The kids are going back to school and we’re getting back to the data, it’s the perfect time to check on how the Canadian English-language book market has performed in the first half of 2024, with the latest data from SalesData, LibraryData, and the Canadian Book Consumer survey.
Book sales
Using SalesData, our national sales tracking service for the Canadian English-language trade book market, we found that print unit sales for the first six months of 2024 were down 2% over the same period in 2023, according to our comparable stores panel.
The graph below shows the monthly change in print unit sales in the Canadian English-language trade market from January to June over the last five years using the comparable stores panel.
The value sold in the first half of 2024 is primarily flat compared to 2023. In the first six months of 2024, for the entire English-language Canadian trade print book market tracked by BNC SalesData, 20,772,885 units were sold at a value of $477,159,543.
Which titles sold the most in the first half of 2024?
Bestselling Fiction title: The Women by Kristin Hannah
Bestselling Non-Fiction title: Atomic Habits by James Clear
Bestselling Juvenile and Young Adult title: Dog Man: The Scarlet Shredder (Dog Man #12) by Dav Pilkey
Bestselling adult title by a Canadian contributor: This Summer Will Be Different by Carley Fortune 🍁
Bestselling Juvenile and Young Adult title by a Canadian contributor: Claudia and the Bad Joke (Baby-Sitters Club #15) by Ann M. Martin and illustrated by Arley Nopra 🍁
Category trends during the first six months of 2024:
Juvenile and Young Adult sales were down 5% yearly but still continued to reign supreme at 40% of all English-language book sales in 2024.
Fiction slides into second place with a 30% market share, up from 28% during the first half of 2023. Year over year, Fiction sales were up by 6%.
Non-fiction dropped to third place at 29% of all units sold, slightly down from 31% sold in the first half of 2023. Sales of Non-fiction titles were down 8% when compared to 2023.
Frontlist sales (sales for titles with a publication date within the year) accounted for 26% of all units sold in the first half of 2024, down from 28% in 2023.
Subjects with the most significant increases year over year include:
Anything fantasy romance-related continued to see strong sales in the first half of 2024. Fantasy / Romance was up 235%, and Romance / Fantasy was up 104%. Young Adult Fantasy / Romance also saw a significant sales increase, up 214%.
Other subcategories of both Romance and Fantasy saw significant year-over-year increases as well.
Indigenous fiction books were up 104%.
Non-fiction books on Israel & Palestine saw significant increases, up 1,233%.
Library circulation
Twenty-seven public library systems across Canada reported their physical book circulation and holdings data to BNC LibraryData in the first half of 2024. The reporting libraries encompassed over 600 branches and covered approximately 25% of the Canadian population.
In the first half of 2024, libraries reported 16,096,880 loans and 8,191,292 renewals of physical books.
The top circulating titles so far in 2024 were:
Top circulating Fiction title: The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
Top circulating Non-fiction title: Spare by Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex
Top circulating Juvenile/YA title: Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series by Jeff Kinney
Top circulating title by a Canadian contributor: The Maid by Nita Prose 🍁
The overall library circulation by subject for the first half of 2024 and 2023:
Canadian book consumers
The Canadian Book Consumer survey is conducted quarterly by BookNet Canada and queries Canadians about their book acquisition behaviour. The data below is a sneak peek at the results of the April and July 2024 fieldings that reached over 1,000 Canadian book buyers.
Canadian book buyers primarily purchased print books during the first and second quarters of 2024. Print books comprised 83% of all book purchases — 48% of those were paperback and 25% were hardcover, as shown in the graph below. Digital book purchases rose during the first six months of 2024 compared with the same period in 2023 — 6% increase from year to year.
According to our consumer survey, in the first half of 2024, Canadian book buyers have been buying more Self-help books — in the first six months of 2024 they made up 22% of their Non-Fiction purchases up from 17% in 2023. Additionally, their interest in Fantasy novels and Thrillers has grown, they each now account for 19% of all Fiction purchases in the first half of 2024.
The graph below shows the purchasing behaviour of Canadian book buyers when it comes to physical and online shopping — it has remained relatively flat compared to 2023.
Looking for more research into the Canadian book market, Canadian book consumers, and Canadian readers? Complete information on print book sales broken out by category and Canadian-owned firms for 2023 can be found in our annual publication, The Canadian Book Market 2023.
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What did BookNet read in 2024? We’re sharing some tidbits of data about our team’s reading habits this year.