Bookshops report strong Christmas trade despite flooding

Bookshops are heralding strong Christmas trading, with retailers including Foyles and Waterstones reporting increased like-for-like sales despite the disruption caused by flooding and the threat of the Paris terror attacks deterring city centre shoppers.

Waterstones’ book sales were up by a “modest” single digit percentage in the Christmas period, although the company cannot reveal its exact figures until later, it said. Foyles, Stanfords, Daunt Books, Dubray Books in Ireland, and the independents completing The Bookseller's Christmas Trading Survey have also reported healthy like-for-like sales increases in December in comparison to a year earlier, with many boosted by the success of the parody Ladybird books for adults published by Michael Joseph, which made up eight of Foyles’ top 10 bestsellers.

Foyles sales were up 4.7% like-for-like in the month before Christmas “without significant discounting”, said the retailer’s m.d Paul Currie. Stanford’s m.d Tony Maher, meanwhile, said the company’s book sales were up 6% like-for-like in December, while the eight-strong chain Dubray Books saw sales surge 12.5% after it re-branded and launched a loyalty card in time for Christmas. Independent booksellers have also so far reported a buoyant Christmas, with 74.42% of the 40-plus indies who have so far completed The Bookseller’s Christmas Trading Survey reporting like-for-like sales increases.

These retailer figures reflect a robust performance in the overall physical book market according to Nielsen BookScan, with sales up 9.6% in value year-on-year to £256.4m -representing the best December total in five years. Sales were also up 9.4% in volume to 30.2m units sold.

Watersones m.d James Daunt told The Bookseller that the company’s book sales over the Christmas period were helped by the great “strength and breadth” of the publishing this Christmas along with the “great big dollop of cream given by the Ladybird for adults books”. The flooding affecting parts of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cumbria and Scotland over the Christmas period hampered sales for shops in those areas but had not damaged the overall company performance, he added.

“There has been strength and breadth in books this year,” Daunt said. “London was particularly strong. Obviously the disruption caused by the flooding hit Lancashire, Yorkshire and parts of Scotland but it hasn’t impacted on the company as a whole. Our Carlisle and Lancaster shops were shut for extensive periods but obviously sales are hit because people do not want to risk driving around to shops when there is flooding in parts.”  

“There was a very good, solid spread of books which is good for us, because if there is a few runaway bestsellers then our competitors will just pile them up high and sell them cheap -but none of that was going on this year,” Daunt said. “Everything was available, we had no stock issues, the hub worked perfectly and reprints came through quite quickly. All in all, none of those issues which make one worry and fretful came into fruition.”

He added: “It has been a very good Christmas and a great dollop of cream given by the Ladybird books, which were pure incremental sales and brought people into shops as well.”

The lack of an alternative product “in the wider world” to grab people’s imagination meant that books became a nice fallback present, Daunt surmises. “There was also a lot in the press about books and on the radio, so that helped us too and drew people to books,” he added.  

PRH had a “storming year” for Christmas titles and besides the Michael Joseph Ladybird parodies by Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris, the chain also we did well with Bill Bryson’s The Road to Little Dribbling (Doubleday), Mary Beard’s SPQR (Profile Books) and Guy Martin’s When You Dead, You Dead (Virgin Books).

Daunt Books London-based mini-chain also saw a “significant” single digit sales increase as Daunt said that book sales in London had performed “particularly strongly.”

Currie said Foyles was “very happy” with its 4.7% like-for-like Christmas sales increase in 2015, which he said the chain managed “without significant discounting” which he said was “particularly pleasing” set against an overall 2.15% reduction in the average unit price of books sold over the 12 weeks to Christmas.

“We were delighted in the performance at our flagship Charing Cross Road store and our other London bookshops, bearing in mind a challenging retail environment and lower footfall in the West End reported by other retailers following the Paris terrorist attacks,” Currie said.

“Our regional stores also performed well, and we used the Christmas peak trading to fully understand the different trading profile in our new stores in Bristol and Birmingham.” A recent reorganisation of the Foyles website has enabled the company to deliver “exceptional service” and has increased sales and a “higher conversion” as a result, Currie said.

A whopping eight out of the top 10 Foyles bestsellers for December were the Ladybird for adults titles, lead by How it Works: The Husband and followed by How it Works: The Wife in first and second places. The other two non-Ladybird titles to have made it into the top 10 were The Private Eye Annual 2015 in eighth spot and A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (Oneworld) in 10th place.

Elsewhere, Stanfords m.d Tony Maher said the company’s book sales were also up 6% year-on-year from 1st-24th December, with the travel retailer's Bristol store out-performing its London branch, with sales up 13% there. David Mantero, head buyer at Stanfords, said: “As expected, three of the ladybird titles make it to our bestsellers, The Husband, The Wife and The Hangover at first, second and sixth places respectively. Another general market bestseller to make it into our top ten is Norwegian Wood by Lars Myting at eighth place.”

He added: “A travel title made it to number three, New York Times 36 Hours Europe and a children’s book Slot Together Victorian Dolls House made fifth place.”

Sales at Irish book chain Dubray Books were “very strong” over Christmas according to Michael Neil, the company’s interim managing director, with sales up 12.5% from December 1st to December 24th against last year. The company’s top-selling titles were Children of the Rising by Joe Duffy (Hachette Ireland), Irelandopedia by Fatti by John Burke (Gill and Macmillan) and Grandpa’s Great Escape by David Walliams (HarperCollins).

Neil said the big factors helping its performance were “very strong” Irish titles, the company’s new branding based Christmas look with windows, catalogue and in-store point of sale, a successful half price Book of the Week Radio campaign, its new loyalty card and a three for two offer on the company’s top 100 paperback books. 

A full report on independents' Christmas trading will be published in this week's issue of The Bookseller, out on 8th January.