A new report called State of Digital Publishing in Canada published on June 6th by BookNet Canada provides interesting insights into the declining e-book market.
According to the report, 61 percent of Canadian publishers saw digital revenues increase in 2016, with one in four publishers saying they saw digital revenues increase by “at least 25 percent” over the past year.
Over the same time period, however, Canadian publishers saw a 2.1 percent decline in e-book sales — meaning while the amount of e-books sold were lower, the prices were higher.
Interestingly, publishers that took part in the survey say 46 percent of their e-books saw “no sales in 2016.” In 2014, the percentage of e-books with sales was at 88 percent. This past year that number declined to 54 percent. BookNet speculates the above trend was caused by publishers continuing to digitize their back catalogues as well as the aforementioned 2.1 percent decline in e-book sales.
As an aside, the vast majority of publishers — 96 percent and 93 percent, respectively — uploaded their books to the Kobo and Amazon e-commerce stores, with fewer — 84 percent — taking their titles to iTunes Book Store.
Much has been made of how people are turning back to physical books. In Canada at least, it appears e-books are still viable, even if that’s not true everywhere else in the world.
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