A survey, presented at the opening of Book Night 2017 at the National and University Library in Zagreb earlier this week, shows that 53% of the population have read at least one book over the past year, compared to 47% in the year before.
"This gives rise to optimism. Most of those who read read four books a year, and they mostly read borrowed prose books. Children books are read more as well," said Tamara Kraus of the GfK market research agency which conducted the survey.
Books in Croatian continue to be read the most (82%), followed by books in English (15%). Translations of books by foreign authors are read the most (40%).
Areas where reading is above the national average are Zagreb (64%) and Istria and Primorje (62%). Most people borrow the books they read (46%).
Regarding book purchase, most books are bought in bookshops (53%) and during discounts (56%).
Books that are read the most are fiction (58%), followed by technical literature (30%), nonfiction (29%), and children's books (15%).
The survey shows that people who do not buy books do so to a large extent (59%) because they do not need books and are not interested in them (in the year before the percentage was 52%), while the second most frequent reason, lack of money, was quoted by 19% of the respondents as against 25% in the year before.
Of those who do not buy books, a half said that nothing could prompt them to buy a book while one third said books should be cheaper.
The survey also shows that e-books were read by 12% of the respondents as against 8% in 2016.