This paper analyses major social shifts in reading by comparing publishing statistics with results of empirical research on reading. As media statistics suggest, the last five decades have seen two shifts: from textual to visual media, and with the advent of digital screens also from long-form to short-form texts. This was accompanied by new media-adequate reading modes: while long-form content invokes immersed and/or deep reading, we predominantly skim online social media. Empirical research on reading indicates that the reading substrate plays an important role in reading processes. For example, comprehension suffers when complex texts are read from screens. This paper argues that media and reading trends in recent decades indicate broader social and cultural changes in which long-form deep reading traditionally associated with the printed book will be marginalised by prevailing media trends and the reading modes they inspire. As these trends persist, it may be necessary to find new approaches to vocabulary and knowledge building.

Societies are facing fundamental transformations as digital technologies are changing the ways we live, interact, work, study and read. The social and cultural impact of the digitization process on reading skills and practices remains under-researched. While digital technologies offer much potential for new forms of reading, recent empirical research shows that the digital environment is having a negative impact on reading, in particular on long-form reading and reading comprehension. It also remains unclear whether the transition to digital media actually lives up to its promise of improving learning outcomes. Recent studies of various kinds indicate a decline of crucial higher-level reading competencies and practices, such as critical and conscious reading, slow reading, non-strategic reading and long-form reading. Current educational policy, meanwhile, relies heavily on monocultural standardized testing of basic reading capabilities and on growing use of digital technologies. Reading education, assessment, research and policy-making should focus more on higher-level reading practices in both adults and children in order to understand the development of reading skills and practices in an age increasingly dependent on a ubiquitous digital infrastructure.

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The paper analyzes best-seller lists in seven major European book markets between April 2008 and March 2009. The paper's authors introduce the concept of an impact factor for best-selling authors that shows how influential an author is in a given market and across the analyzed markets overall. The paper's authors discovered that a new generation of European best-selling authors appeared in major book markets of Europe such that those not writing in English have an impact of almost twice that of the English writers. Furthermore, the authors have discovered that only veteran English or American best-selling authors tend to be published by big media conglomerates; the majority of the European best-selling authors were published by a surprising mix of big and small, independent and international publishing houses. It is striking that English as the most popular second language in the world did not play a stronger role as an intermediary language in the transmission of books from one European culture to another, as European publishers in major markets still employ editors who read a variety of languages and thus play the role of intermediaries in how books travel from one culture to another.

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