Instagram is one of the most popular and fastest-growing social networks, in Canada and around the world. The percentage of Canadians using Instagram on a weekly basis has nearly doubled since 2016, jumping from 20% to 39%.
We've covered lots of highly Instagrammable subjects here on the blog in the past — everything from houseplants to organizing to celebrity social media book clubs. We've also covered how Canadian readers and publishers are using Instagram to discover and promote books.
But there's one genre that's top of mind when we think Instagram, and that's poetry. We began our investigation into the effect of the Instapoets on poetry sales in 2018, when we noted how Instapoets knocked literary heavyweights like Homer, Leonard Cohen, and Pablo Neruda from the top 10 after 2014, but how has the rise of poetry on Instagram affected the subject as a whole? Let's hit the data to find out!
For this blog post, we aggregated sales for all poetry books by authors whose Instagram follower count is 50k or higher as of October 2019, and who rose to prominence on the platform, and then we tracked their sales in comparison to the sales of all poetry books from stores across the country.
Share of sales for all poets compared with sales of Instagram poets, 2014 to 2018
In 2014, Instapoets accounted for just over 12% of all poetry sales. By 2016, half of all poetry sales were for books by poets with strong Instagram followings. Instapoets' domination peaked in 2017, when their titles accounted for just over 80% of all poetry sales.
In 2018, Instapoets accounted for just under 1% of all poetry ISBNs with sales, but made up 70% of all units sold. Pretty compelling!
While it looks like Instapoets' domination may have peaked in 2017, it's hard to say what could happen in the future. If we look at the 10 top-selling poetry ISBNs in BNC SalesData's Lifetime (from October 2005 to present), only two non-Instapoet authors crack the top 10: Thomas Devaney at number three and Leonard Cohen at number six and number nine.
Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur 🇨🇦 (9781449474256) 📸
The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur 🇨🇦 (9781501175268) 📸
You Are The Battery by Thomas Devaney (9780999702819)
The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur 🇨🇦 (9781501175275) 📸
Love Her Wild by Atticus 🇨🇦 (9781501171239) 📸
The Flame by Leonard Cohen 🇨🇦 (9780771024412)
Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur 🇨🇦 (9781449483135) 📸
A Beautiful Composition of Broken by R.H. Sin (9781449490164) 📸
Book of Longing by Leonard Cohen 🇨🇦 (9780771022296)
Pillow Thoughts by Courney Peppernell (9781449489755) 📸
Based on our data, cultivating a following on Instagram certainly doesn't seem like a bad idea for the aspiring poet, given the Instapoets' domination of the category. So far in 2019, Instapoets account for just over 52% of poetry sales — and with the holiday buying season still ahead, and lots of cozy poetry-reading weekends to come, we'll have to see if these young poets will continue their hold on the top 10 in the future!
Sales and library circulation data of science fiction titles during the third quarter of 2024.