We’re back with more data from the Canadian Book Consumer survey which we’ll publish in our study Canadian Book Consumer Study 2022, out this spring.
Last time, we took a deep dive into the Canadians' book buying in 2022. Today, we’re turning the page to take a look at another huge group of Canadian book consumers — Canadian book borrowers.
But first, a bit about the Canadian Book Consumer survey. It's an annual survey of Canadians and Canadian book consumers that began in 2012. In it, we survey Canadians quarterly about their book buying, borrowing, and other book-related behaviours during the months of March, June, September, and December. In 2022, we surveyed a total of 10,840 Canadians — 20% of these were book borrowers.
What do we know about Canadian book borrowers in 2022?
What they borrowed
Last year, Canadian book borrowers borrowed an average of 4.8 books per month from the public library — 3.4 print books, 1.0 ebooks, and 0.4 audiobooks.
Overall, 71% of all books borrowed in 2022 were print books, 21% were ebooks, and, 8% were audiobooks. The graph below shows the books Canadian borrowed by format over the last five years.
Here, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Canadian library circulation is clear, with significant decreases in print book borrowing and increases in ebook borrowing in 2020 — print borrowing was down 23% and ebook borrowing up 119% from 2018 to 2020. In 2022, the percentage of print books borrowed by Canadian book borrowers has continued to recover — up 12% since 2020. The percentage of borrowed ebooks has also decreased — down 24% since 2020. Yet, the percentage of audiobooks borrowed has steadily increased over the last five years, up 66% since 2018.
Where they borrowed
In 2022, many Canadian book borrowers visited their local library either online (77%) or in person (70%) in a given month. The graph below shows the frequency of library visits either online or in person for Canadian book borrowers last year. In both cases, the majority of book borrowers visited the library between one and four times in 2022, at 61% for online and 46% for in-person library visits.
Canadian book borrowers visited the library in 2022 for a variety of reasons, but year over year the top five reasons have remained the same. Last year, the top reasons for visiting the library were:
to pick up holds (44%);
to browse displays and shelves for books to borrow (36%);
to discover a new book, author, and/or illustrator (24%);
to put books/materials on hold (17%); and
to read magazines/newspapers (14%).
How they borrowed
Canadian book borrowers generally borrowed books for themselves in 2022, at 64% and up from 6% the year before. That being said, many Canadian book buyers also checked out books for another adult (20%) or a middle grade child (6%) last year.
In 2022, most book borrowers borrowed only books from the library (74%). Though, 26% of Canadian book borrowers also checked out something else from the library last year. The most popular items were DVDs at 10%, next were magazines (6%), movies (5%), CDs (5%), and music (3%).
How did Canadian book borrowers discover the books they borrowed from the library? The most popular ways book borrowers discovered books in 2022 were:
browsing by genre or subject (42%);
searching specifically for the book (32%);
browsing books by author/illustrator (30%);
having read other books by the author/illustrator (29%); and
having a recommendation/ or reading a review (18%).
Canadian book borrowers took many actions both online and in-person when deciding which book to borrow last year. In 2022, the most popular decision-making actions were:
reading the book description (54%);
checking to see if the library has it (48%); and
reading reviews about the book (30%).
Why they borrowed
Why did Canadian book borrowers borrow books in 2022, rather than buy them? The top three reasons were:
to save money (56%);
to not spend money (50%); and
to read it, but not to own it (41%).
That being said, many Canadian book borrowers also bought books last year — 18% bought new books and 19% bought used books.
Canadian book borrowers who bought new books bought an average of 3.0 books per month — 1.8 print books, 0.9 ebooks, and 0.3 audiobooks. Compare this to Canadian book buyers, who bought an average of 2.6 books a month last year — 1.6 print books, 0.8 ebooks, and 0.3 audiobooks. Most book borrowers spent anywhere from $1-49 on these books (59%), while others spent $50-99 (19%) or $100-149 (7%) a month last year.
Book borrowers also bought an average of 3.7 used print books in a month last year, with most also spending between $1-49 in a given month (74%).
That’s all for now! Stay tuned for the third and final instalment of this blog series next month and sign up for the research newsletter to be notified of all the newest data on Canadian book consumers as its released.
A deep dive into book prices in Canada from our upcoming Canadian Book Consumer Study 2023.