Hit The Books

I've realised something recently. Granted I realise new things all the time, like yesterday when I realised my manboobs are big enough to make convincing cleavage if I tape them together the right way.

The thing I want to talk about though is how much university sucks if you like reading.

Some of my readers probably already know about my ill-fated stint at university. In fact it was upon dropping out that I started this blog to help encourage my writing. While at university, my time was taken up by nothing but university. Or at least in theory it was... In truth my time was taken up by video games and food. But I digress...

For the average student who is interested in passing papers, the bulk of your time is taken up by university. I don't mean to say that every waking moment is study, study, study. But certainly when you're not at university, or travelling to and from school, or working on assignments, you're still thinking about university. Every moment is pervaded by thoughts of study. If you're at your evening job, you're thinking about how early you need to wake up for class tomorrow. If you're at a party, you're thinking about the assignment due next week. If you've just finished exams, you're thinking about applying for nest semester's papers. University is your life while you're there.

You know all this when you apply to a university. You start studying there knowing how much of your time and life it will take up. That's fine, that's part of it. And yes, you don't spend every single second thinking about university. There is down-time. The problem is, reading comes in pretty low on the list of 'down-time activities', so when your downtime is really limited, you tend to end up not reading.

For 4 years.

I of course can't speak for everyone, but I know for a fact I started reading a hell of a lot more when I dropped out of university. In fact, I was amazed that when I came home from work and sat down to play a game or whatever, I didn't feel guilty at all. I was so used to sitting there, knowing there was some other work that still needed doing. I was gobsmacked at how much time I now had. Most of my friends are finishing their degrees now and they're going through the same experience. By extension, a lot of them have started reading again.

I also know plenty of people who read while they were at uni, so don't take this as me saying 'students don't have time to read'. Some do, most don't. And those that do still tend to read less than they would have were they not studying. In truth I fall into this category. I was still reading during the year and a half I was at university, it's just that in that time I read maybe 3-4 books in total. By comparison, I've read about 10 books so far this year. Yes I'm a slow reader.


My question, therefore, is how does this phenomenon affect publishers? More people than ever are going to university, often for 4 or more years. That's a massive chunk of the population. It's the bridge between 'Young Adult' and 'Adult fiction'. It's a demographic writers will struggle to write for, simply because so few will ever read what's out there for them. Publishers will be loathe to publish books for this age group, simply because there's too few buyers. Retailers won't stock those sorts of books, because they'll just waste space.

And the group that loses out is the writers.

As always.