The Canadian Book Market 2023, is out now! It’s your definitive guide to understanding the Canadian book market, making business decisions, identifying trends, opportunities for growth, and more. In this year's edition you’ll find:
Top-level consumer data from BookNet’s Canadian Book Consumer survey panel, including insights about book buying, discoverability, purchasing behaviour, and more.
French Canadian trade book market sales data from the Société de gestion de la Banque de titres de langue française (BTLF).
A section featuring insights into the sales of books by Canadian contributors and Canadian-owned publishing houses.
English Canadian trade book market sales data by subject from BNC SalesData — for more than 50 subject categories. Including top-level data: total value and volume of sales, percent change from the previous year; the subject’s share of the total market; weekly sales analysis; market shares by volume for the top 10 ranked publishers and distributors; and much more.
And, new this year, information about the top circulated titles in Canadian libraries.
Highlights
We've compiled some highlights in the infographic below (scroll down for the text version of these stats). But to get the whole picture of the Canadian book market, be sure to purchase your copy.
The book industry in 2023
In 2023, we tracked sales for 847,477 unique ISBNs, which translated to 48,791,765 physical books sold at a total value of $1,102,387,350.
Combined, the sales of Juvenile and Young Adult subjects accounted for the majority of the market share at 40%. In second place, Non-Fiction made up 30%, and Fiction occupied the third place at 28%.
The top Juvenile & YA titles were Dog Man 11: Twenty Thousand Fleas under the Sea by Dav Pilkey and A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson respectively.
The top two Non-Fiction titles were Spare by Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex and The Woman in Me by Britney Spears.
The top two Fiction titles were It Starts with Us and It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover.
In the French-Canadian market, Juvenile & YA also had the biggest portion of sales throughout 2023, accounting for a 44% of the trade market. The best-selling title in this subject category was Astérix. L'Iris blanc by Fabacaro & Didier Conrad.
Other highlights include
Kate Beaton’s graphic memoir, Ducks published by Drawn & Quarterly is the top selling title for Canadian-owned publishers in 2023.
Books by Canadians made up 12% of print book sales in Canada in 2023.
Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune 🍁 was the top selling title by a Canadian contributor.
Colleen Hoover continues to be a big seller this year:
It Starts with Us was the top-selling Fiction title.
Seven of her titles made it on the Romance top 10 hardcover and top 10 paperback lists.
The top 10 hardcover and top 10 paperback titles in the Fiction / Fantasy include nine books by Sarah J. Maas.
For the sixth year running, two out of every five print books sold in 2023 in both the English- and French-language markets in Canada were categorized as either Juvenile or Young Adult (YA).
Dav Pilkey is once again at the top of the Juvenile category, for the fourth year in a row, but this time with Dog Man 11: Twenty Thousand Fleas under the Sea.
Did Taylor Swift’s announcement of her most recent album impact Poetry sales or library circulation?