In this mini episode, we run through the bookish highlights of 2016, including the current size of the Canadian book market, industry updates, and new research on consumer buying habits.
(Scroll down for a transcript of the conversation.)
Transcript
Zalina Alvi: Happy New Year podcast listeners and welcome to 2017. I'm your host Zalina Alvi, and this is the BookNet Canada Podcast. Another year is behind us, and with it, millions of books bought, sold, borrowed, read, and listened to in Canada. It was a busy year with lots of developments in the book industry here and abroad from fluctuations in the books. People were buying to have a supply chain is adapted to a changing marketplace. So, in this month's episode, let's look back on 2016, and what it meant for the Canadian book market.
First up, let's talk about the size of the trade market for print books in Canada. In 2016, there were more than 50 million print books sold across the country in all kinds of retailers, including book stores of all sizes, general retailers, and Indies, which amounts to about $983 million worth of books.
Now, that number comes from data reported by retailers who participate in our sales tracking service, BNC SalesData, which covers about 85% of the trade market. If you want to compare how that stacks up to the sales in 2015, our methodology involves looking not at all the retailers reported their sales this year, but instead, we look at a subset of those participating retailers. One that includes retailers who consistently participate every year and that excludes any that might have dropped off or have been added recently to see how things are changing year-over-year in a more reliable way.
So, when we look at that particular subset of retailers, and how many books they sold in 2016 compared to 2015, we see a 6.4% decline in the number of e-copies sold, and a 3.6% decline in dollar value. So, overall, the print book market in Canada has declined a bit. We should keep in mind that this doesn't include the sale of ebooks, digital audiobooks, or used books.
When we break things down into subjects, we see the nonfiction declined by the most in 2016 selling about 10% fewer units in the previous year with fiction dropping by about 7%, and juvenile seeing a very small decrease of 1%. In terms of market share, which just looks at the percentage of books sold in each of these categories relative to each other, nonfiction accounted for a 33% of all book sales. Fiction accounted for 27% and juvenile around 38%, which is about the same as 2015.
Now let's talk tabout format. When it comes down to buying preferences among book buyers, there hasn't been the much change in 2015. According to consumer serving that we do every year, on the whole, paperbacks are still number one. They account for 54% of all book purchases in Canada, followed by hardcovers at 24%, ebooks at 17%, and audiobooks at almost 3%. Compared to 2015, there've only been slight changes of a percent or 2, with paperbacks going up a bit and ebooks going down a bit.
When it comes to places where shoppers are buying those books, consumer research conducted in 2016 shows some small gains for online shopping, which includes retailer websites, apps, and download sites. In 2016, online shopping accounted for 48% of all book purchases, which is up almost 2% over 2015. Meanwhile, shopping at physical brick and mortar stores went down by almost 2%. That would still account for the majority of book purchases at 52%. Of course, there's a lot more to the book market than just a few high level numbers. We regularly publish studies with lots of detailed information and analysis that are often free or accessible to publishers and retailers who work with us. You can visit booknetcanada.ca to learn more about those and how to get your hands on them.
So, which books were people actually buying? You probably have a good idea which titles were the best sellers of 2016, but let me see if I can surprise you. In the fiction category, the top three titles were "The Nest," by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, "The Girl on the Train," by Paula Hawkins, and "All the Light We Cannot See," by Anthony Doerr. "The Girl on the Train" was very likely propelled back onto the bestseller list, thanks to its movie adaptation starring Emily Blunt, and the continuing success of "All the Light We Cannot See" proves awards in literary prestige can definitely have a lasting impact on sales.
For nonfiction, it's nice to see some Canadian titles took the top two spots. At the very top is "99: Stories of the Game" by the great one, Wayne Gretzky, followed by "Oh She Glows Every Day," by Canadian cookbook superstar Angela Liddon. And in third place is "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up," by Marie Kondo proving that we Canadians love hockey, cooking, and being tidy. Perhaps, least surprising of all the juvenile list in 2016, which includes kids and YA books was topped by Juggernaut, Harry potter, and the Cursed Child, which was also the top selling title in any category for the whole year.
It's followed by a "Diary of a Wimpy Kid #11," "Double Down," by Jeff Kinney, and the graphic novel "Guts," by Raina Telgemeier. It's also interesting to note that if you look at the top 10 juvenile books, Harry Potter titles actually took up three spots. In addition to "Cursed Child," "Fantastic Beasts" and "Where to Find Them", the companion to the movie that came out in 2016, and "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" both appear.
So, that's what Canadians were buying in 2016 but what else happened? Well, if you're in the know and care at all about subject classification, you might have heard that new BISAC subject codes were rolled out for young adult books. Whereas, before the juvenile category included both books for kids and young adults, the industry is currently working on separating out the YA books so they can be their own category.
This involves a process that starts with creating new subject codes for YA books and then getting publishers to use them in the book metadata. At the moment, publishers are still in the midst of adopting these new codes. So, we're hopeful that in the near future, we'll be able to report on the YA subject category all in its own. We'll keep you updated.
There are also some exciting developments right here at BookNet. Earlier in the year, we were involved in the launch of the new readers advisory programme called Loan Star's, spelled L-O-A-N. It's powered by librarians and other library staff across Canada who read and vote on upcoming titles through our e-catalogue service, BNC Catalist. And then they published the most popular titles in a monthly top 10 list. So far we've released almost a year's worth of list. We got about 800 library staff participating.
If you wanna see those lists or you're a librarian or a publisher who wants to get involved, check out loanstars.ca. We're also proud to report that way back in February, we reached a bit of a milestone that will excite any data nerds in the crowd. Our aggregation service that collects and disseminates bibliographic data for the book supply chain, which is called BiblioShare reached two million public records. That's pretty good news for our quest to become the ultimate purveyor of bibliographic data in Canada, which, of course, is on-service of making it easier for people to find and sell books in Canada.
So, that's just a quick recap of what happened in 2016. And we're already jumping headfirst into this year. In addition to our upcoming "Deep Dive Series," which looks at sales trends consumer habits for particular subjects starting with mystery books coming out this February, we also have lots of new research and insights that we're waiting to share at annual publishing conferences, Tech Forum and ebookcraft. They take place in downtown Toronto from March 22nd to 24th. So, if you're interested, check out techforum.booknetcanada.ca before tickets sell out.
If you have any questions about our research or the services we provide, please get in touch at booknetcanada.ca. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund. And, of course, thanks to you for listening.
