Canadians book vendors are grappling, but in the way, you may think

Key takeaways:

Book Industry struggling to keep up with requests due to global paper scarcity, worldwide supply problems.
A scarcity of wood pulp for paper is resulting in supply multiple problems.
This means long delays for book vendors and publishers.

Paper shortages leading to paper prices going up:

Erik Ko has several good news coming out of the outbreak. While most entertainment industries faced lowered business and shutdowns, he saw a bump.

While movie theatres, nightlife and restaurants shut down, people instead turned to the more solitary pursuit of reading and upheaved a long-suffering industry to an extent of famous not seen in years.

“The demand all of a sudden, like doubled, tripled,” stated Ko, co-founder of Manga Classics and CEO of Udon Entertainment — both Ontario-based publishing firms. Though he stated the market is just about as good as it has ever been in the 20 years he’s worked in it, there’s an issue, and it’s shown most clearly by one of their best vendors. Source – cbc.ca

“It is one of the most popular titles that we have, and we are out of this,” Ko said, shaking his head. “It’s going to be the coming April before we can get stock back.” Source – cbc.ca

Demand, but no providings

Ko is far from alone.

While book vendors worldwide want to vend books to readers, and readers are starving to purchase them in 2020, both the US and The UK saw their biggest yearly surges across a decade. A global paper scarcity and worldwide paper scarcity and global shipping catastrophes mean they are having a tough time keeping up with that request.

In Canada, while total sales in 2020 were reduced due to widespread retail shutdowns and cancelled latest launches, ebook sales trended upward.