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Comment by brainwad | Hacker News Reader

What's a book, though? I suppose people would at least count a traditional e-book. Does long-form fanfic count? How about a book-length website? What about one that was originally published as a book and then republished online?

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I'm sure the general population being asked whether they read books have a very clear idea of what a book is.

Is that understanding also cross-culturally consistent? That's a typical failure mode in comparative surveys between different countries - the meaning of the question depends on the translation used in each language. I imagine here the implied frequency might also vary between languages; maybe English speakers don't say they "read" unless they read once a week, while Spanish speakers are laxer?

I think it's obvious enough without getting into the weeds like this unless their sample size is unreasonably small. E-book yes obviously counts. For the rest, like fanfic? Probably, but does it matter here? Is this actually going to move the needle?

Be cool if they would research that, instead of asking rhetorical questions and assuming that none of it matters and everything is "obvious."

I think it's just people being snooty. Bestsellers are trash, and by definition a plurality of readers are reading them. I don't think someone who reads Gladwell has any greater cognitive power than somebody who reads twitter.

All your examples could be printed and read as books - whatever form they are consumed in. What differences are you seeking to highlight with these examples?

People don't usually count reading an online piece of writing as equivalent to reading a book, even if the exact same content could also be in book form. Hence if you ask speakers of a language with a lot of available online reading material (English), you may systematically underestimate how much they read long-form content.

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