Book sales in Russia in 2022 grew in money, but decreased in copies

The Russian book market, taking into account sales of paper books only and excluding educational literature, at the end of 2023 grew by 10%, to 109 billion rubles. In 2021, the growth was similar – 10%. At the same time, in terms of the number of copies sold, the commercial paper book market decreased by 7% to 229 million copies, against a growth of 26% in 2021.

Sales of paper books in specialized individual bookstores showed a drop of 1%, to 28.6 billion rubles, in federal book networks – an increase of 17%, to 18.6 billion rubles. Sales in online stores grew by 18%, to 46.2 billion rubles, but the growth of the channel slowed down (in 2021, an increase of 31% was recorded). Growth was demonstrated by the segments of fiction (by 22%) and children’s (by 20%), while the segment of applied literature (non-fiction) grew only by 1%.

The market of digital books (including electronic and audio versions) in Russia, according to Eksmo-AST, in 2022 for the first time showed no growth at the end of the year: its volume remained at the level of 2021 – 11 billion rubles. How wrote “b” On July 27, citing data from the LitRes Group of Companies, the main factor behind the stagnation of electronic and audio books in 2022 was problems with payments in the App Store and Google Play in the spring.

Read about the situation in the book market in the material “Bestseller close to text”.

Valeria Lebedeva