It’s Freedom to Read week and we’re back with another instalment of our blog mini-series on banned books.
Last time, we took a look at Canadians' interest in banned books and the way that publishers identify banned books in their book metadata keywords.
In this blog post, we’re digging deeper into banned books by looking at the sales of banned books in Canada. Are Canadians buying these controversial titles?
About the data
In this blog series, we’re identifying books that are banned or controversial using the keywords that book publishers include in their ONIX book metadata. Like we explored in the first blog post in this series, there are nearly 2,000 ISBNs and 614 unique titles or book series that are identified as banned or challenged in their metadata keywords.
From this list, we identified the top 10 individual books and top 10 book series:
Individual titles
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ulysses by James Joyce
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood 🍁
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Animal Farm by George Orwell
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Series titles
House of Night series by P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast
The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman
A Wrinkle in Time series by Madeleine L'Engle
Jasmine Toguchi series by Debbi Michiko Florence
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series by Alvin Schwartz
Cilla Lee-Jenkins series by Susan Tan
Aristotle and Dante series by Benjamin Alire Saenz
The Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis
Maus series by Art Spiegelman
The Luck Uglies series by Paul Durham
These 20 books and book series had a wide range of original publication dates, ranging from 1884 to 2017. Interestingly, the top individual titles identified as banned or controversial had much earlier first publication dates than the top series titles. The graph below shows that these individual titles were first published in the 1980s or earlier, while series titles were all published after 1950.
For this blog series, we’re using SalesData, our national sales tracking service for the Canadian English-language trade print book market, and LibraryData, our national Canadian library collection and circulation analysis tool, to gather data on the sales and library circulation for titles related to these 20 titles and series.
SalesData and LibraryData store ISBNs differently. While SalesData gathers data for each individual ISBN, LibraryData uses ISBN clusters. These ISBN clusters may contain any number of ISBNs related to one title or to a series of books.
To compare Canadian book sales and Canadian library circulation, the ISBNs related to each banned book or book series were taken first from LibraryData clusters. This same list of ISBNs was then used to gather data from SalesData.
Through LibraryData and SalesData, these 20 banned books and series numbered 648 ISBNs altogether:
The largest number of ISBNs related to a single banned book or series is 206 ISBNs.
The smallest number of ISBNs related to a single banned book or series is 5 ISBNs.
While each banned book or series had 32 related ISBNs on average, the median number of ISBNs was 19.
What impact does this have on the results? Be sure to check out our upcoming post on library circulation to compare the data.
Now, onto the results!
Buying banned books
We tracked the Canadian book sales for these 20 books and book series week-by-week from the beginning of July 2020 to the end of June 2023. The graphs below shows the total units sold for all ISBNs.
Units sold for all banned books from July 2020 to June 2023
Altogether, sales of these banned books decreased 23% from July 2020 to June 2023. Yet, there were some significant peaks in sales especially during the holidays:
Nov. 23-Dec. 20, 2020;
Dec. 6-Dec. 26, 2021; and
Dec. 12-Dec. 25, 2022.
Outside of the holiday season in the fourth quarter of each year, the biggest peaks in sales for all banned books were:
Jun. 29-Sept. 13, 2020;
Oct. 11-Oct. 17, 2021;
Feb. 28-March 13, 2022; and
Oct. 3-Oct. 9, 2022.
The graph below compares the sales of single banned book titles, series banned book titles, and all banned book titles. Over the entire time period, single banned book titles outsold series banned book titles – 58% of all banned books sold were single titles, while 42% of titles belonged to series.
Units sold for single titles, series titles, and all banned books from July 2020 to June 2023
The next graphs look more closely at the differences between the units sold for single titles and series titles.
Units sold for single banned book titles from July 2020 to June 2023
The graph above shows the units sold for single titles during this time period. Here, units sold overall decreased 26% from July 2020 to June 2023. While the holiday season was a popular time for these titles, they also saw big peaks in sales from:
July 6-July 12, 2020;
Sept. 6-Sept. 26, 2021;
Sept. 26-Oct. 23, 2022;
March 6-March 12, 2023; and
June 19-July 2, 2023.
Units sold for series banned book titles from July 2020 to June 2023
The units sold for series titles over this period are shown in the graph above. Overall, series titles saw a 12% decrease in sales from July 2020 to June 2023. That being said, these titles also saw big peaks in sales outside of the holiday season:
July 6-July 12, 2020;
Oct. 11-Oct. 24, 2021;
Jan. 24-Jan. 30, 2022;
Feb. 28-April 10, 2022;
June 27-July 3, 2022; and
Aug. 15-Aug. 28, 2022.
Are Canadian library book borrowers equally interested in banned books?
Stay tuned for the third part of this mini-series on banned books — and sign up for the research newsletter to be the first to know about all our upcoming research!
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