The number of book buyers in Ukraine since 2008 has fallen from 42 percent to 31 percent, and the average price of a book over the period has grown from Hr 27.82 to Hr 49.31, GfK Deputy Director Hleb Vyshlinsky said at the presentation of a company study of the book market.
According to the study, despite the fact that salaries have doubled in six years, the subjective financial assessment of the population worsened – the number of persons who have to save on clothes and food has grown from 17 percent to 31-32 percent. According to analysts, the increase in the price of books and the fall in the financial state became the key factor of the decline in the purchase of books.
According to GfK, 49 percent of Ukrainians said that they did not read any book over the past three months. 56% of respondents among families with children did not read any book. In a year the number of families where children read at least one book over the past three months fell from 57 percent to 44 percent.
According to the study, 24 percent of respondents read books only in Ukrainian, 44 percent – in Russian. In 2014, the large interest to Ukrainian language books was seen thanks to the interest to modern Ukrainian authors. The number of families that speak Ukrainian has also grown.
Some 11 percent of Ukrainians read e-books, and they prefer to download them illegally, not to buy.
The study was conducted in July 2014, and 1,000 respondents aged 15-59 were polled.
