Early on, a mentor once suggested that I check out Amazon.com‘s  and New York Time’s Best Selling Non-Fiction Best Selling Lists for some of the best life changing books.  I hesitated because I did not think I really cared to read what the mindless drone masses thought was good, I only wanted to know what the cognitive elite and most successful people thought.   I took the advice anyways, and started to plow though the lists, even going back into the 1930′s and before, reading every title that looked promising or was the #1 book for that year or decade.  I was blown away at the high quality of many of them.  The biggest questions that struck me were along the same lines of:

  • Why don’t more people know what’s in this book?
  • This must be common knowledge now, why are so many people not aware of it?

I just could not wrap my head around why certain ideas that were so prevalent, with millions of copies sold in the world was not more into mainstream though. For instance the best selling health book of the entire 1970′s was no where in the American Health Care system – I just couldn’t figure it out.  Now, here is where I was wrong: It’s not the masses of mindless masses that even read books.  Here are some figures I’ve gathered that point out exactly who is reading, and who is not:

  • 99% of people don’t buy books
  • The average Fortune 500 CEO reads 4 to 5 books per month (and makes over 500 times what the average book reader person makes…)
  • The average person buys 1 book a year
  • The number of people who will not read past the first chapter …60%-98% depending on the book
  • 54% of people never read another non-fiction book outside of school for the rest of their lives.
  • National Endowment for the Arts report titled “Reading at Risk” found only 57 percent of American adults had claimed to have read a book in 2002.  This figure is most likely grossly inflated.
  • 95% of people, basically, don’t read books

So the advice given to me to check out the best sellers lists for the best life changing books was solid advice.  It is NOT the mindless masses reading these books, it’s basically the top 1-5%.

It’s true though, most of the subjects on those lists do not really appeal to me; I do not care about politics, some biographies of some pop-star, the latest fad diet or someone complaining and fighting against unwanted things.  But there are real jems there, and I will heartily pass on the advice.  One more fact:

  • The average American by the age of 60 has watched 15 years of television.