Consumer Compass is live - three things we learned about US book buyers

Consumer Compass has now launched. It's a national study of the people who pay for books in the US: 5,119 people, including 344 teens, describing 9,961 books they bought in a three-month period, each matched to a real book and placed in one of 54 categories.

Sales data tells us which books are selling whereas reader surveys tell us who reads books. Consumer Compass fills the crucial gap between the two - which consumers are buying which books, how they're discovering those books and why they're choosing them.

We shared the first results at our launch webinar on November 11 - here are three headline findings.

1. Recommendation is the main route to discovery - more than social media

We asked buyers how they heard about each book, then which of those discovery routes mattered most. A recommendation from someone they know and social media are named almost equally often, for 23% and 22% of purchases respectively. But when we look at the route respondents say mattered most to them, recommendation is the clear leader with 18% of purchases, against 15% for social media.

Put another way - while social media spreads the word about a book, a recommendation is more important in starting the path to purchase.

2. The subject leads why a book is chosen

How someone hears about a book is one question - why they chose the book once they were aware of it is another. Our respondents identified the subject or topic as the most common reason they chose to purchase a book (47%), ahead of a genre they were looking for (30%) and a favorite or familiar author (28%).

Story elements matter too: storylines, characters and tropes each come up for 11-16% of purchases across the market. Looking at categories and authors shows the different ways buyers behave across different types of books - and that's where the most valuable and actionable insights from Consumer Compass can be found.

3. Print reaches the most buyers - ebook has the heaviest

Because Consumer Compass measures people as well as purchases, it can show who is behind each format. 58% of buyers bought a print book in the last three months, far more than bought an audiobook (39%) or an ebook (30%).

However, when we look at the number of books purchased per buyer we see a different story: 40% of ebook purchases come from the 24% of ebook buyers who bought five or more books in three months. Print has the widest reach - ebook is more the heavy buyer's format.

Go deeper

More extensive findings are available through the Consumer Compass national report, category reports and the full data set in our custom-built user interface. Those provide more detailed and actionable insights on specific buyer groups. For product and pricing information, tell us what you're interested in. And if there's something you'd like the 2027 study to ask US book buyers, we'd love to hear it.

About the study

Consumer Compass Pilot wave, fieldwork 3 September to 26 October 2026, online. 4,775 US adults and 344 teens aged 13-17 who paid for a book in the previous three months, whether they bought it outright or accessed it through a paid subscription; we use 'bought' as shorthand for both. Weighted to US book buyers. How people found and chose books reads on the 3,336 adults who answered at a considered pace; format reads on purchases described from 8 September.