Book sales jump a third in first week of bookshops reopening in England and Wales
Booksellers have reported their customers “acting like kids in a sweet shop”, with print sales jumping a third in the first week of bookshops opening their doors after lockdown.
Related: Readers on the bookshops they miss most: ‘I can’t wait to take my lockdown baby!’
Bookshops open across England and Wales opened on 12 April, alongside other non-essential retailers, for the first time since December. Readers rushed to benefit, with official book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan reporting print market growth of 33% in volume and 32.5% in value week on week. In total, 3.7m books were sold in the seven days to 17 April.
“Opening our doors again was utterly joyous,” said Waterstones chief operating officer Kate Skipper. The company has reopened its 243 shops in England and Wales, and is set to open its Scottish and Northern Irish shops from next week. “Being back amongst the shelves, touching the books and talking about books, is the best – recommending books is something that I think everyone’s just been desperate for. If you don’t know what you want to read, I don’t think you can replicate being in a bookshop.”
Maggie O’Farrell’s Women’s prize-winning novel Hamnet, about the death of Shakespeare’s young son, was a big seller for the chain over the last week, as was BP Walter’s thriller The Dinner Guest, Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, and Richard Coles’ memoir The Madness of Grief.
“We’d had advance teams in the week before – we felt it was very important you didn’t feel like you were walking into a Christmas hell,” said Skipper. “So many people are just really thrilled to be back in a bookshop.”
At Westbourne Bookshop in Bournemouth, owner Paul Angel agreed. “We’ve had people trying to smell the books through their masks, and perfectly respectable middle-aged people acting like kids in a sweet shop. We’ve had a great first week.
“It was so nice to see some familiar faces again. We worry about some of our older customers, as they can be lonely at the best of times and their regular visit to a bookshop is an important part of their week.”
In Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, Read bookseller James Ashmore reported that “just about everyone was breathing a huge sigh of relief as they walk through the door”.
“They’re walking out with books they didn’t know they were coming for, because they’ve had the chance to browse, talk and and hear our recommendation,” he said. “Sales have been excellent. The first few week days felt like Christmas. Customers both old and new have been queuing patiently – they’ve stuck by us throughout this lockdown because they wanted to ensure they had a bookshop in the town when we came out the other side. You can really tell that everyone is well-practiced at shopping safely, too. It’s fantastic to be back in business.”
At Not Just Books in Thetford, which opened for the first time last October, owner Jane James said that seeing the excitement of children had been the most enjoyable part of reopening. “Our biggest compliment came Saturday morning when a dad brought his two sons along, saying, ‘I don’t know what you’ve done to my boys, but they’ve been up since 6.30am asking to come to the bookshop!’” she said. “To get this sort of feedback has made it all worthwhile, as since January we have doubted our timing on a couple of occasions.”
Book sales hit an eight-year high in 2020, with 202m print units sold despite physical shops opening and closing across the UK during lockdowns. The big publishing houses reported healthy profits, while many independent booksellers have observed strong support from their local communities, in the face of record profits at retail giants like Amazon.
