Let’s start with books. Consumer demand is shockingly low overall: Americans spend 0.2% of their income on all reading materials, barely more than $100 per family per year.12 Americans used to spend more on reading but never spent much: back in 1990, well before the rise of the web, reading absorbed 0.5% of the family budget.13 Today’s Americans spend about four times as much on tobacco and five times as much on alcohol as they do on reading.14 Within
