Apparently some people find books intimidating. Really? “Books”? All books? I mean, have you SEEN some of them? Even Danielle Steel and Terry Brooks? They’re like the literary equivalent of pleasant lap dogs with bows in their hair, little body sweaters, and full harnesses. Their poop looks like raisins. Seriously.

Publishers, retailers and librarians are missing out on a potential market of 20m consumers because the book world is too intimidating, according to research conducted by HarperCollins, the Trade Publishers Council and the National Year of Reading (NYR).

The research, to be published this week, looked at attitudes to books in the C2DE socio-economic group, characterised as lower income, non-professional families and estimated at 20m in size.

It found that in many such families, books were seen as alien and unattractive, while reading was considered an anti-social activity for people who, as one respondent said, “don’t know how to live”.

Choosing a book in shops and libraries was also a major obstacle for many, the research found, with many of the codes and references setting out where books were located being off-putting for this segment of the population.