What Pakistan Actually Reads: 4,311 Book Orders Analysed
We sell books across Pakistan, so we know what Pakistan buys. This is 12 months of our own order data — 4,311 orders between August 2025 and July 2026 — broken down by city, category and month. No survey, no estimates. Actual purchases.
We are publishing it because nobody else does. Pakistan has no public data on reading habits, and what exists is guesswork. This is one retailer's view, not the whole market — but it is real, and it is more than anyone else has put on the record.
Karachi buys the most books. Lahore spends more per order.
Across our top 16 cities, 2,620 orders:
| City | Orders | Average order |
|---|---|---|
| Karachi | 763 | Rs. 1,686 |
| Lahore | 636 | Rs. 1,846 |
| Islamabad | 396 | Rs. 1,865 |
| Rawalpindi | 227 | Rs. 1,706 |
| Peshawar | 103 | Rs. 1,653 |
| Multan | 93 | Rs. 1,581 |
| Faisalabad | 85 | Rs. 1,574 |
| Gujranwala | 58 | Rs. 1,685 |
| Hyderabad | 50 | Rs. 1,614 |
| Quetta | 46 | Rs. 1,875 |
| Sialkot | 33 | Rs. 1,915 |
| Vehari | 28 | Rs. 1,708 |
| Bahawalpur | 27 | Rs. 1,686 |
| Gujrat | 26 | Rs. 1,515 |
| Sargodha | 22 | Rs. 1,432 |
Karachi leads on volume, as population would predict. What population does not predict is that Sialkot and Quetta have higher average order values than Karachi — Rs. 1,915 and Rs. 1,875 against Rs. 1,686.
The pattern we see repeatedly: smaller cities order less often but buy more per order. Our reading of it is that book-buying in a smaller city is a deliberate, planned event — you place one order and make it count — whereas in Karachi and Lahore, where bookshops are a short drive away, online ordering is casual and incremental.
Every city reads differently
Ranked by orders within each city:
- Karachi — Fiction (111), Self-Help & Motivation (105), Fantasy (66), Children's Books (57)
- Lahore — Fiction (108), Self-Help & Motivation (77), Fantasy (70), Children's Books (46)
- Islamabad — Fiction (67), Self-Help & Motivation (42), Fantasy (33), Young Adult (30)
- Rawalpindi — Fiction (35), Self-Help & Motivation (30), Fantasy (20), Young Adult (17)
Two things stand out.
Karachi over-indexes on self-help. It buys 36% more self-help than Lahore despite only 20% more orders overall. Whatever the cause, Karachi is disproportionately buying books about productivity, habits and personal finance.
Islamabad over-indexes on Young Adult. With less than half of Karachi's order volume, Islamabad buys more YA in absolute terms (30 vs 21). Proportionally that is more than double the rate. The teenage and young-adult reading market is concentrated there in a way it is not elsewhere.
Children's books cost nearly twice as much per order
This is the clearest single finding in the dataset.
| Category (Karachi) | Orders | Net sales | Per order |
|---|---|---|---|
| Children's Books | 57 | Rs. 138,964 | Rs. 2,438 |
| Fiction | 98 | Rs. 130,206 | Rs. 1,329 |
The same holds in Lahore (Rs. 2,247 per children's order) and Islamabad (Rs. 3,219).
The explanation is straightforward: adults buy one novel at a time for themselves, but parents buy sets. A Roald Dahl collection or a Wimpy Kid bundle is a single order at four to five times the value of a single paperback. Parents are also buying for a child who will finish the book in days and want the next one.
The academic calendar moves the market — sharply
Monthly orders by category show how tightly the exam and admission cycle drives buying:
| Category | Aug 2025 | Sep | Oct | Nov |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Test Preparation | 21 | 16 | 14 | 5 |
| Textbooks | 16 | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| Education & Reference | 24 | 38 | 12 | 17 |
| Fantasy | 17 | 37 | 29 | 38 |
| Young Adult | 12 | 33 | 37 | — |
Test preparation peaks in August and collapses by November — down 76% in three months. Textbooks are sharper still: a 16-order August falls to 4 by November, a 75% drop. That is the admission and new-session window, and outside it the demand simply is not there.
Fiction runs the opposite way. Fantasy more than doubles from August to November. Young Adult triples from August to October. As the academic rush ends, discretionary reading takes over — and it keeps climbing into winter.
For anyone selling or stocking books in Pakistan, the practical implication is that these are two different businesses running on opposite calendars, and inventory planned on an annual average will be wrong in both directions.
Self-help is the most consistent category in Pakistan
Across the four months above, self-help ordered 70, 61, 67 and 48 — the flattest curve of any category we sell. It does not spike for exams and it does not surge in winter. Titles like Atomic Habits, The Psychology of Money and The 48 Laws of Power sell at a steady rate all year.
What this data does not tell you
We would rather state the limits than have them pointed out.
- This is one retailer. 4,311 orders is a real sample but it is our sample. Buyers who use us skew towards people comfortable ordering online with cash on delivery.
- City data comes from billing addresses, which is not always where the reader lives.
- Categories reflect how we classify products, and roughly a fifth of orders sit in an unclassified bucket, excluded from the category analysis.
- It covers Aug 2025 – Jul 2026 only. One academic cycle. We will publish again next year and see what holds.
Using this data
You are welcome to cite these figures, quote the tables, or use them in research and reporting. Please credit OnlineBooksOutlet and link back to this page so readers can see the methodology. If you want a breakdown we have not published — a specific city, category or time period — message us on WhatsApp at 0332 1626626 and we will see what we can share.
Methodology: all orders placed at onlinebooksoutlet.com between 1 August 2025 and 31 July 2026. 4,311 orders total; 2,620 across the 16 named cities. City names normalised for inconsistent capitalisation. Figures are net sales after discounts and returns. Published 4 August 2026.
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