India's Book Market Report 2026 to Track Digital Growth & Economic Impact

The announcement was made during a media interaction at the New Delhi World Book Fair 2026, where industry stakeholders highlighted the growing need for data-driven insights into the sector. The report is expected to be released between August and September 2026.

Speaking at the event, Pranav Gupta, Vice President of the Federation of Indian Publishers, said the third edition marks a significant shift from earlier studies that primarily focused on print publishing. He said the upcoming report will present an integrated view of the Indian book market by analysing print alongside digital formats, including audiobooks. "This edition will also, for the first time, measure the economic contribution of digital publishing to the Indian economy," Gupta said.

Gupta referred to findings from the India Book Market Report 2022, which estimated that India has over 24,000 publishers and produces more than 2.5 lakh ISBNs annually. According to that report, the school education segment accounted for 71 per cent of the print market, followed by higher education at 25 per cent, while trade publishing contributed 4 per cent. He added that the new edition will build on this foundation to provide a clearer, data-backed picture of how consumption patterns and formats are changing.

Vikrant Mathur, Executive Director of NielsenIQ BookData India, said previous editions of the report examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the publishing sector, education infrastructure expansion, enrolment trends across school boards, import-export dynamics, copyright policies and piracy-related challenges.

"The focus now is to revisit the market after five years and understand how digital publishing has grown its scale, direction and segment-wise impact across school education, higher education and general trade," Mathur said.

He added that the study will also benchmark publishing against other entertainment industries, such as music and films, to assess relative growth and economic contribution. The findings, he said, are expected to support industry stakeholders and inform future policy discussions.

- ANI