Eurostat: 13.4% of EU residents purchased paper books online in 2023

In 2023, the proportion of EU residents purchasing print books, magazines or newspapers online will still be significantly higher than e-books, online magazines or online newspapers.

In 2023, 13.4% of EU residents purchased a print book online in the last 3 months. This is a slight increase from 2022 (12.7%), but still lower than the share in 2021 (14.5%).

The share of the population buying e-books, online magazines or online newspapers online is about half that of those buying print books. In 2023, 7.2% of EU residents bought e-books, an increase from 6.6% in 2022, but stable compared to 2021.

According to the report, in the first three months of 2023, the Netherlands had the highest share of online paper book purchases (23.5%), followed by Luxembourg (22.2%) and Ireland (21.1%). Cyprus (1.4%), Latvia (2.9%) and Bulgaria (3.7%) had the lowest shares.

In the same year, the highest e-book market share was in Denmark (22.0%), the Netherlands (21.6%) and Ireland (16.9%), while the lowest was in Cyprus (0.6%), Bulgaria (2.0%) and Romania (2.2%). Denmark and Finland were the only two countries where more people bought e-books than paper books in the three months before data collection.