Print book volume down by 4% in Canada in 2017

Print book sales in Canada have declined in 2017, with print book volume down by four percent and value down by three percent compared to 2016 figures.

According to a report published by BookNet Canada, Canadian publishers sold 51.5 million print books in 2017 for just over C$1 billion (A$1.01 billion). ‘Juvenile fiction’ (including young adult) slightly increased its share of the market to 40% (up from 38% in 2016), while fiction and nonfiction categories both saw slight declines.

The top seller of the year was The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (Mark Manson, Macmillan), followed by The Sun and Her Flowers (Rupi Kaur, S&S), Origin (Dan Brown, Bantam), The Woman in Cabin 10 (Ruth Ware, Random House), and Milk and Honey (Rupi Kaur, Andrews McMeel). The top-selling juvenile title was The Getaway (Jeff Kinney, Puffin). Backlist titles made up 60% of all print book sales in 2017, which is up by two percent over 2016.

The findings are drawn from BookNet Canada’s sales tracking service, BNC SalesData, which tracks year-on-year changes in the print market, but does not track the sale of ebooks, digital audiobooks or used books.

As previously reported by Books+Publishing, print book sales in Canada was down by 6.4% in volume and 3.5% in 2016.

Category: International news