BookNet Canada is a non-profit
organization that develops technology, standards, and education to serve the
Canadian book industry. Founded in 2002 to address systemic challenges in the
industry, BookNet Canada supports publishing companies, booksellers,
wholesalers, distributors, sales agents, and libraries across the country.
BookNet says
it tracks 85% of the print books sold in Canada.
The 2014
report set out there were 52 million units sold during 2014. The value for the
units sold was $934,000,000.
The top
fiction sellers were:
1.) Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn; and,
2.) The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion.
Categories of
market share included:
1.) Juvenile Fiction – 31%
2.) Romance – 7% 3.) Suspense and Thrillers – 5%
4.) Biographies and Autobiographies – 4%
5.) Cooking – 3%
6.) Mystery and Detective – 3%
7.) Self-help – 2%
The BookNet blog summarized sales:
Unit sales across the total adult
trade print market in 2014 were down by 3.5% compared to 2013, whereas the juvenile
trade print market was up 4.1%. Despite the slight decline in the adult trade
market, some categories were stronger in 2014 than the previous year, including
Historical Fiction (42.6% increase in unit sales), Science (30.2%
increase), Mystery & Detective (11.1% increase), and Comics &
Graphic Novels (7.7% increase). In addition, sales figures in The
Canadian Book Market do not include ebook sales, so the overall book
market may be healthier than reflected
I am glad to
see mystery and detective sales up significantly.
In an example
of how raw statistics can be misleading they asked Canadians if they had read a
book written by a Canadian author in the last year.
The initial bars are discouraging:
Those who
responded that they had read a Canadian book
have decreased from 41% in 2002 to 24% in 2012
The author of the report said:
The majority of
these participants expressed being somewhat interested in Canadian content. So
what seems to be missing isn’t an interest or a desire to consume Canadian
literature, it’s knowledge and awareness of who our homegrown talent are and
where to find them.
BookNet is encouraging publishers to put a Canadian identifier in the ONIX fields.
How careful
we must be in assessing statistics.
Bill, I didn't know juvenile fiction was so popular in Canada. The numbers for historical fiction are impressive too. What kind of historical fiction are Canadians most likely to read?
ReplyDeletePrashant: Thanks for the comment. I am not sure on the historical fiction I doubt Canadians are really about Canadian history. More likely it is British. I am not sure where the boundary is between historical fiction and romance but there are a lot of books for sale in Canada set in England involving the rich and the beautiful. There is an author, Mary Balogh, an English immigrant to Saskatchewan who has been very successful with English Regency romance fiction.
DeleteThank you, Bill. Personally, I like reading historical fiction set in and around WW I & II and the American Civil War.
DeletePrashant: Thanks for the further comment. I expect you are like a lot of Canadians who like the same historical fiction. We are not much for reading about Canada's history.
DeleteThis is really interesting, Bill! It's good that there's a group that keeps track of this data. You're right, though, that it's important to consider carefully what interpretation we make of data. Still, this is some useful information. And like you, I'm glad to know that the mystery/detective sub-genre is growing in popularity.
ReplyDeleteMargot: Thanks for the comment. I have wondered about the comparable American stats. Maybe it is time for some internet sleuthing.
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