Year: 2020
Market size: 97.08 billion yuan
书是随时携带的花园
shū shì suí shí xié dài de huā yuán
A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.
— Chinese proverb
Today’s market size shows total book revenues in China in 2020. As many industries suffered revenue losses due to the coronavirus pandemic, so too did the book industry in China. Revenues were down 5.19 billion yuan from 2019, or 5.08%. This was the first time the market declined since tracking began in 2001. By contrast, the market saw double-digit growth each year from 2015 to 2019.
In 2019, 70% of retail book sales took place online, up from 28% in 2012. The first year that online sales overtook brick-and-mortar sales was in 2016. Rising book prices along with larger online discounts offered by publishers have contributed to this trend. Online discounts averaged between 38% and 41% while brick-and-mortar discounts averaged 11%.
Revenues at physical bookstores have seen mixed results since 2015. Revenue grew in both 2015 and 2017 but declined in all the other years. The declines stayed in the single digits until 2020 when revenues plunged 33.8%. Government shutdowns to prevent the spread of the coronavirus took their toll on brick-and-mortar establishments in China and elsewhere around the world. Online sales growth from 2015 to 2019 had been in the double-digits each year, peaking at 33.2% in 2015. Growth stood at 24.9% in 2019. While online sales continued to grow in 2020, growth slowed dramatically to 7.27%.
Recently, Chinese publishers have been producing fewer titles as they focus on higher-quality works. In 2019, 194,000 new titles were released, down 6.7% from 2018. In total, more than 505,000 titles were published in China that year. Nonfiction publishers with books ranked in the top 10 of the bestseller list as of November 20201 include Hainan Publishing House, Nan Hai Publishing Co., Beijing Union Publishing Co. Ltd., Wenhui Publishing House, Huaxia Publishing House, CITIC Publishing House Co. Ltd., Human Literature & Art Press, and Jiangsu Literature & Art Press. Fiction publishers with books in the top 10 include Chongqing Publishing House, October Art & Literature Publishing House, Jiangsu Literature & Art Press, Hunan Literature & Art Press, The Writer’s Publishing House, and Beijing Union Publishing Co. Ltd. The top nonfiction book in November 2020 was Educated: A Memoir, by Tara Westover. The fiction book ranked number one was Ordinary Word, by Lu Yao. This book was ranked at number 13 just a month earlier.1 The last month of available data as of February 2, 2021.
Sources: Porter Anderson, “‘Crisis and Changes’: Insights from Beijing OpenBook Conference,” Publishing Perspectives, January 18, 2021 available online here; Porter Anderson, “China’s Book Market: A 2019 Update From the OpenBook Beijing Conference,” Publishing Perspectives, January 17, 2020 available online here; Porter Anderson, “China Bestsellers: November’s Big Sales Rule the Charts,” Publishing Perspectives, January 5, 2021 available online here; Lai Lin Thomala, “Number of Published Book Titles in China from 2009 to 2019,” Statista, December 29, 2020 available online here; “12 Chinese Sayings on Books,” Chinese 4 Kids, May 16, 2018 available online here.
Image source: Adapted from Cici Hung, “Unnamed Road, Qingpu Qu, Shanghai Shi, China,” Unsplash, August 21, 2019 available online here.