Book retail sales in 2021 from the open volume data

At the beginning of the new year, Beijing Open Volume Information Technology Co., Ltd. released the 2021 book retail market data interpretation report.

Thematic publishing pushed up the growth rate of physical bookstores

The book retail market in 2021 rose 1.65% year-on-year and has not yet returned to pre-epidemic levels. The growth rate of online store channels slowed down significantly, up 1% year-on-year, and the scale of code ocean was 77.48 billion yuan; the physical store channel was driven by theme published books, up 4.09% year-on-year, and the size of code ocean was 21.2 billion yuan.

From the perspective of market segmentation, in addition to social science and life and leisure, the proportion of other categories in the book retail market has decreased year-on-year.

Driven by books related to party history, the academic and cultural category increased by more than 20% year-on-year. The good news is that the literary market has resumed positive growth, up 4.6% year-on-year, mainly due to the new works of famous artists and online paper books. The variety of head books with sales of more than 1 million has increased from 1 to 3. In recent years, online paper books have performed prominently, occupying 31 seats in the top 100 sales of fictional books, and 63 seats in the top 100 sales of fictional new books.

In 2021, although children's books are still the largest category in the yard ocean, they are slightly down 0.1% year-on-year. With the help of short video e-commerce, Children's Science Encyclopedia has overtaken children's literature and become the first major sub-classification of children.

Classic books occupy the commanding heights of the head

In 2021, the top 1% of the book varieties sold contributed nearly 60% of the code to the book retail market, and comic knowledge, online paper books and classic series of books are the mainstream hot spots.

Among the top 100 non-fiction sales, "Mr. Toad Goes to the Psychiatrist" ranked first, the "Three-Body" trilogy ranked in the top 3, Yu Hua's new work "Wencheng" ranked 10th, and Zhang Jiajia's new work "Paradise Tour" ranked 11th, indicating that the head book is still occupied by classic books and recommended reading materials by students. In addition to the "Half-Hour Comics" series and the "If History Is a Bunch of Meows" series, there are also Yang Tianzhen's "Take Yourself Seriously", Li Meijin's "Psychological Upbringing", Liu Qing's "Lecture Notes on Western Modern Thought" coming out of the "Get" APP, and the theme publishing category "At the Turn of the Gorge River: Notes on Chen Xingjia's Life".

The top 100 children's sales are mainly classic children's books and series, and "Bronze Sunflower (New Edition)", "Little Bean by the Window (2018 Edition)" and "Mi Xiao Circle Brain Teaser - Clever Little Prodigy" ranked in the top 3. Children's Science Encyclopedia mainly focuses on the study of history, country, geography, physics, animals and other humanistic science and natural science.

China Publishing Group, People's Publishing House and New Classic Culture Co., Ltd. ranked first in the level of publishing groups, publishing houses and publishing companies, and are the most influential publishers in the market in 2021.

Book sales channels are more diverse

Judging from the open-volume monitoring data, in 2021, traditional channels are still the main position of book sales, whether it is physical stores or platform e-commerce and self-operated and other e-commerce, the scale of varieties is more than 1 million, and the scale of short video e-commerce is more than 30,000. Book sales channels show a diversified pattern, book sales are multi-channel, and the connection links between upstream units and downstream readers are more diversified and short. Online channels still account for nearly 80%, and the short video head anchor is live streaming with goods, which brings online sales a step closer to the unique experience of physical stores.

The book retail market has always been a low-concentration market, with fierce competition among publishing units in different channels, large publishing houses with a stable general market, and small publishing houses going out of the circle through new channels.

According to CNNIC, by the end of 2020, the user scale of short video reached 870 million people. In 2021, through short video e-commerce, some old books will meet a small peak in sales; some new books continue to sell or detonate through short videos, and sales will shift to the platform and self-operated and other e-commerce, making publishing units begin to face up to this book marketing channel. However, it must be seen that the short video e-commerce platform that starts with the lowest price on the whole network has the lowest discount, which will bring great harm to the content production of publishing units.