An in-depth presentation of the most recent data on Canadian book buyers, readers, and consumers. Link to video and slides: https://bnctechforum.ca/sessions/book-industry-state-of-the-nation-2024/ Presented by BookNet Canada on April 2, 2024, with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage.

1. Lauren Stewart: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Tech Forum Online. My name is Lauren
Stewart, and I'm the director of operations and customer relations at BookNet. My esteemed
colleague, Noah Genner, BookNet's president and CEO has put this presentation and insights
together and is available after the presentation to answer your questions. I'll put up a slide
with how to reach us at the end. Thanks to Noah, you are watching a presentation on the
Canadian English language book market in calendar 2023. Today, we'll be looking at data
that BookNet has gathered at the start of 2024 on the book market and book readers and
consumer behaviour in 2023.
Before we begin, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that BookNet's operations are
remote and that our colleagues contribute their work from the traditional territories of the
Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee, the Wyandot, the Mi'kmaq,
the Ojibwa of Fort William First Nation, the Three Fires Confederacy of First Nations, which
includes the Ojibwa, the Odawa, and the Potawatomie, and the Métis, the original peoples of
the lands we now call Beeton, Brampton, Guelph, Halifax, Thunder Bay, Toronto, Vaughan,
and Windsor. BookNet endorses the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada and supports an ongoing shift from gatekeeping to space-making in
the book industry. I encourage you to visit the native-land.ca website to learn more about the
peoples whose land you are joining from today.
As a warning, as we get started, some of the numbers we're going to show in this
presentation are going to be somewhat negative. 2023 was a weird year for book sales in
Canada, but we wanted to start with a positive data point to help offset some of the negativity
that's coming our way. Good news, 80% of adult English-speaking Canadians said that they
read a book last year. We will come back to this number in a little bit, but let's start rolling
with some market insights first. We are going to begin by looking at data from BNC
SalesData, which tracks print book sales from approximately 80%-85% of the trade market
in English-speaking Canada.
Referring to our reporting panel of retailers from across a wide range of retail channels, last
year we tracked over $1.1 billion dollars of books sold in Canada, which amounts to over
48.5 million units. If you're wondering how this compares to previous years, each column on
this bar graph represents total sales in millions of units from 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023
respectively. That downward trend is a little alarming, but just to note that these numbers are
pulled from what we call the all markets in SalesData, which is not ideal for measuring year-
over-year change as we are always adding to that group with new retailers. And there is the
opportunity that sales may be happening in channels which we do not get data for, which is
why we always want to work closely with publishers and other industry stakeholders to fill
the gaps in SalesData so that we always have an ever-increasingly complete view of the
industry and book sales in Canada.
On this slide, you will see unit sales broken down by week. Week numbers are on the
horizontal axis. Over the last year, you can see the weirdness that happened in the winter of
last year. This was because of some issues at one of our large retailers. We processed some
data late. Other than those issues, 2023 and 2022 were actually quite similar, with 2023 being
slightly below 2022. But are we back to "normal?" Let's explore what we mean by being

2. slightly below. We mentioned earlier that our all markets view of the data can be challenging
because there may be retailers added to it throughout the year. To counter that, we do have a
group of comparable stores that is stabilised. Looking at this group of retailers on this slide,
their sales are actually down pretty significantly year-over-year. While a lot of channels were
down year-over-year last year, with the exception of the indie channel, which was up a little
year-over-year, but compared to the rest of the market, indie retailers did pretty well.
The situation with one of the large retailers that I mentioned on the last slide was really
difficult for the market as a whole. We also cannot ignore customer sentiment here either. To
add a little context from this data, we have some comparable data from the U.S. On this
slide, you are seeing a year-over-year comparison of the print book market from 2022 to
2023 for the U.S. market, courtesy of BookScan, and Canada from SalesData, you can see it's
fairly similar. The U.S. had a better year overall than we did in Canada. We did have some
retail challenge that made things tough for the market here last year, but of note, both
markets did well in Fiction last year. Each column on this bar graph represents a percentage
of units sold from 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 respectively, insofar as frontlists, which
are books published within the year being measured, and backlist is concerned. 2023 looks a
lot like 2019 here. Perhaps the increased percentage for frontlist in 2023 compared to 2022 is
inflated due to issues at some retailers in 2023 in procuring backlist.
So, let's look a little bit more closely at frontlist. This is a look at the bestsellers from
SalesData last year. Sixty per cent of the top five bestsellers were frontlist titles.
Autobiographies reigned supreme last year, but there was the perennial "Dog Man" and the
ever-present Colleen Hoover. But let's look at Canadian bestsellers in the print market. Here,
we see mostly Non-Fiction. Technically, 60% are frontlist again, but the remaining 40%
were published very late in 2022, and one of them even had a boost because of other events.
BookNet Canada also collects physical circulation data from public libraries through our
BNC LibraryData project. Currently, we have 27 public library systems reporting their
physical book circulation and holdings data to BNC LibraryData. The reporting libraries
encompass 606 branches and cover approximately 25% of the Canadian population. I'm not
going to spend a lot of time on that today, but we thought we would show the top Canadian
checkouts from LibraryData. On this slide, you can see the top five circulated Canadian print
titles from public libraries last year. Of note, libraries are generally much more oriented to
backlist than sales are from retailers. On this slide, we see a subject breakdown for the all
markets view of our SalesData retail sales panel. Physical book sales are still dominated by
children's books, at least when it comes to unit sales.
There's a little growth in the Fiction category at the expense of Non-Fiction this year, but not
a lot of change when you look at the macro subject categories. But if we dig into these areas
a little more, we can see some interesting trends. So, let's have a look at a couple of subjects
that saw a lot of movement in 2023. On this slide, we can see the growth in the Romance
category between 2022 to 2023. That growth increased to 9% last year, surpassing over 3
million units sold. This is a category that has continued to grow even through 2023. We also
saw an increase in our consumer surveying. So, even though Romance is still crushing it, it's
interesting to see the shifts that have taken place within that category over the past year. This
graph here allows you to see some of those shifts. Contemporary Romance is still one of the

3. highest performing subcategories of Romance in 2023, with Colleen Hoover, Hannah Grace,
Carley Fortune, and Lucy Score dominating the romance charts. However, you can see there
was the slightest shift in this category between 2022 and 2023, where Contemporary
Romance went down by 5%.
Romantic Comedy is another higher performing Romance subcategory, which in 2023
actually went down by 9%. Regency, this was a Romance subcategory that we saw trending
in past years due to the popularity of the "Bridgerton" Netflix series, but in 2023, we can see
it's gone down a bit by 35%. So, while subjects like these have gone down, on the flip side,
we've seen huge increases in the subcategory of Fantasy, which increased by 235% between
2022 and 2023. This brings us to our next topic. I'm sure you've heard about it, everyone's
talking about it. We certainly can't avoid it, so let's get into it.
What is romantasy? "The Guardian" describes romantasy as a portmanteau of romance and
fantasy, applied to novels that blend elements of both genres. These novels are typically set
in fantastical worlds with fairies, dragons, magic, but can also feature classic romance
plotlines, enemies to lovers, soulmates, and love triangles. As a defined genre, it's been
around since as early as 2008, but within the last year, it's really taken off with authors like
Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros. Much of this boom is due to its popularity on social
media platforms like TikTok. There are also theories that readers are responding to the
element of escapism that romantasy offers. While darker subgenres of fantasy were popular
in the early 2010s, with gritty dark tales like "Game of Thrones," we are now seeing the rise
of cozy fantasy and romantasy and fairy tale fantasy, books that have a bit more of an
uplifting feel to them.
But when we use SalesData, we're using BISAC codes, and there is no romantasy BISAC
code. For the purposes of this presentation, we looked at the following BISAC headings,
Romance as a subheading within the Fiction Fantasy category, Fantasy as a subheading
within the Fiction Romance category, as well as Romance within the Young Adult fantasy
category. Across all three of these categories, there was a significant growth trend between
2022 and 2023, with fantasy romance increasing by 57%, romance fantasy increasing by
234%, and YA fantasy romance increasing by 331%. So, we can absolutely confirm here that
the headlines are correct, romantasy is moving up.
Some of the top performing titles for romance fantasy in 2023 are the "Throne of Glass"
books by Sarah J. Maas, "A Soul of Ash and Blood" by Jennifer Armentrout, and "A Touch
of Darkness" by Scarlett St. Clair. If this kind of thing is of interest to you, we have a
SalesData webinar about trends that you can view on our Tech Forum site or on YouTube.
Use the QR code on the screen to access the video of that presentation for lots more. And
let's wrap up the SalesData market by having a look at Canadian sales. Here, we have another
bar graph from SalesData with the 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 years compared, this time for
total sales and market share of Canadian contributor titles. Of note, while the market as a
whole was down around 9%, Canadian contributors were up a little year-over-year between
2022 and 2023. Of note, there were 39,216 Canadian contributor ISBNs with sales reported
against them in 2023. So, that's for the English trade market. Let's look at Quebec.

4. Here, we have French language sales in Canada from Gaspard. Note here that the graph is
dollar value, not units. The blue column on the left, Gaspard book sales, is equivalent to our
all markets. Gaspard's national publishers represents domestic publishing, which accounts for
52% of the French language market in Canada. Their international publishers represent what
we would consider distributed imports, which accounts for about 48% of the French
language market. They tracked 239 locations, and overall, they were down 1% in unit sales
year-over-year.
And here's some additional context for the data that we gather in BNC SalesData and some
high level numbers for you. Our 2,749 retail outlets represent a cross section of all channels
in Canada and represent approximately 80% to 85% of the physical book market. In 2023,
we added 33 new retailers to SalesData. Some of those had multiple outlets, but this makes
2023 our third most successful year in BookNet's history insofar as retail recruitment is
concerned. If you want more information on category bestsellers and performance, our
Canadian Book Market Annual for 2023 is available from our website. There's a QR code on
the slide that you can scan to get that. And let's go back to that 80% number from the
beginning of the presentation and look at the book market from a slightly different
perspective.
We wanted to share some insights from our Leisure and Reading Survey, where we asked
1,000 adult English-speaking readers about their reading behaviour in the previous year.
Specifically, we asked respondents if they read a book in the last year. The column to the far
right is for January 2024, and the previous columns indicate the January results from 2023,
2022, and so on back to 2015, which is on the furthest left. You can see that there was not a
lot of change in the results from 83% back in 2015, with less than a handful of percentage
points up and down year-over-year, taking us to 2024 when 80% of respondents said that
they read a book in the last year. However, it looks like people are reading less. The
frequency of reading is actually down. So, let's take a look at that now.
Again, looking at our Leisure and Reading Study results from January 2024, we asked
respondents to indicate the formats of the books they read the last year. Eighty-two per cent
of readers read a print book, which is down from 84% in 2022. Frequency of that reading is
also less. Sixty-nine per cent of readers read an ebook, which is up from 67% and has been
steadily increasing year-over-year. Frequency also looks like it's increasing here. Fifty-four
per cent of readers read an audiobook, which is up from 51% in 2022, the largest increase
amongst all formats. Frequency also looks like it's increasing. Here's some more data from
that same Leisure and Reading Study. Respondents were asked to think about the books that
they read the last year and select the type of books that they read from the following list.
They could select multiple types of books, and it does appear that readers are reading more
diversely than they did the previous year, with all options being up over 2022. You can see
the year-over-year change on the right-hand side of the slide.
Also, let's talk a bit about the diversity of people's reading. Seventy-one per cent of readers
felt it is important that books about a group or a culture should be written by people from that
group or culture. Eighty-five per cent of readers feel it is important that authors accurately
represent their material through research, fact-checking, and/or hiring reviewers and
sensitivity or beta readers. And 90% of readers feel that books should be representative of a

5. variety of experiences. Inevitably, when we talk leisure time, we have to talk about leisure
spending. We don't want to belabour the point, but the economy and inflation is impacting
people's spending and it isn't just books.
This slide has a graphic from the Bank of Canada's Survey of Consumer Expectations back
from Q4 2023. This is showing how some consumer behaviours that would normalise with
the end of a period of high inflation actually remain near survey highs. For instance, many
consumers are still reducing or postponing purchases because of their inflation expectations,
and people are still following inflation more closely than they usually do. But let's come back
to books and our leisure reading study. We asked respondents to select the statement that best
describes their book buying. Amongst readers, borrowing was up and spending was down.
The number of people who didn't buy any books, i.e. they only borrowed or got their books
for free, didn't change year-over-year. However, the amount that buyers were willing to
spend on books was less across the board. This helps set the context for the print book
market that we saw in SalesData in 2023.
To wind up this state of the nation update, let's look at our Canadian Book Consumer Panel.
This one is a quarterly surveying of Canadians about their book buying and reading habits.
And these results are from surveys fielded in March, June, September, and December 2023
to English-speaking adult Canadians. The survey is designed to eke out the most popular
formats and subjects, insights on why and how Canadians acquire books, the reasons why
Canadians decide to read, buy, or borrow specific books, and data comparing and contrasting
buyers and borrowers.
Let's start by looking at how people acquire books. This question, how did they acquire
books, shows how respondents to our survey told us they acquired books in the last year.
Over the course of the years, we queried about 4,000 adult Canadians on the following book
acquisition activities monthly. There's not a lot of change year-over-year. We can't compare
to 2022 because we changed the question a little, but the numbers are similar. Two thousand
and forty-five respondents, 48%, bought a new book, and these are the people we survey
more fully. Thirty per cent borrowed a book from a library, 21% bought a used book, 20%
got a book for free, and etc.
This graph looks at percentage of age category who acquired a book in each way. So,
apologies in advance for the busyness of the graph on this slide, but there is a lot going on
here. This slide is showing the breakdown of how respondents acquired their books broken
down by age. People can check more than one option, so the percentages by age group can
total more than 100. The different colours correspond to the different age categories, and the
black bar shows the average for all respondents, which are the numbers from the previous
slide. Overall, the middle age ranges, 35 to 54 years, acquire the most books, averaging close
to two books a month. The older cohorts, 55 or more, acquire the least number of books,
averaging close to one. The younger groups get books for free more often, either as a gift,
borrowing from someone else, or via some other means. Buying new books is dominated by
the 35 to 54-year-olds. We will have more demographic breakdowns coming later, stay tuned
to our blog.

6. We've talked about how people acquire books, so let's take a look at where they got them. In
2023, 55% of all book purchases were made online and 45% in a physical location. You can
see the impact of the COVID lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 and the move back to what things
looked like before the pandemic, going back to 2022 and 2023. However, we haven't quite
got back to 2019, and we even saw little growth in online again in the Q4 of 2023. Not a big
change, but something we are going to keep an eye on. So, let's look at just physical books
for a minute. We can see that physical retail channels have moved back above online post-
lockdowns, but it is an almost 50-50 split. Let's look back at the overall market again.
We also asked the respondents where they are purchasing their books. Here, again, the
responses for each year span from 2019 to 2023. You can see a continuing decrease in online
book buying and an increase in bookstore shopping. From elsewhere in the survey, buyers
tell us they visited bookstores significantly more in 2023 than they did in 2022, with both the
number and frequency of visits being up in 2023. We have lots of data to look into for this,
so keep an eye out as our blog and newsletters will be the first place for updates.
This chart compares 2019 to 2023 in terms of the formats the respondents confirmed they
purchased in 2023. The growth of paperbacks in 2023 is notable and looks to be a shift back
from ebooks. This is a trend that has continued since the height of the pandemic. This
shrinking of ebook purchasing is in contrast to what we are seeing in the reading of ebooks,
which looks like it is growing, so we need to look into that a bit more. Let's dig a little bit
deeper into formats. Here, we have the percentage of buyers who bought particular formats.
Unsurprisingly, most people bought a print book. Buyers who buy digital are much more
open to purchasing other formats. We can see that when we look at the quantities they are
purchasing each month. How many people are just print buyers? How many people are just
ebook buyers? Well, 1,508 bought a print book, 74%, 582 bought an ebook, 29%, and 309
bought an audiobook, 15%. But of that, 1,019 only bought a print book, 50%, 151 only
bought ebooks, 7%, and 47 only bought audio books, which is 2%.
This is the average number of purchases by month for buyers of particular formats. You can
see that ebook and audiobook buyers buy a lot of books. Is this a price thing, a subscription
thing? Sorry, these are teasers for research that is still to come. Again, keep an eye on our
blog and sign up for our updates using our newsletters for more to come. One of the things
we like to pay attention to is how people are becoming aware of the books that they are
buying. This is the percentage of purchases that had these options checked and respondents
could check more than one option, so they will not add up to 100. So, 21% of purchases said
that awareness was created by reading other books by the author, 20% said that they looked
at recommendations, 18% said that they were browsing and searching, and 12% attributed it
to social media.
We didn't see a big year-over-year change, but there were some changes. Browsing and
search were down year-over-year, and recommendation and reviews and social media were
up. Some of this might be tied to people being more frugal with their money. Generally, we
have seen that online, there's less browsing and more specific searching, and also that
impulse buying was down, though not a lot. In terms of social media channels, Facebook and
YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X, formerly Twitter, are used the most often among
book buyers. Instagram is continuing to grow. Twitter is falling, but not a lot. There is a

7. series of posts going up on our blog these days that has a lot more detail on format
preferences, pricing tolerance, store visits, and more. Visit the BookNet blog or follow the
QR code on screen to get linked to it right away.
On this slide, we have listed some of the major research publications you will see coming out
from BookNet in the coming months. We have a lot of free content on our blog as well, and
our newsletters will always have snippets and links. Of note, the new release of the Canadian
Book Market has just been released and can be purchased from the BNC website. And
finally, last year we mentioned that the book market was going to be defined by some large
trends, a continued bounce back of physical retail, the importance of mobile in reading and
shopping, BookTok, and finally the uncertainty around the economy and what it was going to
do to people's leisure spending. All of those look like they had some impact last year, with
the uncertainty about the economic landscape likely being the largest.
We have already discussed some of the subject trends we are likely to see in 2024, so we will
leave that out of here for a bit now. But let's focus on some of the macro trends that are likely
to have an impact on the Canadian book market this year. First, AI. From AI-generated
books to data and analytics, AI will continue to be a focus in 2024. Content creators,
publishers, and retailers are all trying to figure out how and when to take advantage of some
of the technologies. We are already feeling the impact of this and this will continue to grow
throughout 2024. Social media and influencers, BookTok is still a thing, and there is a huge
growth in bookstagrammers that are both helping to drive awareness and sales of numerous
titles. As we mentioned earlier, social media continues to grow as an awareness factor for
book readers and consumers.
Consumer sentiment on the economy and politics. There was a slight uptick in consumer
sentiment in Canada at the end of 2023, and it remains to be seen if this will continue
throughout 2024. With concerns about everything from inflation to global affairs, consumers
have been watching their spending closely.
Sustainability. This last one might be a little bit aspirational, but there are a lot of efforts
afoot to make the book industry more sustainable. This is something consumers continue to
tell us matters to them when selecting what and how to buy. Much of it is about managing
risk and just makes good business sense. Will sustainability become an even bigger issue for
our businesses and consumer in 2024? Well, let's see how those macro trends impact the
Canadian book industry next year. So, that's all we have for you today. We're happy to take
some questions if you have the time, but if not so much, or if you have questions you'd like
to ask over email, we've put up our research email, which is research@booknetcanada.ca
where you can reach our team. Feel free to reach out and remember to sign up to our eNews
for up-to-date market information. That link is also on the slide. Thanks, everyone.