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RE: A Thought
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From: Charles Bayless <charles.bayless_at_gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2014 12:42:44 -0500
Katelyn wrote: "I'd love to hear more about where these numbers come from and how non-purchasing readers are counted."
Katelyn,
Probably the best answers are in that article Norma Jean referenced earlier
(search: Children's Books: A Shifting Market by Jim Milliot in PW). There are a series of charts at the bottom of the article that show where, how, and in what form books are purchased.
How much reading is done via borrowing (from friends, from library) versus how much is done via ownership (book buying) is very hard to nail down. There are guesses but they are at best educated guesses. Library Data Visualization has a good resource (search: What Public Libraries Have the Highest Circulation Rates in the U.S.?) for locking in on circulation rates. The national average circulation rate per capita is 8.0 with huge variation by library system (for example, the DC system has a circulation rate of 5). In other words, on average each US resident borrows eight books a year from a public library. But the measurement difficulties expand from there. For example, not all books that are borrowed are read; some books are borrowed only for research, etc..
From ALA (search: Library Operating Expenditures: A Selected Annotated Bibliography) we know that in 2010 public libraries spent about $1.26 billion on book purchases. K-12 school libraries spent approximately $480 million on book purchases (search: Library Operating Expenditures: A Selected Annotated Bibliography). So total public and school book purchases total roughly $1.7 billion out of a total book market of approximately $28 billion (search: BookStats Fills a Gap with New U.S. Publishing Data), i.e. roughly 6% of the total book market which strikes me as low. I suspect the denominator is too high, including text books, reports and some forms of reference books not in general population circulation. The textbook market in the US is some $14 billion (search: The Changing Textbook Industry by Jonathan Band), so we would probably want to remove that as part of the market size. If we did that, then libraries would represent about 12% of the book market. The market in Trade Books is about $7 billion. In that case, libraries would represent about 24% of the trade book market. My best estimate would be that libraries represent roughly 15% of the market for the type of books we are discussing. In conversations, I have heard both higher and lower numbers but 15% is my best guess.
IIRC from BLS data, average household expenditures on books is approximately
$50 and there are circa 117 million households, yielding an estimate of individual purchasing of about $5.9 billion versus $1.7 for institutions such as libraries.
Libraries make their purchases all sorts of ways depending on a number of factors. Sometimes directly from publishers, sometimes via Amazon, sometimes through local booksellers, sometimes via distributors. Though library purchases cannot be disaggregated as a particular purchasing channel, you get the picture from the bottom pie chart in the article.
As has been mentioned, everything is ultimately driven by commercial demand, either through individual consumers purchasing more books or institutions such as libraries. Non-purchasing readers' interests show up primarily through public libraries who represent perhaps 15% of total book purchases.
Charles
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2014 12:42:44 -0500
Katelyn wrote: "I'd love to hear more about where these numbers come from and how non-purchasing readers are counted."
Katelyn,
Probably the best answers are in that article Norma Jean referenced earlier
(search: Children's Books: A Shifting Market by Jim Milliot in PW). There are a series of charts at the bottom of the article that show where, how, and in what form books are purchased.
How much reading is done via borrowing (from friends, from library) versus how much is done via ownership (book buying) is very hard to nail down. There are guesses but they are at best educated guesses. Library Data Visualization has a good resource (search: What Public Libraries Have the Highest Circulation Rates in the U.S.?) for locking in on circulation rates. The national average circulation rate per capita is 8.0 with huge variation by library system (for example, the DC system has a circulation rate of 5). In other words, on average each US resident borrows eight books a year from a public library. But the measurement difficulties expand from there. For example, not all books that are borrowed are read; some books are borrowed only for research, etc..
From ALA (search: Library Operating Expenditures: A Selected Annotated Bibliography) we know that in 2010 public libraries spent about $1.26 billion on book purchases. K-12 school libraries spent approximately $480 million on book purchases (search: Library Operating Expenditures: A Selected Annotated Bibliography). So total public and school book purchases total roughly $1.7 billion out of a total book market of approximately $28 billion (search: BookStats Fills a Gap with New U.S. Publishing Data), i.e. roughly 6% of the total book market which strikes me as low. I suspect the denominator is too high, including text books, reports and some forms of reference books not in general population circulation. The textbook market in the US is some $14 billion (search: The Changing Textbook Industry by Jonathan Band), so we would probably want to remove that as part of the market size. If we did that, then libraries would represent about 12% of the book market. The market in Trade Books is about $7 billion. In that case, libraries would represent about 24% of the trade book market. My best estimate would be that libraries represent roughly 15% of the market for the type of books we are discussing. In conversations, I have heard both higher and lower numbers but 15% is my best guess.
IIRC from BLS data, average household expenditures on books is approximately
$50 and there are circa 117 million households, yielding an estimate of individual purchasing of about $5.9 billion versus $1.7 for institutions such as libraries.
Libraries make their purchases all sorts of ways depending on a number of factors. Sometimes directly from publishers, sometimes via Amazon, sometimes through local booksellers, sometimes via distributors. Though library purchases cannot be disaggregated as a particular purchasing channel, you get the picture from the bottom pie chart in the article.
As has been mentioned, everything is ultimately driven by commercial demand, either through individual consumers purchasing more books or institutions such as libraries. Non-purchasing readers' interests show up primarily through public libraries who represent perhaps 15% of total book purchases.
Charles
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Received on Fri 28 Feb 2014 11:42:44 AM CST
