Was Lockdown a Reading Renaissance?

The Covid-19 pandemic response saw some changes to the ways that people lives and worked in the UK last year. With more and more of us trading the commute and the office for virtual working, pub nights and long weekends for zoom quizzes and hanging out for staying in, lot of people found that they were having to rethink the ways that they filled their recreation time – and for some of us, this has meant picking up those paperbacks that have been gathering dust on the nightstand for some time now.

Some publishers are seeing record growth – Nigel Netwon, the chief executive and founder of UK publishing giant Bloomsbury has heralded reading as becoming an “ingrained habit” under lockdown. Sales at Bloomsbury jumped 14% to £185.1 million in the year to the 28^th of February, and saw a huge increase in the sales of ink-and-paper books, as opposed to those formatted for eReaders. Speaking to i, he was hopeful about the trend continuing to grow and reading occupying a greater part of our lives than in recent years – and mentioned that it wasn’t something that people were likely to shake off, either.

i called it a 'Reading Renaissance' - and based on the figures, rightly so. Newton commented that themes of escapism, fantasy and cookery have enjoyed the biggest swell in popularity, with a 7% uptick in sales of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series one of the most notable trends – perhaps students were missing their classrooms, or home workers longing for the ability to send an owl instead of joining yet another Zoom call? Whatever the reason, it’s interesting that narratives about global catastrophes have taken rather a hit in terms of their Amazon ratings too, although we can’t for a second think why.

Whilst one study by the Literacy Trust corroborates the sales patterns that Bloomsbury is reporting, it isn’t strictly true for all demographics. Although 2020 was a bumper year for bookworms, if we fast-forward to 2021, however, the narrative changes. Nielsen Books’ Understanding the Children’s Book Consumer Survey found that children and young people’s reading has decreased since an uptick in the early days of lockdown last year. The research highlighted that 25% of primary schools were worried that that access to books had become a barrier to reading for pleasure, and that 40% of primary-level children were unable to take school-owned books home during the lockdown period.

It's an interesting split – and the idea that children and young people were reading more only to end up reading less does raise some concerns when it comes to thinking about just how much virtual learning fatigue might have been an issue during the later lockdowns. It’s also important to remember when we think about the increasingly virtual nature of education and working – whilst for adults, home working has been consistently proven to be more productive, virtual education has had a much more negative response- especially from the educator community.

Whatever else can be said, global lockdowns have proven that in times of uncertainty and crisis, one of our first instincts is to reach for a book- which is comforting in many ways. What matters now is understanding where we go from here, and whether the early pandemic ‘Reading Renaissance’ can continue, and how we can motivate children and young people back into the trend after a disrupted and disjointed fifteen months in education.