Some New Canadian Book, eBook, and Library Statistics Available in New National Book Count

From the National Post:

The results of the second annual National Book Count were released on Thursday. For the second year in a row, book sales and libraries loans were tracked by a partnership of booksellers and library systems and combined by the National Reading Campaign, a group of “readers, parents, writers, editors, librarians, bookstore owners, teachers, publishers and distributors” established in 2008 to study the reading habits of Canadians. During the week of January 23 to January 29, 2012, a total of 3,405,687 were “sold or circulated” in this country, which works out to more than five every second.
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Last year, the count came in at 2,714, 946.
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• 111,053 English language e-book sales were counted. As this is the first year counting e-book sales, no direct comparison can be made, but publishers report a “significant” increase from 2011.
• 2,141,553 print books were borrowed from 28 participating public library systems. 63,196 e-books were downloaded. Canadian libraries saw an 8% increase in print circulation and a 50% increase in digital circulation for an overall increase of 9% total circulation for libraries that participated in 2011 and 2012.

More Highlights from the National Book Count in the Complete Article

Filed under: Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Libraries, Public Libraries, Publishing