HERI Committee Report
If you have any questions or comments regarding the accessibility of this publication, please contact us at accessible@parl.gc.ca.
APPENDIX C
C. CANADA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS
Canada Council data reveal that the average print run of Canadian-authored books, particularly hardcover books, tend to vary considerably from year to year, from one category to the next. These trends typically echo the impact of best sellers and shifting popular tastes. For example, as table C-5 shows, in 1988, the average print run of an English-language poetry hardcover was 346 copies, with increases in annual averages peaking at 4,316 in 1996. Conversely, French-language print runs of children's books showed few consistent patterns between 1987 and 1997, with average print runs fluctuating from highs exceeding 5,000 copies in 1987 and 1993, to lows of just 2,170 in 1992 and 2,790 in 1996.
Table C-6 shows the percentage of print runs actually sold over two-year periods. Although these data cannot tell us anything about Canadian-authored book sales after the arrival of the book superstore and e-commerce, they do reveal that the larger the publisher (and, by extension, the more resources available for marketing), the higher the percentage of a print run that will eventually be sold. These data also suggest that smaller publishers are hurt more by periods of economic recession, as evidenced by the sudden drop in sales experienced by smaller publishers beginning in 1990.
1 "Family Expenditure in Canada, 1986, 1992, 1996," Survey of Household Spending, Statistics Canada, 1997, 1998.
2 Some cells in Table C-5 have been left empty. This is the result of unavailable data rather than no reported activity.