Sales of new books in Quebec are at their highest level in ten years. Almost all indicators are green… except for digital books, whose sales declined between 2022 and 2023. Good news or bad news?
Published at 8:00 a.m.
The decline, or at least a certain leveling off of sales of digital books, is good news if we only consider digital technology as a threat to Quebec’s cultural industries.
We can think so: foreign music and video giants have caused a plummet in the income of many local artists and creators. These platforms favor American or English-speaking entertainment products. This amplifies the effect of dumping cultural that we already saw 40 years ago, on TV, in the cinema and on the radio.
According to the Observatoire de la culture et des communications du Québec, 6.5% fewer digital books were sold by Quebec warehouses and aggregators in 2023 than in 2022.
Foreign digital books purchased otherwise, and all-you-can-eat services such as Kindle Unlimited from Amazon or Kobo Plus from Rakuten, are not counted. However, these are the two “Netflix of the book”. Amazon sells two out of three digital books in the world!
This decline in digital books could therefore be considered a missed opportunity. In monetary value, digital represents 1.5% of revenues of the book industry in Quebec. Perhaps there is still a leader to be found in digital, who does not need to be a foreigner.
Because foreign platforms will probably never offer the same discoverability as a bookstore to Quebec books.
Quebec showcase
That said, there are digital ways to encourage the Quebec book industry.
The most attractive is borrowing, since it is free. The Digital Loan has 1 million Quebec books, 40,000 audio books and 25,000 books in English. This is the site to which a majority of Quebec libraries refer their members who wish to borrow the digital version of the books they keep in catalog1.
A few other libraries go through the OverDrive site. The supply of books in French is, however, much more limited.2.
You borrow a digital book in the same way as at the library: with your membership card. Borrowed books have an expiry date and are available in limited quantities. Sometimes you have to wait until a popular title is available again before borrowing it.
For a vacation in the South during the holidays, for the upcoming spring break or for any other time of the year, in fact, you will usually end up finding a good book… that won’t cost you anything.
The other option is obviously to buy a digital book on the Quebec booksellers website. Now that Archambault belongs to Renaud-Bray, this group has become the undisputed Quebec book giant. Otherwise, there is the leslibraires site. ca, where approximately 110 independent booksellers sell your choice of paper or digital books.
If you are an avid and demanding reader, you can combine borrowing and purchasing and pay less, at the end of the year, than for an annual subscription to an all-you-can-eat ebook platform.
The right e-reader?
You will still need an e-reader. A tablet or a phone have screens that are not very easy on the eyes. An E-Ink screen reader, yes. Even under the blazing sun. And a battery life of a few weeks is far superior to that of a tablet.
In addition, this year, the choice is more varied – not to mention colorful – than ever.
In fact, the Japanese manufacturer Rakuten offers two Kobos with color E-Ink screens. The colors are a bit bland, but color book jackets look more natural. The 6-inch Clara Color costs $160 and has everything you need, including audiobook recitation. The Libra Color is 7 inches, costs $250, and is stylus compatible for note-taking. You can deposit ebooks borrowed from Digital Loan on Kobo.
For around $150, Amazon sells a brand new 6-inch Kindle that comes with 16 GB of storage. That’s enough for 7000 pounds! Its display is monochrome, but very bright. Kindles can receive books borrowed from OverDrive, but not from Digital Loan.
All e-readers accept e-books that you purchase from booksellers. ca or on a bookstore site. Amazon offers to convert the EPUB file format so that you can read this format on a Kindle.
No need to stick to just one platform, therefore. Which, when you think about it, is the best way to fight the digital giants.
1. Visit the Digital Loan website
2. Visit the OverDrive website
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