful decorative sprays on the page edges of books. Like our copy of Katabasis for example. The RF Kong book has these gorgeous, gorgeous sprayed edges. So they're like publishers are cleverly attending to book materiality because they know that display can be for when Gen Z people really love books. They want it in multiple formats. You know, they, they may want to listen to it, they may want to display it on their shelves and they may want to be able to access it on their phones no matter where they are.
- [25:17]
Rebecca
Yeah. Let's talk briefly about genre and then I want to come back to this idea of the materiality and the social nature of reading for Gen Z. But I was really struck by your data about their fiction preferences. So would y' all talk some about the genres that are most prevalent and popular for Gen Z and maybe how that differs from what we've understood about older generations of Readers? Sure.
- [25:40]
Rachel Norda
I mean, we asked mostly about format in our 2020. This survey is longitudinal and this is the third iteration. So in 2020 was when we first collected data. It was for all age groups. And when we found that Gen Z and Millennials were the most active and interesting, we started narrowing in 2022 and 2025 to specifically look at them. But the we Only in 2020 did we ask about genre. So I think the data that you're referring to, Rebecca, is there was a survey that we quoted in our book that was from Library Journal about different generations and. And their reading. So that is a few years old now.
- [26:29]
Kathy Inman Behrens
Okay.
- [26:30]
Rachel Norda
But we were more asking, you know, like, for example, Gen Z prefer to read something in a graphical or comic format than strictly text. We asked about whether they prefer audiobooks or, you know, traditional text, things like that. We found the data on genre was quite a lot in 2020 and didn't differ that substantially from what we were expecting.
- [26:58]
Rebecca
Okay, interesting. I was snagged on the note that many of the genres that Gen Z readers prefer, romance, horror, science fiction, and fantasy, have really robust online communities associated with them. And they're also very prevalent in other forms of media that folklore in that generation are consuming, especially gaming and movies. And I'm curious, do you have thoughts about the directionality of that relationship? Is it those communities existed? And I know this is impossible because correlation and causation, but I'm just. What is the spidey sense? Are folks drawn to those genres because that's where they can find community? Or is it that the community sprung up because there was so much affection for the genre? I know it's just a feedback loop on top of itself now, but let's consult the. The Crystal ball.
- [27:45]
Kathy Inman Behrens
Rebecca, what. What you're. What you're noting is that social reinforcement for reading behavior is incredibly powerful, that the people who are most likely to identify as readers are people who find meaningful community around their reading. And actually, in one of Our articles from 2024, we. And we. And we do this in our book as well. We draw the contrast between reading behavior and reading identity. And I think that people would assume that your identity is based on behavior, but in fact, we found that people who didn't identify as readers actually read
- [28:24]
Rebecca
more than the people who did. Okay, tell me everything.
- [28:33]
Kathy Inman Behrens
Rach, do you want to jump in on that?
- [28:35]
Rachel Norda
Yeah, I'm so glad you mentioned that, Kathy, because that's exactly what I thought of when you asked this question. Rebecca, was identity. You mentioned data from our book about how Gen Z are identifying as readers
- [28:48]
Rebecca
at a high rate.
- [28:50]
Rachel Norda
And we think a big part of that is because the genre communities that they're a part of are an important piece. The society social aspect of reading is what really seems to make people comfortable with identifying as a reader as opposed to whether or not they're actually reading. And so, you know, that speaks maybe for publishers and for authors about increasing some of those social opportunities so that there's more folks who maybe have the behavior of reading but start to identify as readers because it is a powerful thing and identity can drive consumption. Absolutely.
- [29:29]
Rebecca
It's one of the things that we've wondered about book talk, like how many of the big book talk phenomena titles are actually being read, which of course we can never know, versus people picking them up because they want to participate in the social activity online around reading. And this assumption that we're able to make because of just Gen Z being digitally native, that reading is fundamentally social is such a shift from how I grew up thinking about reading as fundamentally solitary in nature. What do physical books have to do with this? Because you all, you tie those things together in a really interesting way.
- [30:11]
Kathy Inman Behrens
You know Rebecca, I'd like to straddle two different things. This question and the one before you mentioned Brandon Sanderson and I think that when he had that record breaking Kickstarter, you know, $41 million in a month around books, I mean he created his own publishing house called Dragonsteel just to accommodate his, the self publishing wing of his work. He still publishes with Tor.
- [30:39]
Rebecca
Right.
- [30:40]
Kathy Inman Behrens
So the Sanderson phenomenon on was there like there were people who had never heard of Brandon Sanderson who suddenly are looking at the front page of the New York Times and seeing that there's this author, this sci fi author and fantasy author who's breaking all records on Kickstarter. That's, that's an extreme example of the way that the social reinforcement for reading can spark, can actually grow and find new readers. You know, I think that some of the TikTok phenomenon has been like, why are so many people buying books? Well, it's also possible that there's a whole group of people who weren't previously buying physical books who now found purpose and meaning in doing so.
- [31:23]
Rebecca
So that really struck me in the reading, Kathy, this not just physical books as being meaningful to Gen Z, but that it's the places that you go to get physical books being meaningful. And Rachel, near the top of the show teased some data about significant changes in the last three years. There were really interesting and I think encouraging changes from your 2022 round of survey to the 2025 surveys about where Gen Z readers are going to get their books, would you talk about what those changes are and what that might be telling us about what Gen Z is interested in with books and reading?
- [32:05]
Rachel Norda
Yes, I can.
- [32:06]
Kathy Inman Behrens
Go ahead, Rachel.
- [32:07]
Rachel Norda
All right, so in terms of how Gen Z discover books, we expected some of the findings, which is that word of mouth is important. So the people who they know personally in their lives, when those folks, family and friends recommend books to them, that's high on the list of discovery mechanisms. However, they're also doing things like turning to other media for recommendations. So streaming a television series or a movie and then going to the book afterwards. Right. When they find out that it was a book first. But the most surprising thing for us in this year's in the 202025 data compared to 2022 was librarian recommendations. So not only were Gen Z in high numbers going to their physical local library to borrow books, but also the number three way that they preferred to discover books was through a recommendation from a librarian. And I think that could mean several things. Maybe it's going up to the desk to actually talk about to the librarian. Maybe it's when you're in things like the Libby app and you can chat to librarians, you know, who give you recommendations or those great curated displays that librarians do that introduce folks to new books when they then come into the physical library. But that was really encouraging to us.
- [33:36]
Kathy Inman Behrens
I just want to note that, you know, it was a 21% jump for people, Gen Z, people going to bookstores. Right. That in our 2022 data, it was 10% had gone to a bookstore. And remember, this is also post Covid time, so that might also be a piece of it. But 31% of our survey respondents in 2025 said that they'd gone to a bookstore to get a book, which was the number one preferred way. Amazon used to also increased significantly from 9% in 2022 to 22%. And the local public library is the number two preferred way at 24%. That's a 7% jump from 2022. So these are really heartening signs that point to the value of these third spaces, let's call them.
- [34:32]
Rebecca
Yeah, and it really validates James Daunt of Barnes and Noble being out there on the press tour over the last few years, being like, the kids are coming in after school, we've got to have their TikTok books ready for them. It also really jives with just anecdotal experience that I've had the last several times I've been in my local Barnes and Noble, there have been pairs or trios of younger women, particularly in the romance section, taking books off the shelves and basically book talking them to each other. Did you read this one? Have you heard about that one? Here's the new Ali Hazelwood. When is the next one of these coming out? And like I just stood there eavesdropping for probably longer than I should have been, like, oh my God, the kids are gonna be okay. That they are out in these, in these public places seeking engagement with each other and with physical media. I found it really interesting how you all point out that physical books take on a different meaning when there are alternatives to physical books. And I had never thought about it in this way before that like coming up, the only options available to me were print books. But when ebooks and audiobooks exist in a readily available form, choosing physical media means something. And that younger people are seeking particular experiences when they pick a physical book or they go to a physical bookstore. What is going on with the materiality of physical books right now? And then let's, let's do come back to this also the questions of the third spaces and maybe what that might be telling us about generational loneliness, which I know is also interesting to you all.
- [36:06]
Rachel Norda
What's nice about a print book is it doesn't bother you, it doesn't gather your data, it doesn't do all the things that like your phone would. And obviously e readers allow a space where you can read your ebook but you're not going to be notified constantly in the same way. Class is now in session and the UPS store is here to help you ace arriving on campus. Our certified packing experts can pack everything you need from desktops to decor. Plus, when you pack and ship with us, you get our exclusive pack and ship guarantee. Your items arrive safe or your money back.
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Rachel Norda
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- [36:52]
Rachel Norda
but it's so easy to read a book on the phone, it's easy to listen to an audiobook on your phone. And yet it's really hard to actually be immersed in that long form media when you're in those spaces. So they're convenient. I love using audiobooks when I'm on a walk or ebooks when I'm traveling so that I don't have to, you know, put bring a heavy stack of things. But Gen Z are just showing us that when given A choice when they get to say no, what is actually the best format for me to read this book and enjoy it with other people, that is the print book.
- [37:28]
Rebecca
And when you point out that most of them, when they're engaging with ebooks, are doing it on their phones, not in a dedicated e reader, that really was illuminating to me because of course, you want to escape into your book and you can't do it if you're reading it on the same device where, like, your Snapchat alerts are going off.
- [37:44]
Kathy Inman Behrens
Well, I mean, it's also worth noting that the physical location matters. There's a scholar called Ryan Rafaeli who published in the Harvard Business review in 2020 about the rise of independent bookstores, like the resurgence of independent bookstores. And since 2020, we've seen even more independent bookstores opening. So there's some data from the American Booksellers association that I don't really have at the tips of my fingers, but I absolutely remember that the trend is up and for. So for people, for Gen Z, who are fortunate enough to live. And we do need to remember that there are huge book deserts. Right. So this is a thing to talk about too. But for those who are fortunate enough to live in bookish cities, independent bookstores are enjoying a huge resurgence. And that Gen Z in particular, because they are interested in. In consuming ethically, or more. More interested, let's say, than other generations in consuming ethically, that indie bookstores are really appealing. They're making that appeal. And they are also these comfortable, safe spaces where they can go and engage with others and do that kind of impromptu book talk that you were observing.
- [38:57]
Rebecca
Rebecca, that safety piece I found touching, but also kind of broke my heart that, like, this is a generation that many have to walk through metal detectors when they're going into schools and they don't have that experience when they're walking into their public library or into their local bookstore, that it's. It feels both emotionally and literally physically safe to them to. To be surrounded by books and to be in those places. How is, you know, we talk, especially with Gen Z, about the loneliness epidemic that is a product or that we think is a product of everyone being on their phones. And you all have some strong words for Jonathan Haidt and the anxious generation in your chapter. But what can we take from your findings about what loneliness is looking like and how younger folks might be using books to address that?
- [39:48]
Rachel Norda
I really think it goes back to the community piece, Rebecca. And I think that's why enabling as many folks to be able to adopt that identity as a reader is really crucial because then they'll seek out bookish places, they'll look for other readers. And this gives them a safe space to be able to, you know, talk about the topics that come up from the books, to engage with others, often offline, which can be really nice. You know, print books have, in addition to all the things that we were talking about about it not pinging you, you get to own a print book, like you can buy one and Amazon won't just take it back at some point, you can borrow it out to someone else, you can gift it, you can, you know, do kind of what you want with that. And I think that's another part of the benefit of materiality when, you know, so much of their lives is being surveyed and where they don't actually have control over some of the media that they're engaged in like you would when you borrow or buy a print book.
- [40:57]
Kathy Inman Behrens
And then to get back to the loneliness piece and how that fits in with Gen Z of our survey respondents. Oh no, this is actually, I'm sorry, this is data from Vivek Murty, who was the first former US Surgeon General who found that 79% of 18 to 24 year olds reported feeling lonely. And then the comparison is that 41% of seniors aged 66/ reported feeling lonely. And like just to contextualize why this is a big deal, lack of social connection is as dangerous as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. So this, this is an extraordinary public health crisis, the epidemic of loneliness. Libraries are a really interesting space and so are physical bookstores for that kind of that they have a long Gen Z, have a longing. You know, 85% of our survey respondents in 2025, 85% said that they wish that they had more places to relax outside their home and, and 84% of Gen Z agree that books, games and fandoms help them feel more connected with others. So unstructured or self structured time is part of the appeal of either the physical space of the library or the bookstore or the unstructured time of coming into an online community when you can.
- [42:24]
Rebecca
I think it connects to or possibly connects to your findings about genre preference as well that your respondents are citing a preference for pretty escapist genres. And they talk about wanting me time and wanting a book that they can use to escape reality. And this is one of the places that I really found the non judgmental approach that you took to be so interesting because older generations have talked about and like I have been Guilty of this myself about thinking about escapist reading as having some sort of negative valence to it. But there are real reasons that all of us would want to escape reality at some points. And the use of those genres as a form of self care I thought was really interesting to see.
- [43:09]
Kathy Inman Behrens
I fully agree. I would say that, you know, I have two kids who are Gen Z humans and it is one thing to, I mean, at one point my husband and I would say, you know, these things that are happening are not really normal. This is not how things usually go, you know, and that's no longer a thing we can really say because we're kind of in a new normal. And given that, I think that Gen Z, the big increase in use of libraries, the big increase in librarian recommendation as a way to find books, the big increase in uses of bookstores, all of these are a way of Gen Z saying, all right, so this, this is our coming of age. This is how we're like, like the world is asking a lot of us right now. Yeah, we're going to find some really fun escapist literature to jump into. Like we're going to make ourselves feel better. One last thing worth noting, which is that lonelier Gen Z are less likely to have visited a physical library in the past 12 months. And Rachel is, is amazing at talking about like, you know, for each one unit increase in the loneliness score, the odds of visiting a physical library go down by 27.
- [44:23]
Rebecca
I did want to ask about how those pieces might connect to another one of your findings, that social media influencers and talent and like booktok in particular are less important to Gen Z now than they were a few years ago. What do you think is going on there?
- [44:40]
Rachel Norda
You don't know what you can trust on the Internet and there have been many influencers who turned out to be AI. And so I think this is all part of what we're seeing with Gen Z. Turning to physical spaces and physical books and because it's hard to know online who you can trust. Whereas there used to be, you know, and still is to some extent this parasocial relationship with influencers where it feels maybe like a recommendation from a friend or a family member if you feel like you know them online. But, but more and more there's this question of, you know, how well do you know them and, and who are they and can you trust their recommendations. So I think it's, it makes a lot of sense that Gen Z are turning away from, from talent and influencers and moving toward bookstores and libraries.
- [45:33]
Rebecca
Context sounds like very much like the kids are going to be okay.
- [45:36]
Kathy Inman Behrens
Well, not just the kids, but also things like book festivals and author appearances. I mean, the front page of the New York Times today, and I know that will air at a different time than we're recording, but front page of the New York Times today is that the number one expert on detecting deep fakes with AI can no longer tell the difference.
- [45:55]
Rebecca
Oh boy.
- [45:56]
Kathy Inman Behrens
If the world's expert on deepfakes can't tell a difference, then what we have is a crisis in authenticity. Authors are in a fantastic position because authors make these long form works and then they communicate them to readers. And readers ideally can get to see or engage with their favorite authors. And we didn't gather any data on this, so that's beyond the scope of what we know. But I will say, just in life, I've observed that some of the most successful self publishing authors are those who have vital communities gathered around them that they nurture those communities with, with newsletters, sometimes with podcasts. And so they're, they're, they're giving people an occasion to get together and talk about ideas. And I can imagine there would only be a growing need for this and a growing demand for it. Because what's really ironic about the data that we gathered is that on the one hand, the influence of influencers and talent went down, but the actual use of social media went up. So gen Z, like 91% of our survey respondents are on YouTube, for example. Right. That's a gigantic number. The numbers for TikTok. Yeah, the numbers for TikTok and Instagram are up a bit too, but they, the influencer culture has gone down and that's because people understand that they're being sold to in a way. And I think they're really turning that. This is a great moment for authors to really, you know, to give people access to authenticity. And it may come down to things like appearances at book festivals and book tours and other kinds of things, or even just really nurturing community in the ways I was just suggesting.
- [47:51]
Rebecca
That is such an interesting point to make about AI and the value of an author being able to show up in physical space and say, I'm a real person and here is the real book that I wrote.
- [48:02]
Kathy Inman Behrens
Rebecca.
- [48:03]
Rachel Norda
The Portland Book Festival sold completely out last year.
- [48:06]
Rebecca
Jeff just told me that that's amazing.
- [48:09]
Rachel Norda
They have 10,000 seats and that has never happened before. And I, I was just so thrilled.
- [48:17]
Rebecca
Yeah, you love to hear that happen.
- [48:18]
Kathy Inman Behrens
This coming year, the Portland Book Festival is expanding from one day to A multi day experience that's also going to pull in music and food. And I think that, you know, people are turning to the arts, you know, like in a crisis of authenticity. Well, what do we need? We need those nourishing stories and those people who make stories and make art and make culture, make that food that's so memorable that you want to have conversations about. So it's a good time to be in the arts, even though it's also obviously a scary time.
- [48:53]
Rebecca
That sets me up for the last question that I wanted to ask y' all because I think, I think this, all of this research will be so illuminating for listeners who are both just civilian readers and also industry professionals. One of the things Jeff and I like to do on the show is if we were the emperors of publishing, here's what we would do. So I'd like to ask y', all, if we if you just millions of dollars fall from the sky and you get to start a publishing house, what kind of books are you thinking about? How are you presenting them to the youngest readers who are going to make up the bulk of the market? What would you like the publishing industry now to understand about what we really know about readers? And you know, like, you get to go in and start fresh or give them some advice. How are we redirecting?
- [49:36]
Rachel Norda
I would work really closely with libraries, much more closely than most publishers do already. And I would bundle more. I mean, that's why Brandon Sanderson left.
- [49:46]
Rebecca
Preach it, Rachel.
- [49:48]
Rachel Norda
I've been doing another study that's been near and dear to my heart about readers with migraine. And it's also great for readers with disability to have that flexibility of being able to move into different formats. But if they have to own all the formats separately, then, you know, it's a big hurdle. And I don't know why publishing has been so slow to bundle, but that that would be a big part of my strategy of how they were starting and publishing company and backed up by
- [50:16]
Rebecca
some of the very recent data from Spotify that their page match feature where you can go between an audiobook and an ebook or a print book that you just have access to, you don't have to like have bought it, but that that is increasing engagement with audiobooks, just the option to more seamlessly move between modes of reading, which as, as we know from your data, Gen Z is doing okay.
- [50:38]
Kathy Inman Behrens
Kathy I really love how many of our Gen Z respondents are also makers themselves. Makers in many different kinds of ways, whether they're writers or they identify as gamers or they identify as podcasters. And what I would really love is more opportunity to blend the book consuming and the writing or the podcasting or the making music. So more embodied experience. Experiences. I mean, again, if I've got lots of cash, I'm going to have lots of literary festivals all around the US and you know, going up on, on Rachel's idea or kind of building on Rachel's idea. I mean, we do have something like 1700 public libraries all over the United States. We have these built in community hubs where small festivals could be, could be given. And so the more people can connect with their own authentic voice, the. I mean, how about this? As a teacher, I often have students in classes about literature. I have them make art. So I just got done teaching a class about video games and in this class I had students build twine games. And twine is an interactive software. It's super, super, super simple to use, but it's interactive stories, right? And so students who had the experience of making their own branching narratives were like, wow, it's really hard to design a game. And I never, ever thought I could do this, but I'm so excited that I can. And they told a huge range of incredible stories. We could do a whole different podcast about that. But the long and the short of it is that giving people an opportunity to be both makers and consumers might be a special way to reach Gen Z.
- [52:35]
Rebecca
Thank you both. I think that's a great note to end on. Doctors Rachel Norda and Kathy Inman Behrens from Portland State University. Their book is How Gen Z Discover and Consume Books. It's from Cambridge University Press. And again, check the link in the show notes to see if you're still in that window where you can download it for free. Or of course you can support them with a purchase of the ebook print edition as well. Thank you both so much for being here.
- [53:01]
Kathy Inman Behrens
Delightful to be with you, Rebecca. Thank you.