The Canadian Publishing Market

In the past, I've written a little bit about the problems with understanding the publishing industry resulting from the paucity of good data. Much of the data we have comes from the US market and is based on an unrepresentative sample of US book sellers (see the discussion here, here and here).

In Canada, data on book sales can be also drawn from a survey of consumers run by BookNet, whose 2015 report was recently released: The Canadian Book Buyer 2015.

The survey of 4,277 individuals in early 2015 first asked people if they had bought a book in the previous month. Only 19% (784) responded that they had and all results are drawn from this subsample, which is modest in size but not insignificant.

The key findings:

1. Book buyers bough an average of 2.8 books each;
2. e-books account for 17% of sales, the same as in 2013. This is attributed to the shrinking price difference between e-books and print books.
3. Paperbacks account for 55% of the market, hardcovers for 25%, and audiobooks (and other) for 3%.
4. The typical book buyer is a college educated woman aged 45 or older working full time and living in an urban area.

These findings pretty much confirm what we have learned from the US data. First, the decision of publishers to raise e-book prices has led to a stalling of demand for this format. Second, book buyers are increasingly women which may explain why some men prefer to write under female or gender neutral pronouns.