Print books grew by 15% in 2016

The Indian book market has grown both in volume and value terms when compared with 2015 and has proved to be the best year for growth to-date.

Here’s a good news for the publishing industry. Nielsen BookScan India has measured volume sales of 18.09m units and value sales of INR 5.62bn in 2016. Nielsen BookScan is the world’s largest continuous retail monitoring service for print books. Nielsen BookScan India has been in operation since October 2010 and provides its clients with an annual round-up of the market and has agreed to share this top-level content with our readers.

The Indian book market has grown both in volume and value terms when compared with 2015 and has proved to be the best year for growth to-date. Volume sales have grown by 15% and value by 16.5% when compared with the previous year (2015). The Average Selling Price (ASP) in 2016 decreased by 1% suggesting that discounting is still used by retailers to encourage sales. The ASP in 2016 was INR 310 compared with INR 313 in 2015.

The survey also reveals interesting facts about share by category: Adult Fiction genre is down 1.1 % by volume but has grown 4% by value when compared with 2016 Vs. 2015. While, Adult Non-Fiction Specialist genre has also seen growth; the market has increased 35% by volume and 33% by value when comparing 2016 Vs. 2015. Adult Non-Fiction Trade genre has grown 20% by volume and 16% by value when you look at 2016 Vs. 2015 while Children, Young Adult & Education genre have seen growth of 12% by volume and 23% by value when comparing 2016 Vs. 2015.

For further info, contact: Vikrant Mathur, director, Nielsen Book India at Vikrant.Mathur@nielsen.com