Just stop for a minute and think about it for a second....if there was nothing in your town for the average person to read.....why and how would you learn to read??????sheesh
If there was a synagogue in the town there was a least one who could read.
Christians were considered to be primarily responsible for the adoption of the codex which allowed writing on both sides. This made the collection of writings easier to obtain and transport. For example Papyrus 46 contains Paul's letters on one handy volume.
It is true that a significant minority of the population was literate in this time period. This was usually the top layer of society. A much larger number, but still a definite minority, had a minimal but functional literacy.
Professional scribes were available to assist in drawing up and reading legal documents.
The availability of papyrus and slaves made it possible for books to be produced in the Hellenistic age on a scale previously unknown. Learning was highly prized and there were publishers and booksellers in the major cities to satisfy the desire for reading. Most of the cities of the Greek world had libraries.
The library at Alexandria for instance had an estimated 700,000 rolls in its collection at one time.
A form of entertainment in the first century would be to have friends over to your house and read to them. This is one of the ways the Gospels and Paul's letters became "public".....but only within the circles of the churches and of course by reading in the context of the Christian assemblies.
The formal dedications to Theophilus in Luke and Acts indicates these books were intended for a wider audience that just the Christian community and reflect a higher level of culture.
Source: Backgrounds of Early Christianity, Everett Ferguson, pp128-134
What we learn from this is that early Christianity was in the forefront of trying to get the Word out by using the newest technology available.
The early church was in the business of getting the Word out to the people in any manner possible. Koine Greek was the principal language of commerce throughout the Roman Empire. Although Palestine was multilingual in the first century, Greek was the language of choice in order to disseminate a message as widely as possible. As a result, all of the NT was written in Greek.
Ferguson, pp135-136