Smartphone reading is on the rise in Canada and 20% of readers are now consuming ebooks on their mobile devices, which is a 6% increase over last year. This has mostly been at the expense of e-readers (used by 23% of Canadian readers), which is down by 5% since last year.
Booknet Canada recently conducted a survey with 750 respondents and asked if they had read or listened to a book in the previous year — with 82% responding that they had — and which formats (print, audio, ebook) they consumed. The results also showed that those between the ages of 18 and 44 were more likely to have listened to an audiobook than read a print book or ebook. Audiobook use is about on par with ebooks for readers 45-54 and continues to decline with the older age brackets.
Of those respondents who had read a book in the last year, 46% of them disclosed they had also checked out a book (in any format: ebook, print, audio) from the library. This number is about the same as the previous year.
Half of Canadian readers, 50% to be exact, discover the books they read or buy from word of mouth — the holy grail for book publishers everywhere. An equal number of readers discover books by browsing online (38%) or in a physical store (38%). Social media and public libraries both come in at 30% for how readers discover their next read.
The rest of the discovery channel’s broken down as follows: online communities like Goodreads, 21%; print news or magazines, 13%; e-reading apps, 11%; radio or television, 10%; and “none of the above” came in at 8%.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
