Physical bookshops are catching up, Dutch books less popular | Book & Culture

Some more books were sold in 2022, the Collective Propaganda Foundation of the Dutch Book (CPNB) reported on Thursday. More foreign-language books flew over the counter. Dutch books, on the other hand, were less popular.

A total of 43 million books were sold, 0.4 percent more than in 2021. Market turnover grew by 2.7 percent. The growth is only due to foreign language books. One in five books sold is in a foreign language, for example English.

3 percent fewer Dutch books were sold than one year previously. The last time sales of Dutch-language books fell was in 2019, but then plummeting figures could be seen throughout the book market. According to the CPNB, the decline can be seen in all genres, but especially in the fiction genre. In 2022, 10 percent fewer Dutch-language fictional books were sold compared to a year earlier.

Physical bookshops have had a hard time in recent years because of the corona crisis. Often the shops had to close or people were only allowed to pick up books. That resulted in a financial blow. But last year a catch-up was made: physical stores sold 16 percent more books than in 2021. That is 2 percent lower than the level before corona.

Online sales channels such as webshops did see sales decline. Compared to 2021, 12 percent fewer books were sold. The libraries, on the other hand, did good business. 51 million books and audiobooks were lent, an increase of 34 percent compared to 2021. But that has not yet reached the level before corona. In 2019, approximately 56 million (audio) books were lent.

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