The Globe and Mail has a story, Book buying up 23 per cent, report says by Rebecca Caldwell (Sat. April 2, 2005, R7) on a new report by Hill Strategies Research called, Who Buys Books in Canada (March 2005) which shows that spending on books rose 23% between 1997 and 2001. What is interesting is the size of the print culture business. Spending on books is about the same as movie tickets and newspapers. If you add magazines, newspapers, and books you see that print media dominates over other media.
Here are some of the statistics,
The $1.1 billion spent on books is fairly similar to overall spending on newspapers ($1.2 billion) and movie theatre admissions ($1.2 billion) and amounts to more than double the spending on live sporting events ($451 million). Only newspapers, movie theatres and magazines attracted more households than books in 2001: 63% of all Canadian households spent some money on newspapers; 61% reported some spending on movie theatres; 54% reported some spending on magazines; and 48% reported some spending on books.