Brexit delays and high prices a 'disaster' for booksellers, LBF hears

Brexit is continuing to spell “disaster” for bookshops in Ireland while European booksellers are now facing delays and relying on UK shipping agents, a London Book Fair seminar has heard.

In a 22nd June event hosted for the online fair by Julie Belgrado, director of the European and International Booksellers Federation, booksellers from Ireland and Sweden said they were experiencing increased billing and huge delays to shipments.

Irish bookseller Tomás Kenny said the combination of Brexit regulations and the pandemic climate has made the past 12 to 14 months “very, very difficult”.

He said: “Brexit was very hard to prepare for it because Covid was so difficult, and we are massively exposed to it. Of the books sold in Ireland, 80% to 90% are published in the UK — a lot of the big writers are published with English imprints, so we’d get, approximately 30 deliveries a day. In January, we didn't get a delivery until the 22nd or 23rd, it was a disaster.

“Average shipping was three to four days longer than it would have been in 2020, consistency was gone. It was anybody’s guess when shipments would arrive. Shipments wouldn’t be complete, we get 30 boxes from different orders across five or six days, not matching order forms. The lack of certainty has been the biggest problem so far.”

Kenny said additional costs are mounting up. The business usually buys cardboard from the UK to package shipments but has seen prices rise by 30% in the past six months. The shop is frequently being charged VAT by couriers too when there should be none.

Jan Smedh is a bookseller at the English language specialist The English Bookshop in Uppsala, Sweden. Around 75% of the books he sells are exported from the UK, with roughly 25% shipped from the US. “Logistics have to work for us,” he said, “when this Brexit thing [started] we were concerned”.

The bookshop has ties to publishers in the UK, which regularly send proofs and promotional materials to his premises. These now face delays and accrue fees. “That has been a real problem because we are sent letters asking for fees for things that aren’t worth anything in the post — it’s a glitch, a real glitch.” Another noticeable Brexit side effect, he said, is imports arrive at least 24 hours later than they previously did, while customers are increasingly turning to his shop to import books.

He said: “The private importing of books by people in Sweden from the UK has become more difficult because of customs, everything has to be declared and there is a fee. We’re having more and more people come to us to place orders through us instead of ordering direct — its more efficient because we have these channels set up.”

Smedh credited having a UK-based shipping agent as the “biggest advantage” to withstanding the changes Brexit has caused.

Elda Lamberti, international sales manager at Gardners, said a lack of government advice on changing policies and likely setbacks had left companies particularly vulnerable. “A lot of people seemed to be not prepared after 3.5 years after talking about Brexit, one would have thought governments would have been giving clear instructions to their customs agents,” she said.

“Some people erroneously thought because we had a deal things would not change — it actually just meant we didn’t have to pay tariffs on the goods as we were transitioning.

“With Covid, if there is something we need to do it is try to make things easier for businesses who have suffered so much during the pandemic.”