Here’s some cheery news to balance out the doom’n’gloom of publishing industry lay-offs and bookstore chain incompetence. According to a report from the United States National Endowment for the Arts, 84% of readers who read material online or downloaded from the web are still reading printed books, and furthermore the absolute number of literature readers in the US has grown by 16.6million; this is the first increase in over two decades, and reflects a rise much greater than simple population expansion. Something to smile about, no? [via Mediabistro/Galleycat; image by shaycam]