Everything you need to make the right decisions

Providing the most comprehensive and up-to-date information and analysis of the Books and e-books market, and the behaviours, preferences and habits of the consumer.

Mintel has the answers you’re looking for

What are the key challenges facing the industry? Who is the consumer and what do they want? Where are the opportunities, where are the risks and what lies ahead?

Key points included

• People want to support chain bookstores nearly as much as independent ones
• Apple could challenge Amazon’s dominance with cross-media subscription
• Interactive audiobooks could be next opportunity

Covered in this report

This report covers print and digital books (ie e-books and audiobooks) through all channels. E-books are all books readable on dedicated e-reader devices like the Amazon Kindle, or through smartphone or tablet applications or desktop/laptop browser extensions.

For the market size of consumer print books Mintel uses data from Nielsen BookScan which monitors retail book sales.

For the market size of digital books Mintel uses data from The Publishers Association which reports the invoiced value of UK publisher sales of digital consumer books. This include e-books, audio downloads, online subscriptions and other digital book sales.

Expert analysis from a specialist in the field

Written by Rebecca McGrath, a leading analyst in the Media sector, her extensive knowledge delivers in-depth commentary and analysis to highlight current trends and add expert context to the numbers.

2018 was another positive year for the print book market and Mintel’s research shows the strength of people’s affection for bricks-and-mortar bookstores, whether part of a chain or independent. Waterstones continues to make acquisitions to better position itself against Amazon, particularly with the looming threat of Amazon potentially opening its own bookstores Rebecca McGrath
Senior Media Analyst