Heard anything about that new Harry Potter book? Oh yeah, I forgot, that’s all we’ve heard about for three months. Quick, name another book published in the last three months. Whoops, time’s up, we all lose.

Roughly 8.5 million copies of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” were sold in the first 24 hours, which means an impressive 292 million Americans didn’t buy a copy.

The common wisdom is that it’s a good thing because children are reading. OK, fine. But wouldn’t the world be a better place if we could get more adults to read?

“Oh,” you say. “You’re playing with statistics. Babies and young children don’t buy books, and a lot of people wouldn’t be interested in Harry Potter.” OK. Let’s say half the population wasn’t in the market for the new Harry Potter book. That means an impressive 142 million Americans didn’t buy it. Let’s say two people read each copy, a huge improvement – 134 million Americans didn’t read it.

Any way you cut it, only 10 percent of the reading public read the best-selling book of all time. Now imagine a regular best seller, a book that only sells a million copies, meaning a whopping 299 million Americans didn’t buy it.