The results from the Canadian Book Consumer survey are in. And they bring us new insights into Canadian book consumers — from book buyers to book borrowers and everyone in between.
We’ll be releasing the entire Canadian Book Consumer Study 2022 later this spring, but we’re going to give you a peak at the data now in a three-part blog series.
First things first. What’s the Canadian Book Consumer survey? It's our quarterly survey of Canadians and Canadian book consumers. In it, we ask adult Canadians about their book buying, borrowing, and other book-related behaviours during the months of March, June, September, and December. In 2022, we surveyed a total of 10,840 Canadians — 18% were book buyers.
What did we learn about Canadian book buyers in 2022?
What they bought
Out of all the purchases we tracked in 2022, Canadian book buyers bought an average of 2.6 books a month last year — 1.6 print books, 0.8 ebooks, and 0.3 audiobooks.
All told, 73% of books purchased by Canadian book buyers in 2022 were print books, 17% were ebooks, and 6% were audiobooks.
Looking closer at the sales performance by format, paperback book purchases have stayed relatively stable, hovering between 40% and 50% from 2019 to 2022. Hardcovers have stayed between 20% to 30%. Ebooks have been fluctuating around 20% until the last quarter of 2022 where they dropped to 10% of purchases. Audiobooks have been the most consistent, staying around 5% from 2019 to 2022. The graph below shows the distribution of purchases by format since 2019. Year over year, the sales of most formats in 2022 have either exceeded or returned to their volume of sales pre-pandemic.
Looking across Canadian book buyers in 2022:
book buyers aged 35 to 44 bought the most print books (25% of print book purchases);
book buyers aged 34 and under bought the most ebooks (27% of ebook purchases); and
book buyers aged 34 and under bought the most audiobooks (42% of audiobook purchases).
In 2022, the majority of book buyers bought Adult books (73%), while 16% also bought Young Adult books and 11% bought Juvenile. Out of the Adult books, 61% were Fiction and 39% were Non-Fiction.
These are the top Fiction and Non-Fiction subjects purchased by Canadian book buyers in 2022:
Non-Fiction
Biography or Memoir — 22% of Non-Fiction purchases
Self-Help — 17% of Non-Fiction purchases
Other — 15% of Non-Fiction purchases
History — 13% of Non-Fiction purchases
Spirituality — 8% of Non-Fiction purchases
Fiction
Fantasy — 16% of Fiction purchases
Suspense & Thriller — 14% of Fiction purchases
Mystery & Detective — 14% of Fiction purchases
General — 13% of Fiction purchases
Romance — 12% of Fiction purchases
Buying books from a diversity of perspectives — as well as Canadian perspectives — also mattered to book buyers last year. In 2022, Canadian book buyers searched for books:
By Canadian contributors (34%)
About Canada or regions within Canada (28%)
About a group or culture written by people from that group or culture (23%)
About Indigenous peoples (13%)
By Indigenous contributors (12%)
That are partly or fully written in another language (10%)
Where they bought
Canadian book buyers returned to buying books more and more in person in 2022. The graph below shows the percentage of in person and online purchases by quarter from 2019 to 2022. In 2019, in person and online purchasing was very close to 50% each. In both 2020 and 2021, online purchases jumped up to around 65% and in person purchases dropped to 35%. Over the entire year, book buyers bought 58% online and 42% in person in 2022, compared to 65% online and 35% in person in 2021.
It follows that Canadian book buyers also visited bookstores in person more frequently in 2022. Overall, 64% of Canadian book buyers visited a bookstore in person and 73% visited online at least once per month in 2022. The graph below shows the frequency of online and in person bookstore visits by Canadian book buyers last year. Most Canadian book buyers visited a bookstore one to four times in 2022 — 57% online and 58% in person, some visited five to nine times — 11% and 5%, others 10 to 14 times — 3% and 1%, and a small group visited bookstores 15 times or more (2%).
Regardless of where they shopped, Canadian book buyers chose to buy from a particular place for a variety of reasons. The top five reasons Canadian book buyers gave as to why they shopped where they did were:
Convenient place to shop (31%)
Good price/offer/promo (29%)
Book(s) in stock/available immediately (28%)
Good selection of books (23%)
Easy checkout process to buy books (20%)
How they bought
In 2022, the majority of Canadian book buyers spent between $1 and $49 on books in a month (64%), with many spending between $50 and $99 (18%).
Overall, just over half of all books bought were purchased at full price (55%) while 28% were bought either as part of a sale or were discounted in some way (28%).
On average, Canadian book buyers paid $23.06 for a hardcover book, $15.86 for a paperback, $12.62 for an ebook, and $12.87 for an audiobook in 2022. Interestingly, the value for money perception didn’t change much year over year. In 2021 and 2022, book buyers said the value for money was excellent — 45% and 46% respectively, 41% and 39% said it was good, and in both years 13% said it was fair, 1% said it was poor, and none said it was bad, as shown in the graph below.
In 2022, well over half of Canadian book buyers always or sometimes:
preferred to pay for a bundle of content over buying one single item — 35% yes and 37% sometimes; and
added books to their online cart to get free shipping — 27% yes and 38% sometimes.
How did Canadian book buyers discover the books they purchased? As in past years, the top three ways Canadian book buyers became aware of the books they bought were by:
reading other books by the author or illustrator (22%);
browsing or searching online or in person (20%); or
a recommendation or review (18%).
When shopping at bookstores, Canadian book buyers were most likely to find the book they purchased on the main shelf (19%) or display/promotional table (6%). Online book buyers most likely found the books they bought by searching for the specific book (24%), browsing by genre/subject (9%), or browsing by author (6%).
Why they bought
What made Canadian book buyers decide to purchase a book in 2022? Similar to past years, the top five reasons book buyers bought a book last year were:
Like/interested in subject (30%)
Description of the book (19%)
Like the series (17%)
Recommendation/review (16%)
Low price/on special offer (15%)
But why buy books, instead of borrow them? Just like in 2021, the top three reasons Canadian book buyers bought books in 2022 instead of borrowing were:
to be able to reread the book whenever they want (15%);
to have the book right away (14%); and
to own it for their display, collection, or archive (11%).
Can’t wait for more data? Keep your eyes on our blog for the next instalments in this series and the latest data from the Canadian Book Consumer survey 2022. And sign up for the research newsletter to get insights delivered directly to your inbox!
What did BookNet read in 2024? We’re sharing some tidbits of data about our team’s reading habits this year.