The Globe and Mail reports today on “an ambitious, 102-page study of Canada's retail book sector conducted for Canadian Heritage” which “provides a panoramic survey of the industry.” I’ll have to read the study in its entirety to absorb its full implications, but in the meantime the Globe’s summary offers some food for thought. Clearly the report contains disturbing news about the state of bookselling in Canada. But it also provides encouraging statistics about Canadian reading and book buying habits including the following:
average time spent reading: 4.5 hours a week;
average number of books read each year: 17;
percentage of Canadians who buy at least one book a year: 81.
Those numbers seem to me to provide a nice rebuttal to ubiquitous claims about the death of reading.
For the Globe and Mail article, click
here, and for the full report,
The Book Retail Sector in Canada, click
here.