The holidays are coming which makes this the perfect time to look at books as gifts. In this series, we look at data from 2009 to make decisions about publishing now.

Here is another

“Why Purchased” Stat

85% of books purchased are bought for self
15% are bought as a gift
Of those 15% bought as a gift, 51% were bought for someone under 18 years old

The first thing I pull from this stat is that you should market directly to the reader. Of course more books are probably bought as gifts during the holidays, but with the stats this high, people are probably still buying books for themselves when they are shopping for others.

Then notice that children’s and YA books have a huge portion of the market of books bought as gifts. This does make sense considering many things are bought for kids, like their food, clothes, etc. Still, this could effect your marketing plans. If you have a book for kids or young adults, you may want to market to adults as well. Teens, especially, will probably lobby for particular books and then the adult buys them, but a well-run marketing campaign could inspire the adult to pick up a book for a kid without a specific request.

The statistics in this series are from Bowker’s Essential Facts 2009: About the U.S. Book Consumer Demographics and Buying Behaviors (free download available here, I suggest checking out the report for charts, graphs, and other visuals).

This post is a part of a series of posts based on publishing trends and statistics every Tuesday and Thursday through the middle of November. Check back often to see posts in this series. Look for StatSeries in the headline or check the StatSeries category to see all posts in this series.