Hello. I Hello and welcome. Thanks for joining me today in the children's book market overview. In this session, we're going to explore the latest sales trends in children's book sales and talk about challenges and opportunities for this segment. I'm Brenna Connor, and I am the director, director and industry analyst for the US book market at circana. So I have been with circana for nearly a decade in roles, including marketing and insights, and now as an industry analyst, I'm working with the data all the time to identify the latest trends in the market and also help our publisher and retail clients answer their business questions. This is my third year presenting at the Children's Institute, and I am so pleased to be here. This event really is a highlight of my year, and it's because all of you booksellers are fantastic.
I truly enjoy the time that I get to spend with you here, and I have a lot of respect for the work you do and the value that you bring to the industry. So thank you. Books are a very important part of my life, and they have been since I was a young child, and now in this stage of my life, I'm a parent, so I get to explore children's books from the perspective of a parent, which is really fun, rediscovering old favorites and also exploring new stories of my kid. Now, a little bit about the services and the data that you'll be seeing today. So starting with bookscan, this is a weekly measurement service for print books, covering 85% of the retail marketplace for trade books. What our data does not include is library sales direct to consumer sales from publishers or self published books. So we're really focused on the trade marketplace. We track book sales by ISBN in more than 16,000 retail locations here in the US, and this includes more than 600,000 ISBN coming into our data on a weekly basis, and averages 14 million units each week. We have historical data going back to 2004 and we have more than 10 million unique items in our data set. So it is a very large data set, which makes it very fun to work with. Here's a closer look at our retail panel, where you'll see all of the major book outlets, from Amazon to Barnes and Noble as well as more than 1200 independent bookstores. Independent bookstores are some of the most influential channels in the business, and reporting your sales to bookscan can have a big impact. The ABA is our partner for aggregating data for independent bookstores, and we truly value our partnership with this important organization as independent bookstores. When you report your data to bookscan, you help amplify the indie market's voice, and you gain benefits like access to bookscan. So there is no cost to reporting to bookscan, and there are several beneficial reasons to do so. So when you report to bookscan, you'll be contributing your sales to more than 90 best seller lists, including those from Publishers Weekly and Associated Press. To learn more about reporting, you can email bestsellers@bookweb.org
you can use bookscan in many different ways, just a couple of them I'll mention, is staying informed about market trends, making sure that you're stacking the best selling books that are in your area and maximizing opportunities while also being uniquely used. So in short, you get access to data that can help you build your business. All bookscan reporting. Retailers get their access to our easy to use title and Best Seller Dashboard. And again, a subscription to a to bookscan is free for ABA reporting retailers. Okay, so in this session, we're going to start by exploring trends in the US book market with a special focus on children's and ya markets, and then I'll talk about the challenges and opportunities within these markets and close with final thoughts. The data that you'll be seeing today is primarily drawn from bookscan, which is our print tracking service that I mentioned earlier at Turkana. We also have digital book tracking for both ebook and audiobook within our pub track digital data set. And then we also have our book scan license reporting service, which tracks more than 3000 licenses across all items in our print data set. And we're going to be exploring some licensing trends today as well. Okay, so now let's jump into the fun stuff. I'm going to start with top line data for the total market performance. So this is not specific to kids. It includes adult children's and young adult sales. So what we're looking at here on the left side screen is the annual print books unit sold over the last five years. And the time period that I'm using for this view is 12 months ending April, to give you the most recent data. So in the most recent 12 Months of April, print sales are down 1% over prior year. But I want to take a moment to put this into context, because we're coming off of some of the highest volume years that we've ever measured in book scan. So 2021 and 2022 were the highest volume years we've ever tracked since we started tracking books in 2004 and you can see 2023 sales dropped 5% over prior year, and again, we're down 1% but when we compare this volume to our historical volume, so pre pandemic volume is still well above pre pandemic levels, so very strong by historical standards. And the other note that I'll mention is that dollar sales, which is based on MSRP value in our data, is outperforming units. So dollar sales are up 3% compared to unit performance, which is down 1% and this can partially be attributed to some of the price increases that we've been watching in the industry. I now this is a monthly view of performance over the last 12 months. Again, we're still looking at total market here. This is where you can see the sales per percent change by month compared to the same month prior year. And what stands out here is the strong q4 that the book market saw. So with the exception of q4 you can see that the other months are largely underperforming versus prior year. And in q4 this boost in both units and dollars was largely led by adult fiction. You'll also notice that MSRP dollar sales grew faster than units in q4 because higher price books sold faster. And this is a trend that was consistent with many other months throughout the year, where we're watching better performance in dollars versus units. And this is also carrying through into 2024 The other thing I'll mention is that the book market outperformed the rest of the general merchandise market in q4 so when I say the rest of the general merchandise market, I'm talking about the other industries that we're tracking at circana. So beyond books, we track general merchandise across industries like apparel and footwear, technology, Home Improvement, office supplies, the list goes on. So when we combine all of those general merchandise industries, their q4 sales were down compared to the book market that grew. So this tells me that books are really a bright spot among other retail categories and industries do yes, this is the market performance when we slice it by Super category, with units sold on the left and absolute change versus prior period on the right. And there's two call outs here. The first is that adult fiction and young adult segments are the only areas that are posting gains over prior period, and it's the kids market that is the biggest underperforming segment. The kids market is contributing to two thirds of the overall declines that we're measuring at the total market. We're going to be talking about that in more detail shortly. So even though the kids category as a whole declined, there are pockets of growth, and that's what we're looking at here. So this is the kids subjects with the highest absolute growth in the last 12 months compared to prior period. And you can see that it's a mix of fiction and nonfiction, with activity books posting the highest gains, and I'll cover these in a bit more detail, starting at the top, with biography, the gains in biography is largely coming from Taylor Swift's little golden book. So Taylor Swift's little golden book has been on our children's bestseller list nearly every week for the last year, and it is approaching 1 million in unit sales. This book is doing quite well, and we know that many of the buyers are Swifties and not necessarily children, but it is driving growth in the biography category, gains in action and adventure are coming from a variety of titles, including Max braylers, the last kids on Earth and the monster dimension, as well as spy school goes north by Stuart Gibbs. The growth and activity books, this is largely coming from licensed activity books from licenses like bluey dog man, Disney licenses, as well as Wings of Fire. In school and education, the items driving growth include brain quest workbooks, specifically for pre k up to third grade, and then we also see a number of preschool and kindergarten workbooks that are driving growth. And then lastly, in legends and myths, this is coming from Rick riordans Percy Jackson series. I also want to take a moment to talk about what we're watching in kids holiday books, because in a declining kids market, holiday books are outperforming the rest of the market. So here you can see the sales trend for kids holiday books going back to 2018 and this includes both kids fiction holiday and kids nonfiction holiday combined. So in the most recent 12 months, the subjects that are driving the most growth include Mother's Day and Father's Day, as well as Halloween books. I'll also note the for all growing momentum that we've seen since 2018 within this segment. So when I slice by vintage I can see that it's front list books that are driving the gains in holiday frontless Holiday fiction books grew 2% in units and are up 12% in dollar sales. So this tells me that this is an area where parents and caregivers are willing to spend a bit more because it's a holiday book. I think that this idea also highlights the importance of holidays. So for many of us during the pandemic, we couldn't spend holidays with families and friends, and now that we can, we really value that time much more. I think this idea also highlights the fact that kids want fun books and books that celebrate holidays and occasions to connect with family and community do just that. The last thing I'll point out is that licensed books are another component to this growth where some of the front list growth is led by licensed books from the Grinch Pete the cat along with bluey so and here's a closer look at some of the top growth holiday front list titles with their holidays broken out. So many of these feature popular licensed characters like bluey or Mo Willems pigeon or the Grinch. And then the other commonality is that some of these are new offerings within series. Well, so grumpy monkey, and also those in the how to catch series. So tying this together, and given what we are seeing in kids holiday books, and the fact that we know a lot of it is coming from front list. I encourage you to keep this in mind when you're merchandising for holiday specifically in the kids section of your store. If there are books that parents or caregivers may be spending a bit more money on
this year, it's likely going to be a holiday book. And then I also encourage you to think beyond these traditional holidays. The fact that Mother's Day and Father's Day are two of the top growth holidays tells me that it's there's room to grow the market for kind of these secondary occasions, because we're not just talking about Christmas and Easter books. Here we're talking about Mother's Day, Father's Day and Halloween. So how can you build upon the growth in traditional holidays, by developing a merchandising strategy around non traditional categories and milestones. And here are a few ideas. See, there we go. So looking at special days like Children's Day or best friends day. Summer travel season is also here, so parents may be looking to travel books for their kids, thinking about things like the National Parks travel books or even activity books to keep them occupied while in the car, on a plane tiny triumphs and milestones. So this idea came out of a report that Pinterest relates every year based on the items that their user are pinning. And one of the things that Pinterest called out is the fact that in 2024 more parents are pinning ideas that help them celebrate milestones and tiny triumphs. So this includes things like their kid's first tooth, or their kid losing their first tooth, or the first time they learn to ride a bike. So I encourage you to think about how these tiny triumphs and milestones can be carried over into the types of books that you're showcasing, and then the other the last thing I'll call out here is local events where you'll see a picture of a cicada. So in the Chicago area where I live, the cicadas have descended, and for the first time in more than 200 years, we have two broods of cicadas that have emerged at the same time. So we have a great number of cicadas, and the kids in my area are going nuts for them. They're picking them up. They're collecting them in buckets. They're very excited about these cicadas. So if my local bookstore had an area dedicated to, you know, a handful of cicada books, I know that would gravitate towards it, and I would definitely buy one of those books. So I encourage you to think creatively about what types of events you can showcase locally to build the momentum on this growing Holiday Market. Okay, so moving on to format performance within the kids market. Here we're looking at kids sales only broken out by format. On the left, you'll see the units sold over the last 12 months, and on the right, the absolute change and the call out here is that all formats are down, but board books are down the least this format performance is tied to what we're about to see on the next slide, which is kids age ranges and infant books are a growing segment, which is why we're seeing board books nearly flat compared to some of the other formats that are showing bigger declines. And here is the kids, sales market broken out by age range. So in our data, we have minimum and maximum age ranges, and we use that metadata to create age segments, and that's what we're looking at here. This is the five year trend by segment, and below the column chart, you can see the unit change for 2024 versus 2020 and they want to call out again that we're looking at 12 months ending April. So this 2020 comparison is large pandemic comparison. And then we have the comparison for 2024 versus 2023 so two things to call out here, the young reader and the middle reader age segment are posting the steepest year over year declines, and additionally, it's the middle reader age segment that is the only one falling below pre pandemic levels. So I've highlighted the softening in middle grade sales in past presentations, and the trend continues. It's important to highlight because we need to continue to ask ourselves, what middle grade readers and young readers are interested in reading, how that has shifted since the pandemic, and how can publishers and retailers and booksellers work to help combat this trend? Getting kids engaged with books is a very important topic, and I know that everyone in this room feels the same, and there's something else happening. There are fewer children reading for fun on a regular basis. This is third party data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress that shows the long term trend of 13 year olds who report reading for fun on their own time in 2023 just 14% of 13 year olds are reading for fun daily, or almost every day, which is down from 35% in 1990 then at the same can see that the number of children who report that they never or hardly ever read for fun is on the rise. So one reason this is so important is because when you slice this data by test scores, it's the children who are reading more frequently that are testing higher compared to those who never, hardly ever read for fun that have lower test scores. It's also clear that the pandemic accelerated this trend, where you can see the line that I added there for 2020 and again, it accelerated the trend. So it's clear that technology is a big factor as to why we're seeing this trend thinking about, you know, the technology that was available in 1990 versus right now, the iPhone, streaming video, digital gaming, these are all things that are competing for kids attention, and books are losing the attention more for kids. Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to be a part of a middle grade panel at the Winter Institute, and I wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the ideas that came out of that session, because it was a really productive discussion. I'll also note that I've shared this with the kids focused publisher presentations that I've had over the last few months. So publishers are also seeing this as well. So to start visual storytelling, this was something that came up across a number of booksellers on the panel that kids just don't have the stamina to sit down and read a prose heavy book, even though they may zip through a comic and graphic novel, because they don't have the stamina after being in front of screens so frequently. So this is likely why we're seeing growth in areas like manga and webtoons. Books are expensive, and some parents are bulking at the cost. So one observation from Audrey is that she noticed in her store that bipoc parents are more likely to spend on front list books that represent diversity, contemporary titles with historical themes. This was also Audrey Belmont books, and she mentioned that in her store, parents and caregivers are coming in, looking to buy classic works for their children, but their kids don't want to buy them because they're written in an archaic way. So what she recommends is historical fiction that touches on the themes of classics. So one example is to try the last map maker instead of Treasure Island. This was a really smart approach. Use shelf talkers and face out staff picks. This came from Nicole Brinkley. It gives something for kids to gravitate towards, and then booksellers still want arcs. You guys all know this, but here we are. And then lastly, kids want fun books. This was an idea that came up, and I think it's, it's something very simple, but it's something important.
I also believe that there is space to educate parents on the importance of reading, and it may help to combat this reading decline. So this is the first time that I am sharing this idea, and I'll tell you how I came about it. So as I'm preparing content for today's presentation, along with the other work that I'm doing, not only am I looking at the data from bookscan, but I'm also looking at other data, consumer research and other studies that are published from places like scholastic and in my research, a number of things surprised Me, and I am a big reader. I am a lover of books. I work in the book industry. I prioritize reading probably more than the average parent, and the fact that these findings the prize, tells me that there's room to educate more parents. So here are some of the examples of points that resonated with me again as a parent, that I think could be shared more broadly. I think an educational campaign coming from publishers, coming from booksellers and others in the industry that highlight these points could really help to inform parents why reading is so important and why it should be prioritized, and in turn, get them to make more time for reading in their house. So just a couple examples, I'll share. Children who read for fun or identify as readers are more likely to say that they're very happy compared to non readers. Reading for fun is the single biggest predictor of a child's future success, and there's a very strong relationship with parents reading out loud to children and how often they read for fun later in life. These are really compelling points, and I think they need to be shared more broadly. Okay, so now let's talk about picture books. This is the overall picture book sales trend and the vintage share breakdown in terms of the annual trend. You can see the sales peak from Oh, I can see it here. I Okay, picture books, you see the sales peak in 2021 followed by three years of consecutive declines. And in 2024 picture book sales are down 6% so this is a challenged area, but I will talk about bright spots in a moment. By vintage backless represents 82% a picture book sales front list represents 18 and this is the same format share breakout when we look at the total kids market. Now let's talk about bright spots. Bluey. Bluey is driving growth across many categories of the book industry. So it's no surprise to see bluey is driving growth in picture books. Interactive is also a pocket of growth. So the growth here is largely coming from sound reader books, and those with the most growth are licensed books. This includes things like Disney Princess, Sesame Street and Peppa Pig, and then lastly, mermaids. So some of this is coming from licensed books from The Little Mermaid that did well off of the live action release last year. But then there are a number of other mermaid books that aren't licensed, that are also driving girls. So this includes titles like the mermaid princess from Harper Collins and mermaid day from sourcebooks. We also see a number of mermaid sticker books. So it seems that mermaids are having a moment, and I think that this is coming from The Little Mermaid Live, which brought me in the spotlight to a new generation of kids. Now we're going to talk about the licensed book market, starting with the total license market. This includes the five year trend for kids, adult and young adult licensed books. I'll take a moment to define how we measure licensed books. So in our data, a book will be licensed as long as it lives in another entertainment category. So if it's a movie, page two or screen, if it's a movie or a streaming series, if it's a toy, if it's a video game, then it is coded as a licensed book. So starting with the five year trend, you can see that license sales are down in the 12 months ending April compared to prior period. But it's the adult market that is driving the most declines, and this is coming from softer sales in manga. The kids market is also declining, but at a slower pace, so kids license books are down just 2% and because kids is outperforming the rest of the market, the kids market is gaining share in the licensed market. The categories driving the most declines in kids include fantasy and magic media tie in and humorous stories. Brightbox with market include holiday books, which we talked about earlier, biography activity books, as well as imagination and play. Here are the top growth licenses by each egg's age segment in the last 12 months. So it's no surprise to see that the licensed book market looks different depending on a reader's age, because as children grow, their favorite characters change. So a couple of the points to call out here, again, Bluey. This is a relatively new property compared to some of the others on the list. Even though it has been around for five years, it's certainly newer than Dr Seuss. For example, Bluey was the fastest growing license of the total market in 2023 unit sales for bluey books were up 100% over prior period, also for the young reader segment, many of the top growth licenses are tied to Page to Screen adaptions or other forms of entertainment like Taylor Swift, so Page to Screen is a big driver in the growth that we're seeing in the young reader segment. And then the last thing I'll mention is something that we don't see here. So there's a lack of new licenses that are driving growth, aside from Disney wish, which is in the young reader age segment, many of these licenses have been around for several years or even a decade. So a large largely a lack of newness in the licensing market for children. Now I'm going to show the young adult market, where the trend looks much different than what we saw in kids. So this is the annual sales trend for young adult, and you can see the elevated sales that really took off in 2021 as a result of book talk on Tiktok and this increased engagement that we're measuring, and unlike what we're watching at the total market, ya has really maintained this elevated sales level and has even continued to post gains. So in the last 12 months, young adult sales hit the highest that we've ever measured in bookscan sales are up 4% versus prior period, which is really quite impressive considering this high volume that we've been tracking. And speaking of Tiktok, here's what we're watching in the book talk space. This data includes a roll up of more than 200 authors that are prominently featured on Tiktok. And in the latest 12 months, unit sales are up 40% dollar sales are up 60% this is pretty incredible. I mentioned in my session yesterday that everyone loves a chart that goes up into the right and here is a very strong example of that. I think that this, beyond book sales, is also impacting young people's overall engagement with books, where we're now seeing beauty and fashion influencers use their platform to talk about the books they're reading and the books that they're excited about, the bookshelf wealth, design esthetic, which is separate from book talk, but is on Tiktok celebrates people who have a great number of books and shelve them in Beautiful ways. And I think that these are all tentacles coming out of book talk and a new love of books for many. And I don't think this will stop anytime soon, provided we're able to access the platform in the US. The other thing to call out is that Tiktok is not just for Gen Z and younger folks. Research done by other groups at cercana shows that Tiktok is trending across all generations as a trusted platform for research. So we're talking about millennials Gen X and Boomers using Tiktok on a regular basis. Okay, so now let's look ahead to the challenges and opportunities in the kids book market.
So what's next for kids? We've talked about the challenges, and I want to take a moment to talk about what I think is next in the kids market. So I expect volume to fall below prior year, when we measure 2024 in total, which means that more volatile be in line with what we measured in 2019 we know that middle grade remains challenged, and we talked about reading for fun as a concern, specifically for this age segment, I believe that educational materials will still be in high demand, particularly for preschool and early learners in kindergarten, first and second grade. And the reason that I think this segment is going to be so important for educational products is because these are the children that began the pandemic as infants or toddlers and are now in or approaching school age, and the parents are hyper focused on ensuring that the educational deficits that impacted some of their older children don't impact their younger children in the same way, lack of newness and licensing we talked about that streaming video, this is a large Cross entertainment driver, particularly for the young reader segment, and then pockets of growth coming from holiday. I believe that holiday will continue to be strong in the year ahead. Then economic headwinds. We're going to talk about this more next, but there are economic headwinds, headwinds for all consumers, and then there are more economic headwinds. So now we'll move to some of the broader macro trends that we're measuring at circana at the total retail level, and how those trends are impacting consumer spend now and in the year ahead. So 2024 is a difficult year to navigate because there are conflicting macro economic factors that are facing shoppers. So on the one hand, we see that inflation is flowing the labor market is strong and consumer confidence is on the rise. But then on the other hand, food prices are still quite high. Consumer debt is at record levels and savings are depleted. So with tighter budgets, consumers will be focused on immediate needs, making it harder to sell discretionary categories like books. Here's a visualization of some of the headwinds that I highlighted. So the first chart is showing the slower the slowing labor market. The second chart is the personal savings rates, which grew quite high during the pandemic, but are now largely depleted the increased debt. We have reached a new record of debt in the US at $1 trillion and lastly, the average cost of housing is shifting, and long term growth of average monthly rent, and this is important because renters represent 1/3 of American households. And then on top of this, there is more facing the kids market. So the first thing to call out is the population plateau. Americans are having fewer children than past generations did, and the country's population is expected to plateau in the coming decades, which we'll talk about a little more next. There are additional headwinds facing parents, and of course, this is the primary consumer buying children's books. So while the factors that we viewed on the last slide, in fact, affected all consumers, there are some additional that are unique to parents, including the end of several pandemic era safety nets. So this includes the end of SNAP benefits, Medicaid continuity, as well as childcare grants, and then the final blow is the end of the student loan repayment pause. So this is an issue that will likely bleed into q4 and why q4 this is when the delinquencies for those who do not start paying back their student loans will show up on their credit report, negatively affecting their credit for seven years. So this is something that I'm flagging for q4 and holiday planning. A little more on the population topic. The call out here is that there are 1.4 fewer million people in the US that will be child bearing years in the in the next 10 years. So even if birth rates remain the same, which data has shown they are not, we will have fewer babies being born. And as a result, this, of course, has a broader economic impact beyond just the book market, but it's something to think about for those of us working in the children's market. But some of this pressure may be easy, and so it's not all doom and gloom. This is data from our total retail group that shows the average price per unit for general merchandise on the left and CPG on the right. So Gen merch is what I mentioned earlier in terms of a roll up of all of our other industries, and CPG is essentially anything you would buy at a grocery store. So overall, you can see that prices are receding from what we measured in 2021 and 2022 where Gen merch prices are now down 2% which is quite a change from what we measured just a few years ago. And this trend of lower prices is a good thing for discretionary categories like books, because when people have more discretionary dollars to spend, they can buy more things, like books. So with these economic I wanted to highlight a few strategies and opportunities. So the first is based on the joy economy, and this is an idea that comes from a study from Wunderman Thompson that looks at how brands can help people transcend through tough times. So for many this year is marked by feelings of anxiety and uncertainty, and anxieties persist in many areas related to politics, the economy, world events, the environment, employment and even household anxieties, so products that help consumers transcend these tough times and jolt them from these feelings of anxiety and Just overall negativity by celebrating the thrilling and the uplifting and the magical are poised to do well in the year ahead. There is also a growing market for nostalgia. So nostalgia offers comfort for many, and the rise of fast TV, which is free, ad supported, streaming TV, is introducing a whole new generation to classic TVs. So series like friends or the office or Golden Girls and similar or adjacent to the joy economy nostalgia gives reliable comfort and predictable feelings of content. So think about how to apply this consumer yearning for joy and comfort your own stores. I would also argue that bookstores, in and of themselves, are a part of the joy economy, which is a tailwind for the book industry. And then lastly, in terms of demographics, I want to highlight grandparents as an opportunity for growth in the year ahead, specifically looking at q4 and the holiday season. So we talked about the economic headwinds that are higher for families with young children. And when we look at data from our broader general merchandise market, we can see that consumers ages 55 and above, are a growing segment in terms of dollar spend versus prior year. Okay, so let's recap some of the key takeaways from today's session. The first is that we know the children's market is challenged and reading for fun is a concern. How can we get kids engaged with books again? I think that a focus on educating parents as to why reading is so important is one approach that could help holiday books are a bright spot, and with tighter budgets, consumers will be focused on immediate needs, so focus on holidays and seasonal assortment and think about secondary occasions to create additional demand. Parents are facing more economic headwinds than the average consumer, so factor this into your strategy and look to grandparents area to potentially grow sales and also build a strategy that works for you. So we know that consumers are drawn to products and experiences that bring them joy. How can you incorporate this idea into your store while also being uniquely you? I
Now, here are expectations for 2024 there's a lot here. I'm not going to cover it all, but I'm going to cover off on some highlights, and it's going to be good. I feel like I've been saving the best for last. So trends that will continue are shown in the left column, and then New things are shown in the middle, and then things that we're looking ahead to are on the right. So some of the things I'm going to call out are in this new column. One thing I'll call out is the stabilization in the kids market. So beyond 2024 when we're looking at 2025 I don't going to see this continued decline in kids. I think a lot of this is a result of pandemic readjustment, and we also know that patterns of market are cyclical, so what goes down comes up and vice versa. I've also mentioned, I've mentioned this in Publisher presentations, and I've heard feedback from publishers that they agree, and they're already starting to see this in their own business, reducing screens, another big one that I think will have a positive impact on the book market as a whole, both adult and children. This comes from consumer research that shows more consumers are interested in doing things that do not involve a screen, and what vendor anecdote to a screen than a book? This is my favorite, the new bookstores opening and strengthen indie so in our data, I'm not allowed to break out things like channels or specific retail market share. But I do have the ability to talk about some of these trends at a high level without giving any actual data away. So the thing that I will share is this, when I looked at performance across all retailers in 2023 it was independent bookstores that gained the most market share. I so our independent bookstore channel includes a roll up of more than 1200 independent bookstores, and combined, these stores outperformed every other retailer in our data in 2023 and this is my favorite story coming out of the year. The last thing I'll call out is what seems to be a new trend emerging in prioritizing community and forums. I could talk more about this specifically, but in the interest of time, I won't what I will mention as that I think this is a tailwind, because many of the things coming out of this include prioritizing local shopping, both from a spending point of view, but also sustainability concerns. So again, another tailwind for indies and the strength that you all are building, and that's what I have for you today, so thank you.
If you want to talk about the data more, we have a session coming up called evaluating circana data. We'll be unpacking some of those concepts, and Brenna will be there To answer Your questions. You