Podcast: 2021 in the rear view window

The BookNet staff recaps 2021 in terms of book sales in the Canadian market, BookNet staff reading habits, and all the other book news fit to share.

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Transcript

Ainsley Sparkes: Hello and welcome to this month’s podcast. I’m your host, Ainsley Sparkes, the Marketing & Communications Manager at BookNet Canada. 

This month, we’re bringing you, in audio format, the content of our latest Tech Forum webinar, 2021 in the rear view window, a look back at what happened in 2021. You can find the link to that presentation in the show notes. Let’s get into it!

So, I think a lot of us had high hopes for a return to quote/unquote normal in 2021 and in some ways it was more familiar than 2020, but for the most part, it was still a pandemic year. Clearly that means a lot of different things to all of us, but in this presentation, we’re going to look at what that means for books. It’s actually a relatively rosy picture!

For more details, let’s talk to BookNet Canada’s resident SalesData expert and project manager, Monique Mongeon.

I was hoping you could tell us a little bit about what happened to print book sales in Canada this year so far.

Monique Mongeon: Yeah, it's been a good year for print books in Canada this year. With stores open across most of the country for most of the year, sales patterns are a little more typical than we saw in 2020 when sales were going up and down as different restrictions changed, in terms of what was allowed to be open or closed. We have noticed that the sales are a little more pre-pandemic-like this year. In 2020 we saw the biggest dip in sales from March through May. So, Q2 essentially had much lower sales in 2020 than in previous years. But if we look at 2021 sales for the same Q2 period, we're about on par with the average sales for the last five years before the pandemic began. So, looks to be a solid pre-pandemic sales year for us.

Ainsley: Well, I mean, that's great news. I'm sure lots of people are happy to see that and hear that. So, the biggest sales of the year often come towards the end of the year with the holiday shopping and the December sales boost. How is that looking this year?

Monique: Yeah, we are in the peak of holiday shopping season right now. So, it's hard to say how it will pan out in totality. But last year, we noticed the holiday shopping bump started about two weeks earlier than it did in 2019. 2020's holiday shopping really seemed to kick off around the second week of November. I had mentioned last year that perhaps others like myself had started shopping earlier to allow time to ship or mail gifts to their recipients since restrictions at that time really were limiting gatherings.

Looking at 2021 so far, the holiday shopping bump seems to have kicked off even earlier. It looks like holiday shopping began in the first week of November. There could be a lot of reasons for this. Many industries are experiencing supply chain problems and encouraging customers to shop earlier this year, that may have had an impact on the earlier sales. Another thing to notice is that Hanukkah was earlier this year than last year. This year Hanukkah ran from November 28th to December 6th. Last year, it was a little later December 10th to 18th. So, that may have influenced some of those buying patterns as well.

Ainsley: Yeah, you were mentioning shopping last year, online, and trying to get everything ordered. And we've had like another whole year of this online shopping and getting used to it. So, maybe people started doing that earlier this year. So, if we look at 2021 compared with 2020 and pre-pandemic, 2019, what does that picture look like?

Monique: Yeah. So, sales in 2021 are up about 7% over 2020, and we're up 5% over 2019's numbers. So, that's pretty good, up over both years. We still have lots of big sales to come through the end of December. We're recording this on December 9th. So, there's still lots of holiday shopping left to do in December. Traditionally, the last few weeks of December are the best-selling weeks of the year. So, we'll have to see how that impacts the overall numbers for the year, but things are looking good so far.

Ainsley: That's great. Are you seeing any differences in terms of what people are buying this year over what they bought last year? Any different subjects popping up?

Monique: Yes. There are a lot of really interesting things happening with different subjects this year. We talked last year, we've covered it on our blog a few times. That Juvenile Non-Fiction, had a really good year in 2020, sales were up about 8% over 2019. But that trend hasn't held through 2021. Juvenile Non-Fiction sales are down about 6% over last year. So, lots of Juvenile Non-Fiction buying last year, less of that this year. What's interesting is that Young Adult Non-Fiction, so, a slightly older age range, but still Non-Fiction, it's up this year 21%. It's a pretty small category overall, but it's growing a lot. There's a lot of bestselling adult Non-Fiction getting adapted for younger audiences in the YA Non-Fiction category. So, this subject might be one to watch with that level of growth over this year.

What other subjects? Manga has had a really good year. We've covered it on our blog a few times. Manga sales are up 104% over last year, which is pretty significant. So, that's something to keep an eye on as we move into 2022. Romance LGBTQ — that subcategory is up 241% over last year. Again, really incredible growth, very significant interest from readers in that category compared to last year. So, that's another category to watch in 2022. Something else we've covered a lot is the backlist sales growth.

Backlist sales have been up about 2.5% each year for the last two years. Looking at year to date, it looks like we might see a similar pattern this year. So, we did some analysis on those backlist titles and those sales, looking at different pub date ranges and found that books between two and five years old, tend to perform the best in sales. And of that group, two-year-old titles do the most sales in that group. So, it might be a good time to dust off your two-year-old backlist and give it another shot to keep selling.

And related to that backlist data, what's interesting is that in that two to five-year age band, we're also seeing a lot of books that have been popular on BookTok, the sort of book influencer, TikTok. They fall in that same pub day range, that two to five year period. So, a number of older titles have been able to find audiences on BookTok. So, TikTok's influence on sales trends in books and trending titles is something to keep an eye on. We've covered that on the blog a few times, and I'm sure we'll be looking at it again in the new year as new titles pop off on the For You Page.

Ainsley: Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that pans out, what effect that has. And also, people are starting to talk about what that might mean for book deals and new authors. Are they gonna find TikTok stars and make them bestsellers? Find out in 2022 and beyond, I guess.

Monique: I'll be watching the data every week to find out.

So that’s the print book picture so far in 2021, but what about the habits and behaviours of Canadians? To shed some light on that, we’ll turn to our consumer data that we get from the Canadian Book Consumer Survey. It's a quarterly survey conducted by BookNet Canada querying Canadians about their book behaviour. The online survey was fielded primarily in April, June, and September 2021 to just under 5,000 English-speaking Canadians who met our screening criteria. 

First, let's talk about the return to in-person bookstores. At the beginning of this year, of all bookstore visits, 65% were happening online and only 35% were in person. This makes sense as there were closures across the country and many people were staying home. But the gap has been narrowing and by the time we get to the third quarter of this year, we see that 55% of bookstore visits happened online and 45% were in store. Pretty even.

What about purchases? We’re seeing something similar, online and in-person purchases are almost back to 2019 levels. In our September survey, 57% of purchases were made online and 43% in person.

Other COVID data we’ve gathered in our consumer studies for the first three quarters of the year: We asked Canadians whether COVID was impacting their book buying, 19% said yes, 15% said sometimes, but the majority, 66% said that it had not. The answers are similar for whether COVID was impacting their book borrowing: 25% said yes, 14% said sometimes, and 62% said no.

When we look at their reading behaviour, we see that Canadians are readers. 77% of Canadians read a print book at least once in the last 12 months and just over half read a print book at least once a month. 42% read an ebook at least once, 28% listened to a digital audiobook and 21% listened to a physical audiobook.

As you probably can tell by now, we’re data people here at BookNet so we thought it would be interesting to gather some stats on the reading habits of the BookNet staff. In 2021, to date, we’ve collectively read a total of 368 books!

The format breakdown: 44% were print books, 36% were ebooks, and 20% were audiobooks. BookNet Staff preferred Fiction to Non-Fiction — 63% of the books we read were Fiction and 47% were Non-Fiction. 21% were by Canadian authors.

We’re big library users at BookNet 75% of the books we read were borrowed from a public library. But we bought lots of books too, 170 or so in 2021.

We also have to shout out our most prolific BookNet reader who at the time of our surveying in early December had read 106 books — and had 5 more on the go!

Interestingly we found that one BookNetter only read Fiction, one only read Non-Fiction. Only one read print books and only one read ebooks.

Let’s move on to the bestselling books of 2021! Using SalesData, our sales tracking service for the Canadian English-language trade book market, we pulled the bestselling print books in Canada year to date.

We’ll be sharing the full top ten lists on our blog but for now, here’s a sneak peek.

  • The bestselling overall Fiction title was The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

  • The bestselling Canadian Fiction title was State of Terror by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny 🍁

  • The bestselling overall Non-Fiction title was Atomic Habits by James Clear

  • The bestselling Canadian Non-Fiction title was Beyond Order by Jordan B. Peterson 🍁

  • The bestselling overall Juvenile/YA title was Dog Man Mothering Heights by Dav Pilkey

  • The bestselling Canadian Juvenile/YA title was Love You Forever by Robert Munsch and Sheila McGraw 🍁

And now let’s look at some of the data from libraries in Canada. Using LibraryData, the national library collection and circulation analysis tool, we can find the top circulated books in 2021 so far.

  • The top-circulating overall Fiction title was The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

  • The top-circulating Canadian Fiction title was The Push by Ashley Audrain 🍁

  • The top-circulating overall Non-Fiction title was A Promised Land by Barack Obama

  • The top-circulating Canadian Non-Fiction title was From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle 🍁

So moving on to the Juvenile list, and here’s where things get a little less straightforward. LibraryData uses ISBN clusters to track circulation, holds, etc. in the system. This differs from SalesData, which reports data at a per-ISBN level. We do this because of how libraries report their collection data to us – their data is broken out by their Catalog ID or record. Each record can contain multiple ISBNs, often all of the editions of a single work. When you use the library, you put a hold on a copy of Pride and Prejudice, for example, and you usually don't mind which particular edition or ISBN you receive - just that you get the first available copy! Some clusters may contain ISBNs for different but related works. For example, occasionally all of the titles in a series or set may be clustered as a single work. And this is what we’re seeing in the most circulated titles in the Juvenile and YA category.

  • The top-circulated overall Juvenile/YA was the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney

  • The top-circulated Canadian Juvenile/YA was a Robert Munsch collection

So those are the books that were popular in 2021!

Before I go, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge that BookNet Canada staff, board, partners, and our makeshift podcast studio, operate upon the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee, and Wendat indigenous peoples, the original nations of this land. We endorse the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and support an ongoing shift from gatekeeping to space-making in the book industry. And we hope that our work, including this podcast, helps to create an environment that supports that shift. We'd also like to acknowledge the Government of Canada for their financial support through the Canada Book Fund. And of course, thanks to you for listening.