First and last and always

At the end of May last year, as bookshops looked to open and play catch-up after the first 12-week lockdown in the United Kingdom, I warned that the deluge of new, moved and recently published titles could have a deleterious impact on their chances of thriving over the summer as well as hampering booksellers.

As we begin to think about unlocking this time around, there are some worrying echoes, with our Springboard online event this week hearing of harried booksellers facing a glut of information from publishers as the latter look to find space for their books come the great unlock.

The Booksellers Association will shortly be writing to publishers about their concerns around the reopening, including warning that booksellers are “bruised” from the continuous stresses and strains of running their small businesses at a time of such uncertainty. Unsurprisingly, many are not much cheered by a near-constant stream of publisher announcements about their record years.

As BA m.d. Meryl Halls told me, booksellers will reopen with a mix of apprehension and excitement. “Confidence, after such an extended closure at a difficult time of year, is at a low ebb,” she avers. “Support and investment from publishers who, we keep hearing, have had a very good war, is essential and urgently necessary, whether it’s to do with trade terms or imaginative and sensitive help with restocking.”

In my view, publishers are heavily invested in the fortunes of high street bookshops. If the past year has taught us anything, it is that a market without hand-selling and the discoverability provided within bookshops—including from launch parties, readings and author tours—is one that survives but with the heart removed. (If you don’t believe me, just read some of the odes penned to booksellers by authors as part of our Springboard supplement.) We have learned to cope in the scenarios presented to us over the past year, but have not loved them. Suspicions that publishers have been using the period to bulk up their direct marketing and direct sales operations for a longer play are, I’m sure, unfounded.

But Halls is right to detect a shift in mood. A year ago the closure of high street bookshops for any period of time felt like a seismic disruption, but I no longer detect that same sentiment. Publishing ploughs on, fewer titles are moving around, and in terms of future expectations, rights dealing continues apace, unmoved either by what’s not happening in bookshops, or by the displacement of the London Book Fair or Bologna (see pp06–19). In that respect, one can understand booksellers’ fears of being left out and left behind as this new world unfurls itself.

We shouldn’t overplay our hand. As Nielsen figures show, books sold during the lockdowns, but they sold more once bookshops were open; further, as the UK launch of Bookshop.org has shown, indie picks still carry a premium online. Meanwhile, social media has kept bookseller voices central, as have online events. There is no good recovery that does not include booksellers at the front. We know this, now is the time to show it.