The World Population Review published data about reading habits by country that recently got some traction. Among other things, it reported the “time spent reading” in terms of the number of hours a year spent reading and converted that number into a “number of books read” per year. The data was collected between 2017 and 2022.

The US scores highest with 357 hours / 17 books per year, followed closely by India with 352 hours / 16 books, and the UK in third position with 343 hours / 15 books. Pakistan, with 60 hours / 2.6 books, is reported in the last of nine categories. Such rankings make for great headlines, but you must remain skeptical of the credibility of their data sources, methodology, and the country rankings they produce.

Every few years there are similar studies about reading habits, some more credible than others. However, one thing that remains consistent is that Pakistan is either far down the list or not even included.

Statista Market Insights put Pakistan’s total book sales at a paltry $60 million. For reference, India’s book sales are reported as $5.5 billion – approximately 90 times as much as ours. It also lines up with other reports that put the value of book sales in India at about 5.0 per cent of the global total, comparable to its 17 per cent of the global population.

With 3.0 per cent of the global population, Pakistan’s book sales make up only about 0.05 per cent of the global total. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) report titled ‘The Global Publishing Industry 2022’, out of all books deposited at recognised repositories in 2022, only 1,911 are from Pakistan. To put this number in perspective, the same number is 264,000 for the US, 401,000 for Germany, and 3,082 for Sri Lanka (a country with a smaller population but in our region).

The decline of reading as a habit is not........

© The News International