The Book Retail Market Watch Report by Beijing Open Book provides records of China’s book market in the last decade. China’s retail book market showed reduced growth in 2008 -- the growth rate of 4.44% in 2008 was close to the record-low of 4.52% in 2003. As growth in retail book market started to slow, market players were anxious to improve efficiency. In 2009, China’s book market experienced accelerated growth sharply for several months, but ended the year-end with a 4.2% growth rate, which was still within expectations.

According to data gathered from more than 1,700 bookstores around China, the growth slowdown was imbalanced. Book sales in the first quarter rose 8%, but the growth slowed down significantly in following quarters (1.4% in the second quarter and 2.3% in the third quarter). Growth picked up again in the fourth quarter, rise a  modest 4.1%, with an overall rateg of 4.2% for the year. In 2009, B2C publications (including books, journals, audio and video products) accounted for less than 10% of the overall book market, but the growth rate was very impressive – about 50%.

Children and literature books remained the key products in China’s book market in 2009, and sales of lifestyle books rose about 6% in 2009, marking the slowest growth in recent years. Social sciences book sales rose 4.5% in 2009, which was slightly higher than the overall rate. Books on academic themes maintained 20% percent growth in 2009, but management books continued to report negative growth despite a reduced growth rate -- sales of books on management fell 10% percent in 2008, and fell 5% in 2009).

The best-selling fiction books in 2009 were mainly on topics of youth, workplace and imported thrillers, and the non-fiction books were about politics, culture and health. Children books, both domestic and imported ones, proved popular.

Report Review

Sales by category in 2009 were as follows: children book sales were up 10.2%, literature up 8.3%, textbooks up 7.3%, lifestyle books up 5.3%, social sciences book up 4.5%, autobiographies were up 2.4%, fine arts up 0.2%. Meanwhile, technology titles fell 3%, and language books down 4.6%.

On Open-Book Sampling

The figures in the report are sourced from Open Book Nationwide Book Retail Sales Monitoring System, and the system covers 1,750 bookstores in 763 counties and cities in 30 Chinese provinces (excluding Tibet, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) by January 2010.  1,235 stores are in the Xinhu chain and 515 non-Xinhua bookstores. In 2009, stores in the system accounted for total sales of 6.99 billion yuan (US$1.02 billion), covering 996,000 products.