The State of Bookselling in Canada 2020
Shipping As found in our 2018 study, What’s in Store: The State of Independent Bookselling in Canada, 49% of bookstores offered customers the ability to buy online and get it delivered. About a quarter of bookstores offered free shipping (26%) and 17% offered paid express shipping in 2018. In BookNet’s Canadian Book Consumer surveys, we discovered that 45% of Canadians add books to their online cart to get free shipping (24% said “yes” and 21% said “sometimes”). For this year’s respondents, shipping represented 4% of all operating expenses in 2020 (similar to advertising and marketing, benefits, and outsourced services). (Note: The shipping data collected in this question could include both customer order shipping and other business-related shipping.) For 83% of bookstores, shipping costs have increased from 2019 to 2020. Changes in shipping operating costs from 2019 to 2020
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© BookNet Canada 2021
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