What we learned about Canadian book buyers, part three

What else have we learned about book buyers in the Canadian Book Consumer Study 2021? This time around, we’re taking a look a Canadian book buyers who also borrowed books from the library.

@BookNet_Canada shares insights into the behaviour of Canadian book buyers.
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In our previous blog posts, we discovered who Canadian book consumers are, how they purchase books, and how you can use this data to:

• reach your current and potential customers where they spend most of their time;

• allocate money to marketing campaigns and projects in a strategic way;

• understand where they’re coming from and who they are;

• learn about their interests, what they like and what they don’t; and

• ultimately, sell them the books they want in the ways they want to acquire them.

The data we’re sharing in this final instalment is a portion of the results of our quarterly Canadian Book Consumer surveys querying Canadians about their book purchasing behaviour. You can find the complete results in the free Canadian Book Consumer Study 2021 and even more on our blog.

The results are from surveys about Canadian book consumers in April, June, September, and December 2021 (what we call the “past month”). We surveyed a total of 10,218 adult Canadians to identify 2,065 buyers. These buyers bought a total of 5,698 books; a monthly average of 2.76 books per buyer.

Buyers who also borrowed

As mentioned above, for this survey we surveyed 2,065 book buyers. Regardless of whether buyers used the library to borrow anything in the previous month, almost all said that it was important for society to have public libraries for people to visit (96%). Almost all buyers also said there was a public library branch located near them (91%). And, 66% of buyers have a library card.

Of all the book buyers surveyed, 459, or 22%, also borrowed books. We’ll call those book buyers and borrowers “buyer-borrowers.”

Library visits

For all buyers, 51% visited a public library at least once in the past month, as shown in the graph below.

Library branch visits for book buyers in 2021, by quarter

Most buyer-borrowers who visited the library (either in person or online) in 2021 did so to pick up holds (21%), to browse displays and shelves for books to borrow (15%), or to put books/materials on hold (12%).

In 2021, 47% of buyer-borrowers agreed that COVID-19 impacted their book borrowing.

Library loans

Buyer-borrowers checked out an average of 4.9 books per month in 2021 — 3.2 print books, 1.2 ebooks, and 0.5 audiobooks.

The percentage of buyer-borrowers who checked out books in 2021 increased compared to 2020:

• 79% of buyer-borrowers borrowed a print book from a library in 2021, up from 72% in 2020;

• 50% of buyer-borrowers borrowed an ebook, up from 37% in 2020; and

• 40% of buyers-borrowers borrowed an audiobook, up from 27% in 2020.

Why borrow instead of buy?

Why did buyer-borrowers borrow instead of buy a book? The main reason was to save money (44%).

The top 10 reasons why buyers borrowed books rather than bought

And that’s a wrap.

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