On January 6, Beijing released the "2021 China Book Retail Market Report". The report shows that between 2015 and 2019, the book retail market has maintained a growth rate of more than 10%, and in 2020, it has experienced negative growth for the first time due to the impact of the epidemic. In 2021, it rose slightly compared with 2020, up 1.65% year-on-year, and the scale of the yard ocean was 98.68 billion, but compared with 2019, the retail market fell by 3.51%, and did not return to the pre-epidemic level.
From the perspective of different channels, the online store channel maintained positive growth, but compared with previous years, the growth rate slowed down significantly, an increase of 1% year-on-year, and the size of the code ocean was 77.48 billion yuan; the physical store channel was driven by the theme publishing book in 2021, up 4.09% year-on-year, and the size of the code ocean was 21.2 billion yuan, but compared with 2019, there was still a negative growth of 31.09%.
In the rapid development of online store channels in previous years, with low discounts and convenient and fast shopping experience, it has continuously opened up new markets, so that many people who originally did not buy books or rarely bought books became book consumers, so they have maintained a growth rate of more than 20%. With the continuous expansion of the scale of online store channels, online traffic has basically been developed. In June 2021, the scale of netizens reached 1 billion people, which has shown a state of saturation, and the number of new consumers that can be converted has gradually decreased, while factors such as the slowdown in macroeconomic growth and the decline in income in 2021 still exist, so the growth rate of online channels has shifted from the previous high growth to the state of low growth.
For physical bookstores, the consumption habits of readers in the post-epidemic era have been changed, in addition to the obvious discount difference that still exists, the sporadic epidemic and natural disasters in 2021 still exist, making the recovery of physical bookstores face greater difficulties.
From the perspective of different market segments, in the book retail market, except for social science and life and leisure, the proportion of other categories has decreased year-on-year. Among them, the proportion of academic and cultural codes increased by 1.4 percentage points, and the proportion of Marxist-Leninist codes increased by 1.4 percentage points. If placed in the physical store channel, the proportion of Marxism-Leninism-Leninism-like codes has risen from 3.9% in 2020 to 15.3%. From the perspective of the year-on-year growth rate of the sub-classification, the growth rate of Marxism-Leninism is the highest, up nearly 50% year-on-year, and the year-on-year growth rate in the physical store channel exceeds 300%, mainly driven by some policy books. The academic culture category rose by more than 20% year-on-year, mainly driven by books related to party history.
It is worth noting that literary books have been showing negative growth since 2018. In 2021, the year-on-year growth rate of the literary market turned positive, up 4.6% year-on-year. Judging from the top books in the literary market, the variety of books with sales of more than 1 million has increased from 1 to 3. In addition, both Yu Hua's new work "Wencheng" and Zhang Jiajia's "Paradise Tour Group" also have good performances.
In recent years, the outstanding performance in the literary market has to mention the online paper book, in the top 100 retail fiction sales of online paper book accounted for 31 seats, and in the fiction of the new book, the network paper book occupied 63 seats. If you look at the novel market, the top 500 chinese online paper books in the novel category can account for nearly 40%, mainly concentrated in the listed books since 2018.
Judging from the composition of various types of books in 2021, children's category is still the category with the largest proportion of code oceans. Compared with 2020, the proportion of children's code oceans decreased by 0.1 percentage points, but it is still higher than the same period in 2019. The reason for the decline in the proportion of children in 2021 is mainly because the demand for parent-child reading during the epidemic in 2020 has driven the proportion of children's classes to reach an all-time high, and there will be a normal decline in 2021.
In addition, in 2021, the 80/20 effect in the book retail market is still obvious, and the top 1% of the book varieties in sales contribute nearly 60% of the yard ocean to the book retail market. Among them, "Mr. Toad Goes to the Psychiatrist", "Three-Body" and "Bronze Sunflower" ranked first in the sales of non-fiction, fiction and children, respectively. From the perspective of the top 100 sales of fiction, non-fiction and children, comic knowledge, online paper books and classic series books in 2021 are the mainstream hot spots in the book retail market.
Nandu reporter Huang Qian