How has the Corona pandemic affected the decline in the rate of reading and buying books in the world?

While many believed that people read books in times of isolation that the world lived for long periods during the past year due to the outbreak of the new Corona pandemic globally, however, the global numbers that came out see the opposite, and indeed proved a significant decline in the rates of reading and buying books at the level of the world.

 

According to a study published by the French Book Center, issued during the past few days, the interest of the French in reading has declined, as 14% of them did not read any book in 2020, and 25% did not buy any new books. The National Book Center pointed out that "the French probably wanted to improve Their understanding of the world and the analysis of the crisis we are experiencing, and their reading rates of investigation books and news (including articles and biographies) increased, while reading of novels decreased (by 7% less than 2018) and practical books (a decrease of 7%). ''

 

According to the British Guardian newspaper, despite the confirmation by Nelson Company - the official body responsible for monitoring the sale of books in Britain - book sales increased by 6% until March 21, 2020, it is likely that this percentage decreased with the closure of the libraries that took place from the day before. March 23, as no reports came out on the Nelson Company from that date for the first time in its history.

 

As for Germany, the cancellation of evenings during the past 2020 year has caused many disasters and losses for authors before publishing houses, and there is a well-known writer whose 100 evenings were canceled in German-speaking countries due to the Corona virus and the closure of literary centers and libraries, and he used to receive an amount of two thousand euros for each evening This means that he lost 200 thousand euros that he would have obtained without counting the sales and profits that his book would achieve, especially since these evenings contribute to selling more books, and consequently more than he would have made and the publishing house.

 

While the situation in Egypt was not much better than its representative in Europe, at the end of last year, the Egyptian Publishers Union conducted a questionnaire for bookselling outlets, to know the status of the sales movement, and to reach percentages for sales and the volume of demand for buying books, and thus to know the percentage of reading from The reality of sales, and compared to previous years in the Egyptian market, especially in light of facing the spread of the Corona pandemic, 51 libraries participated in it, and according to the union, more than half of the sample (32) confirmed that the distribution and sale of the paper book was affected by rates ranging between 50-75% of sales The rest of the sample indicated that the percentage of decline in the sales and distribution of books ranged from less than 10 to 50% at 18 libraries.