Saturday April 24th 2021
“Feels like Christmas”
Great rush to bookstores in England
After a month-long lockdown, bookstores in England are breaking their doors in the first week of opening. There are queues in front of the shops across the country. “Sales are excellent,” reports a bookseller. In the pandemic, more books were sold than in years.
The first week of opening after the month-long Corona lockdown has given booksellers in England a huge plus. 3.7 million books worth a total of 31.4 million pounds (36.13 million euros) went in the week to April 17 over the counter, industry services reported. That was around a third more than in the previous week.
In the largest British part of the country, bookstores, like all other non-essential stores, were only allowed to reopen on April 12th. Industry giant Waterstones reported a huge run on its 243 stores in England and Wales.
There were queues in front of the shops across the country. “The sales are excellent. The first few days felt like Christmas,” said the bookseller James Ashmore from Holmfirth of the newspaper “The Guardian”.
Because of the rapid spread of the corona variant, which was initially discovered in south-east England, the British government ordered a new lockdown at the beginning of January. In individual regions, shops had been closed for a long time due to the new infection situation there.
People are reaching for books more
Probably also because of several lockdowns with far-reaching exit restrictions, most of the large retail chains achieved significantly higher revenues in 2020: For the first time since the figures were recorded eight years ago, more than 200 million books were sold in Great Britain, as the market research institute Nielsen has calculated based on its monthly consumer surveys. That corresponds to a value of 1.76 billion pounds – and an increase of 5.2 percent and 5.5 percent respectively compared to 2019.
Shortly after the pandemic began, surveys had shown that people in Great Britain were reading books much more often. The increase also benefited independent booksellers, it said. They were well supported by their local customers. Homeschooling was also a driver during the pandemic: According to surveys, parents and grandparents spent a good half more on school books than before the Corona crisis.
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