This past year has been one for the history books, but you don’t have to be a history buff to enjoy the subject category we’re exploring in this instalment of our Subject spotlight series — Historical Fiction.
Historical Fiction is one of the top read categories by Canadian readers and has been for ages. In our recent Canadian Reading & Leisure Study 2020, it was the third most popular Fiction category behind Mystery/Thrillers and Science Fiction, accounting for 32% of print books and 28% of ebooks read by Canadians in 2020.
In collecting data for our 2020 Canadian Book Consumer Study, we discovered that 5% of book buyers purchased a Historical Fiction title during the previous month in 2020. The majority of the titles they purchased were print books (67%), 28% were ebooks, 3% were audiobooks, and 1% in another format. When buying their books, 40% of the purchases were planned — a figure that is 3% higher than all Canadian book buyers we surveyed. What’s more, Historical Fiction book buyers are engaged with books outside of reading, too — 63% have added books to a wishlist, 33% have rated a book, 18% have written a book review, and 13% have attended an author reading or book signing.
The past behind us, how’s Historical Fiction faring in 2021?
Below, we take a look at the Canadian sales and library circulation of Historical Fiction titles during the third quarter of 2021 with the help of our SalesData and LibraryData services.
Buying Historical Fiction
From July to September 2021, sales of Historical Fiction titles trended down, decreasing 49% over the entire quarter. This downwards trend was also true in 2020 although less severe. During the third quarter of 2020, sales of Historical Fiction titles decreased 24%.
Looking at both years, July 2021 sales began 13% higher than July 2020 sales but dropped over the quarter. In August, Historical Fiction sales for 2021 were already dipping 2% below 2020’s sales. And by September’s end, 2021’s sales were 23% lower than in 2020, shown in the graph below.
Even though the sales of Historical Fiction titles trended down in the third quarter of 2021 overall, this wasn’t a complete downfall for the subject category.
The BISAC code, Fiction / Historical has eight subcategories. A number of these subcategories saw huge increases in sales from July to September 2021, when compared to 2020, including:
Fiction / Historical / Medieval – up 844%;
Fiction / Historical / Colonial America & Revolution – up 197%; and
Fiction / Historical / Ancient – up 80%.
In the third quarter of 2021, the two most purchased Historical Fiction subcategories were World War II and General, at 46% and 44% respectively. The third most purchased subcategory was Ancient, which made up only 4% of sales.
Borrowing Historical Fiction
In the third quarter of 2021, library circulation of Historical Fiction titles also trended downwards — loans decreased 19% and renewals decreased 5% from July to September. But this was different in 2020. From July to September 2020, library loans steadily increased 31% and renewals shot up 219%. These big increases in library circulation could be due to libraries reopening as pandemic restrictions lessened across the country.
Comparing 2021 against 2020, library loans of Historical Fiction titles in 2021 rose 104% over 2020 and library renewals increased 201% year-over-year, shown in the graph below.
Which Historical Fiction subcategories were trending amongst Canadian library patrons during the third quarter of 2021? Every single subcategory saw an increase in library circulation compared to 2020, especially:
Fiction / Historical / Colonial America & Revolution — loans up 378% and renewals up 284%;
Fiction / Historical / Civil War Era — loans up 234% and renewals up 268%; and
Fiction / Historical / World War II — loans up 203% and renewals up 307%.
From July to September 2021, the three most circulated Historical Fiction subcategories in the library were:
Fiction / Historical / General — 59% of loans and 66% of renewals;
Fiction / Historical / World War II — 34% of loans and 25% of renewals; and
Fiction / Historical / World War I — 2% of loans and 2% of renewals.
Reading Historical Fiction
Based on the sales and library circulation of Historical Fiction from July to September 2021, these are the five most popular titles for Canadian readers:
The Rose Code by Kate Quinn
The Forest of Vanishing Stars by Kristin Harmel
The Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett
The Secret Keeper of Jaipur by Alka Joshi
The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles
And the rest is history!
Stay tuned for future instalments of this series or sign up to our eNews for more digestible data on the Canadian book market.
A deep dive into book prices in Canada from our upcoming Canadian Book Consumer Study 2023.