In Canada, sales online and through non-bookstores are growing, but traditional bookstores "still account for the majority of book sales," according to a Canadian Heritage study of the Canadian book business as analyzed by the Globe & Mail. Annual sales are about $1.5 billion, an amount that has remained flat recently.
Released on the Canadian Heritage website last week, the study called the Book Retail Sector in Canada noted that Indigo, which has 230 stores, represents 44% of national sales--and 67% "if one excludes online and mail-order sales and sales at university and college bookstores."
In Quebec, Archambault and Renaud-Bray, which together have almost 50 stores, account for 44% of book sales in the predominantly French-speaking province.
The report continued: "If an Indigo buyer decides not to carry an individual book, the publisher of that title effectively loses half of the Canadian retail channel." Still, "chain stores are playing an important role in presenting a wide selection of Canadian titles to consumers."
The growth of Indigo and Chapters in the late 1990s led to a decline in the number of independent booksellers, lower publisher wholesale prices and increased discounting at retail on major titles. "Such discounts are now firmly entrenched as a marketing strategy," the study said, reinforced by the strategies of Costco, Wal-Mart and Amazon.ca.
More and more books are being published in Canada--17,000 in 2004 compared to 12,000 in 1996--while readership has remained steady. "The net effect is that a growing number of books are contending for the attention of roughly the same number of book buyers" in "an increasingly saturated media environment," the report said. As a result, "both the average sales per title in Canada and the average print runs in many title categories have been falling in recent years."