Bibliophile Turks prefer novels during lockdown

ISTANBUL

Turkish bibliophiles have been buying novels mostly since a partial lockdown came on March 16, according to data shared by the Istanbul Statistics Office, one of the newly established departments of the municipality.

The office shared the statistics of 100,000 books purchased online from Istanbul Bookstore.

The districts that bought the most books from Istanbul Bookstore were Kadıköy, Ümraniye, Maltepe, Küçükçekmece and Üsküdar, respectively, according to data.

Nearly 67 percent of the book orders came from Istanbul and 33 percent came from outside the city. It is the novels that most readers preferred, followed by followed by fiction books, research books and self-improvement books.

Around 70,000 written materials were published in Turkey in 2019 and 61,000 of them were books.

When analyzed by topics, 28.3 percent of the materials published in 2019 are related to education, 18.2 percent are fiction literature and 16.7 percent are academic books.