Checkmate: How the popularity of a TV show is impacting book sales in Canada

By now, you’ve probably heard about The Queen’s Gambit, a Netlflix limited series that is taking over the top 10 Netflix rankings across the globe. Even I, a person who knows very little about chess, was truly fascinated at the fantastic job the cast, writers, and producers did. I was surprised to find out the series is based on a novel of the same name written by Walter Tevis originally published in 1983.

The story of a young woman whose fantastic chess playing skills take her on adventures, through losses and wins has brought attention to the not always trendy world of chess. Viewers intrigued by the ancient game have taken their curiosity beyond the TV show. A representative from the Calgary Chess Club told CBC that people are showing interest in joining the club and taking chess lessons at rates that they haven’t seen in decades. Chess set sales are booming — eBay alone, has reported an increase of 215% in sales of chess sets and chess accessories since October. Chess set manufacturers were taken by surprise and now due to the sudden increase in demand (in addition to the pandemic) are having a hard time keeping virtual and physical shelves stocked. Even before The Queen’s Gambit success, the pandemic and the need to kill time had slowly been turning people to either play the game or watch people play it — yes, there are actual chess Twitch streamers.

Canadians have been buying more print books about or related to chess since the premiere of 'The Queen's Gambit' in late October.
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Readers are also getting caught up in the trend. For instance, according to SalesData, BookNet’s national sales tracking service for the Canadian English-language trade book market, sales of The Queen’s Gambit have seen an increase of 9,050% in the two months since the release of the series on Oct. 23, 2020. This is even before the peak of the holiday shopping season!

Sales of The Queen’s Gambit print book in Canada, Oct. 25 to Nov. 29

Zooming out, sales for books about chess in general, are also growing as a result of this new interest in chess. In the graph below, you can see the changes to unit sales for a group of randomly chosen books about chess during an eight-week period from the beginning of October to the end of November 2020.

Weekly sales of print books about or related to chess, Oct. 11 to Nov. 29

For comparison purposes, we’ve included sales data for the week ending Oct. 11, two weeks prior to the release of the series. By the first week after the launch of The Queen’s Gambit, sales were up 75%. The following weeks had highs and lows, but overall there was an upward trend for books about chess. Of note, the week ending Nov. 22 saw an increase of 168% in unit sales compared to the prior week. Perhaps this was due to early Christmas shopping or book buying before regional pandemic lockdowns.

But in case you needed further proof, we did some quick searches on Google Trends and what we found confirms that Canadians are looking to get their chess experience started.

The graphs below illustrate the changes to the Google search of terms related to chess from Sept. 3 to Dec. 3.

Google searches for “chess”, Sept. 3 to Dec. 3

Google searches for “chess set”, Sept. 3 to Dec. 3

Google searches for “chess books”, Sept. 3 to Dec. 3

Oh, and here’s something you might not know, some scenes of the show were filmed in Ontario. Checkmate!