.@BookNet_Canada asked Canadians about how frequently they engage in 22 different types of activities, including reading or listening to books.
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How do books fit into the lives of Canadians? To find out, we narrowed in on results from the Canadian Book Consumer survey, a quarterly survey conducted by BookNet Canada querying Canadians about their book behaviour. The online survey was fielded primarily in May and July 2021 to 4,936 English-speaking Canadians who met our screening criteria.

As a reminder, most of the data we’re about to share comes from questions that asked respondents about their book-related behaviour in the previous month, meaning that respondents surveyed in May 2021 were asked about their April book borrowing behaviour and respondents surveyed in July 2021 were asked about their June behaviour.

Activity engagement

We wanted to get a sense of how frequently Canadians engaged in 22 different types of activities, including reading or listening to books. We asked whether they participated in these activities daily, a few times a week, weekly, less than once a month, or rarely/never. We found that most Canadians who engaged in a particular activity did so less than once a month. (Of note, we did not ask about exercising, cooking, or any other care-related and housekeeping activities in this survey.)

Daily book-related habits

When we look at just reading or listening to books, we found that about one in 10 Canadians engaged in a book-related activity on a daily basis.

12% read a print book
11% read an ebook
9% listened to a digital audiobook
7% listened to a physical audiobook
7% read a comic book, graphic novel, or manga book

We looked at the demographics of the daily readers of any format (they made up 26% of all Canadians surveyed) and found that in comparison to all Canadians, more were women — 61% of daily readers vs. 54% overall. They were also older — 38% of daily readers were aged 65+ vs. 31% overall, with fewer people aged 35 to 54 — 9% were 35-44 vs. 12% overall and 13% were 45-54 vs. 17% overall.

Popular weekly activities

Interestingly, considering movie theatre reopening schedules across Canada, 28% of Canadians said they watched movies in theatres weekly. Other popular weekly activities include shopping online (27%), discussing books with others (26%), reading or watching book reviews (26%), and visiting national or historic parks (25%).

Least engaged with: digital newspapers and magazines

We found that about half of Canadians did not

read a newspaper digitally (44%);
read a magazine digitally (55%); or
visit a book-specific online social network site (66%).

Book-related visits

In separate questions, we asked Canadians about how often they visited a bookstore and the library online and in person in the past month. For the first half of 2021, 55% of respondents had visited a bookstore or a library online or in person.

For bookstores, 30% of respondents visited online 1-4 times in the past month and 20% visited 1-4 times in person. This was by far the most popular frequency. Only 5% of respondents visited online 5-9 times and 4% visited online 10 or more times. For in person bookstore visits, 2% went 5-9 times and a further 2% visited 10 or more times.

It was a similar breakdown for libraries — 18% of respondents visited a library in person 1-4 times in the past month and 17% visited online 1-4 times. Where libraries differ from bookstores is that more of the frequent library-goers went in person — 5% of respondents visited in person 5-9 times and 4% visited in person 10 or more times. For online library visits, 3% of respondents visited 5-9 times and 2% visited 10 or more times.

Frequency of online and in person visits to bookstores and libraries by Canadians

BookNet staff reading habits

The research team asked BookNet staff about how books fit into their life, a more open-ended question than we ask in any of our surveys. Unsurprisingly, books were read/listened to throughout the day for many BookNetters, as a companion while doing other things (work, errands, home/self care), or as a focused activity during specific parts of their day (a morning, lunch, and/or pre-bedtime activity) that they did alone or with their children.

Books as gifts was also a popular response when asked about how books fit into the lives of BookNetters — both purchasing for others or maintaining a list for ourselves — and visiting bookstores was a touchpoint while out and about in both familiar and new areas.

Perhaps, unsurprisingly, BookNet respondents seem to include books in their lives on a more frequent basis than our survey respondents.

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