London drives book market's value growth in 2017

London has triumphed over other regions for book sales so far in 2017, outstripping the overall market both in volume and value terms. 

According to data from Nielsen Bookscan, readers in London bought 25m print books for £221.8m this year to date, a year-on-year bump of 0.13% in volume compared to the overall market slide of 1.59%, and a leap of 3.45% in value compared to an overall boost of 1.27%. 

However, while only London grew volume sales, almost every region posted value growth. Northern Ireland and the East of England have both grown at the exact same rate, jumping 2.04% in value against 2016.

Of those that did fall, the North East and Yorkshire had the biggest value declines of over 1% each, while Lancashire dropped by by 0.97% and Northern Scotland by 0.32%. However, Central Scotland inched up by 1.27%. 

Overall 86.9m print books have been sold in the UK in 2017 so far for £706m. 

London's bump comes after foreign tourist visits to the capital are up 9% year on year for the first six months of 2017 according the Office of National Statistics, after a record 19.1 million overseas visitors came in 2016.  

However Edinburgh Bookshop owner Marie Moser, whose own sales are "slightly up" on last year, suggested London could also be enjoying a bump after major chains have revamped some of their stores in the capital. "A lot of stores have been refurbished recently so maybe that’s reinvigorated the market in London," she said.

Georgia Duffy, owner of recently-opened bookshop Imagined Things in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, said she thought it had been “quiet” for booksellers in the area in August but hoped this was seasonal. She speculated London may be having an easier time of it with clout as a beacon for tourists and as a centre of operations where the economy is “a different story”. 

"The amount of visitors in [London] compared with anywhere else is staggering. I don’t know what the figures are but they’ll be in their millions; I think that has a big effect,” said Duffy.

"It’s also very cosmopolitan, people can support numerous bookshops which can all specialise and do their own thing. A lot of people go there for shopping  … We have a lot of tourists in Harrogate, to be fair, but nowhere near what they’ll have in London. The economy in London is a different story, too. People are paid more, rents are higher, there’s a massive concentration of bankers… Everyone that earns a lot of money, a lot of them either live or work in London. It’s big business."

Bookseller Emma Corfield from Bookish, based in Crickhowell, Wales, and Kenilworth Books’ partner, Judy Brook, agreed people-power could be at the heart of it. “[It’s due to] London's population. London has the highest density of bookshops. There is the same amount of bookshops in London as in the whole of Wales,” commented Corfield.

Meanwhile Kate Claughan, co-owner of the Book Case in Hebden Bridge, added: “People have more money in London. It also has stores like Daunts, which are independents but which have a lot of book-buying power … that will have an impact on how much you can discount. They can compete with stores like Waterstones whereas outside of London there will be less book-buying power."

Duffy thought publishing’s London-centric nature may also be a factor, an issue publishers are stuggling to address, according to writers' body New Writing North. 

Claughan said author events help to attract customers into shops but most launches are held in the capital. “In terms of author events, there is often a circle around London of how far authors are prepared to travel," she said. "How many London independent shops have some famous author [living] on their doorsteps? We do well with authors who live near us but there is a bigger pool in London – if you get a really good author then it can have a huge effect, you can sell 100 books in an evening.”

According to the breakdown of regional sales, in 2017 to date, Lee Child's Night School (Bantam Press) has proven popular across the nation, topping eight of the country's regional bestseller charts. The East of England, London, the Midlands and the South plumped for David Walliams' The World's Worst Children 2 (HarperCollins) as their bestselling title, while the South West overwhelmingly opted for Eden Project: The Guide (Eden Project Books).

Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent (Serpent’s Tail) hit the top 10 in London and the East of the England, and Joanna Cannon's The Trouble with Goats and Sheep (The Borough Press) seemed to do particuarly well in farming areas such as Wales and the West and the South West. Indie hit Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall (Elliott & Thompson) has shifted 38,032 copies in London since the start of the year, earning 10th place—the only top 10 it features in. Perhaps predictably, Central Scotland and Northern Scotland bought copies of titles by two home-grown crime authors in large volumes, Ian Rankin's Rather Be the Devil (Gollancz) and Val McDermid's Out of Bounds (Little, Brown).

Moser remarked though that she felt that book buyers were “utterly unpredictable” at the moment, particularly in relation to appetite for political titles. 

"It feels like there’s category exhaustion to do with politics,” she said. “Normally people are after books to understand the political situation but now they’re beyond caring. We’ve noticed a dip in political sales briefly but ironically that’s where most of new publishing is… Because publishers are often planning a year or two in advance, publishing is sometimes out of sync with the national mood. We haven’t sold as many political books as we thought we would."

However, Corfield added that it was all to play for with the sector about to experience its busiest time in the run up to Christmas.