If you're in the business of selling books, you probably spend much of your time thinking about who you're selling to. Well, have we got the free report for you: The Canadian Book Buyer 2018!
Perhaps you've read and used information from previous reports. Well this new study is a full update using the demographics, purchasing behaviour, format preferences, and subjects purchased by Canadian book buyers, including year-over-year changes between 2016 and 2018. It's essential reading for booksellers, marketers, publishers, sales agencies, libraries, and anyone else who wants to reach book buyers.
The Canadian Book Buyer is also a great entry point to the breadth of our consumer research: As you read the full report, we highlight other BookNet studies that go deeper into some of the topics covered in The Canadian Book Buyer.
Scroll down to read the entire report, but first, some highlights!
Introducing the Canadian book buyer:
97% of book buyers said they read at least occasionally and 33% said they read daily.
Audiobook listening, while still small in comparison to print, is seeing notable gains. The percentage of book buyers who listen to audiobooks daily has increased from 2.5% in 2016 to 3.2% in 2018. When we add up all those who listen to audiobooks, regardless of frequency, we find that use has increased from 11% in 2016 to 35% in 2018 — a whopping 24%.
Online book-buying has grown from 48% in 2016 to 53% in 2018. Conversely, in-person purchasing has declined from 50% in 2016 to 45% in 2018.
Methods of discovering books have remained relatively unchanged over the past three years with browsing (in person or online) (22%) and familiarity with a specific author or series (22%) topping the list. These are followed by recommendations or reviews (18%).
We asked those who discovered their book purchase through a recommendation or review where that recommendation or review came from. By far, the most common source was an in-person recommendation from a friend or relative (41%).
Use CataList reports to keep track of new drop-in titles and changes to key elements that publishers make to their forthcoming titles.