The Publishers Association has just published its Statistics Yearbook for 2005. It's well worth getting a copy if only to marvel at the divergence between popular perception and reality.

Next week Macmillan is welcoming a group of top German booksellers to London to learn what's going on in the UK and perhaps to avoid some of the British mistakes. And I'm hoping we can learn something from them. As part of the preparation we have been digging in to swathes of statistics on consumer behaviour in relation to reading etc. I thought I'd share some of the nuggets.

In Germany Internet users have increased from 7% of the population in 1997 to 58% now. The over 60 year olds have increased from 0 in 1997 to 18% now.

In UK Internet advertising now represents 7% of total media spend up 73% on the previous year.

In USA 27% of online users buy or sell in online auction sites.

On average across the world people spend 6.5 hours a week reading. The most of amount time spent reading is in India (10.7 hours), the least Korea (3.1 hours). UK is very near the bottom at 5.3 hours, Germany and USA a little higher at 5.7 hours.

The Chinese listen to radio less than any other nation (2.1 hours a week), Argentina the most (20.8 hours).

On average people now spend more time on the Internet for leisure (not work) than reading - 8.9 vs 6.5 hours. Mexico uses the Intenet for leisure least (6.3 hours) and Taiwan the most (12.6 hours).

Internet use reduces the time people have for reading by around 20%.

40% of Europeans do not read books.

More people use the Internet for leisure than read books in the developed world.

And people wonder why publishers are spending so much time and effort on digital developments...