I want to locate statistics/data about the amount and kinds of nonfiction
read by adults in a typical year, month or however the information is broken down.

Hi Cleo418--

The information you're looking for is compiled by Publisher's Weekly,
the "official" news magazine of the publishing industry.

Their FAQ page contains the latest sales figures (2000) for all
various categories of books.

This is what you were asking for ----------


ESTIMATED ANNUAL SALES OF ADULT
TRADE BOOKS BY CATEGORY IN UNITS
& PERCENT OF MARKET SHARE (2000)  

General Nonfiction  		105 million 	(7.8%)
Art/Literature/Poetry  		45 million  	(3.3%)  
Biography/Autobiography  	50 million  	(3.7%)  
Business  			83 million  	(6.2%)  
Cooking/Wine  		        135 million  	(10%)  
Psychology/Recovery 	        70 million  	(5.2%)  
Reference 			28 million  	(2.2%)  
Religion  			126 million  	(9.3%)  
Technical/Scientific 		78 million  	(5.8%)  
Travel  			19 million  	(1.4%)  


Here's the link to the website. Scroll down to #19 if the link doesn't
take you there.

http://publishersweekly.reviewsnews.com/trade

That should answer your question and provide you with plenty of other
statistics regarding book sales.  If anything I've said isn't clear,
feel free to ask for clarification.

Thanks for the question!

--K~

Search Terms -- I didn't use any because I knew that Publisher's
Weekly would have the information. But you could search for
"Publishers Weekly" using Google and their site would come right up.
Then click the FAQ's.

---

Request for Answer Clarification by cleo418-ga on 24 Aug 2002 18:42 PDT

Thanks for link to Publishers Weekly and the stats.  Can I use this
same source for finding out data about adults reading habits of
newspapers and kinds of magazines as well?  I'm a teacher and looking
for ways to demonstrate to other teachers comparisons between amount
of nonfiction reading versus fiction reading by adults.

---

Clarification of Answer by knowledge_seeker-ga on 25 Aug 2002 07:08 PDT

Hi cleo418 --

I'm glad those stats worked for you. No, that site won't help you with
magazines and newspapers. Their focus is the book publishing industry.
Here's a place you can start looking for periodical statistics.

http://www.writergazette.com/writerstats.shtml

That should give you a good jumping off point for what you're after.
To find that site I just did a quick Google search for:

magazine readership statistics

Best of luck in your project.

--K~

Answer really got me started with locating information in the right
places.  The follow-up response also sent me to another best place for
finding what I needed.  Thanks!