The headline seemed very innocent—but it caught people’s attention.
Over the next few days, several people mentioned this article to me. Some laughed at the story, and others mocked it. But all the parents could relate to author Mireille Silcoff’s predicament: Her 12-year-old daughter is smart—but never reads books for pleasure. “It felt like a parenting failure,” she laments.
But she’s not alone. The number of youngsters who read for fun is collapsing. But the $100 payment did get results. Silcoff’s daughter did read a book—and then decided to read another one for fun. It’s a small victory for literary culture. But those in the book business can’t really celebrate. Paying people to read isn’t a sustainable strategy—especially if you’re paying five times the price of the book. If you want to support my work, please take out a premium subscription (just $6 per month).I’d like to think this is an isolated situation. But paying people to read is more common than you think. I don’t know if the offers below are legit or scams, but they definitely suggest a growing desperation in the book world.
And it’s not just youngsters who are giving up on books. Even serious readers are abandoning contemporary literature. “The literati aren't reading new releases anymore,” writer Naomi Kanakia warns. ... Keep reading with a 7-day free trialSubscribe to The Honest Broker to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives. A subscription gets you:
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Where Did All the Book Readers Go?
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