Bookselling chains hope to reopen in June

Book chains Waterstones and Blackwell’s are planning for a “cautious” reopening from 1st June, as they wait to learn whether the government will allow bookshops to be part of a first wave of so-called “non-essential” retailers permitted to begin trading again from the beginning of next month. But there remains great trepidation among booksellers: an online poll for this magazine has shown just 40% of booksellers want to raise the shutters next month.

The Prime Minister announced on Sunday (10th May) that “non-essential” shops could reopen in phases from 1st June, provided the coronavirus reproduction rate and number of infections remain under control. Retailers would need to meet Covid-19 safety guidelines and, at the time The Bookseller went to press, more information was still to come from politicians over which businesses will be included in each phase. The Booksellers Association (BA) has urged the government to make it clear whether bookshops would be among the first to get back to physical selling.

At Waterstones, where boss James Daunt eventually closed outlets before the lockdown after staff voiced concern about their safety, the company intends to reopen its branches as soon as the government permits. A spokesperson said: “We will do so cautiously, with extensive measures in place to ensure the safety of both our booksellers and our customers. The actions we take include investment in equipment, from sneeze guards to sanitiser stations; in the procurement of PPE for our booksellers; and in the instruction and signage to support social distancing. We learn from the experience of our European bookselling colleagues—notably in Italy and Germany—who have reopened their shops ahead of us in the UK.”

Blackwell’s c.e.o. David Prescott, meanwhile, has said he is likely to oversee a staggered reopening programme, beginning with its flagship stores in Oxford and Edinburgh and university-based campus branches.

Chain reaction
The chains could have a job on their hands convincing staff it is safe to return to work, according to The Bookseller’s poll this week. It suggests more that 50% of indie booksellers are willing to come back in June, compared with just 28% of chain workers. Overall, 40% of booksellers would be prepared to go back to work from 1st June, with 35% against the idea and 25% unsure.

One Waterstones employee told the survey: “Social distancing will not be possible in a lot of different bookshops for a lot of different reasons. Some are too small, some are too busy and some customers—gawd love ’em—will just ignore every entreaty to protect themselves and staff members.”

Properly implementing social distancing rules in stores would persuade 82% of booksellers to return to work, according to the survey, with 72% wanting to see PPE for all staff and 79% strict monitoring of the number of customers allowed in-store.

Addressing some of those concerns is a £50,000 fund from the Booksellers Association (BA) to help its members safely reopen when they are allowed to, with £50 for each store to purchase protective materials like screens for till points. It is also providing a kit of in-store materials for indies, and is working with Gardners to provide PPE equipment.

One of the booksellers to take up the offer is Sheryl Shurville, co-owner of Chorleywood Bookshop and Gerrards Cross Bookshop, who vowed she would open as soon as she could. She said: “We have bought our plastic screens, we’ve got our face masks, we are set to go really. We have two smallish shops that could easily manage one or two people—whatever the guidelines prescribe—coming into the shop. So many other shops are open, even dry cleaners. I am slightly frustrated we aren’t able to open sooner; if the message had been, ‘You can open tomorrow’, we are prepared and we would have done.”

Hazel Broadfoot at Village Books in Dulwich, south London, also said she was keen to reopen, providing her staff are happy for the shop to do so. The shop is likely to limit the number of customers, reduce opening hours and set up a one-way system inside, alongside making use of PPE from Gardners, a hand sanitising station and sneeze-guards.

She said: “I watched a useful webinar with some booksellers in Europe talking about reopening, and their experience made me feel much more hopeful about reopening here. I do foresee that we will be offering our local delivery service for some time to come, as not everyone will physically want to come into the shop.”

Others who were optimistic of reopening include BrOOKs in Pinner, David Headley’s central London outlet Goldsboro Books, Belgravia Books, and Limestone Books in Settle, which was opened by Tanya Carter just last year. Carter said she was stocking up on face visors and hand sanitiser, but would be reducing the shop’s opening hours slightly and only permitting two people to enter her small shop at any one time.

She said: “On the one hand, I’m excited about the prospect of seeing customers again, but just like everybody else, I’m also very nervous and anxious about it, mainly because I don’t want to encourage customers into a dangerous situation. If there were better, clearer government guidelines on how people can keep themselves safe while out shopping, that would be a real help.”

Fears of a return
However, with the UK seeing the highest coronavirus death toll in Europe, and alarming figures of new fatalities revealed each day, not all booksellers were so keen to reopen. After the prime minister’s weekend announcement, Katie Clapham tweeted her Lytham St Annes shop, Storytellers, Inc., would not reopen next month. She told The Bookseller: “I just think June is too soon. Being open to the public means encouraging people to come and browse, and it just feels like the opposite of what we should be doing to keep everyone safe. We’re still able to get books to customers safely by working remotely and we feel really grateful that we can still trade at all. We’ll continue to reassess the situation but it doesn’t feel like reopening is on our horizon any time soon.”

At White Rose Books in Thirsk, owner Sue Lake said she was in a minority of indie booksellers who did not see the sector as “essential”, but still felt the pressure to open. She said: “We are not essential. Not compared to medical, food and hygiene supplies and services. And that is no reflection of my enthusiasm for bookselling. So I am feeling slightly under pressure to reopen in under three weeks’ time, while people, some of whom are our customers, become ill with the virus—and, in one case [concerning our customers], fatally.”

She went on: “If we commence trading on 1st June, it will be myself and one other working out of 16 staff, and judging what is required on a daily basis. Even that may not make financial sense early on, as our customer base is predominantly young families or over-60s, and both these groups may have concerns about exposing themselves to undue risk. We will take baby steps to see what demand there is.”

Emma Corfield-Walters, who runs Book-ish in Crickhowell, said she was unsure if the changes would effect her as the Welsh Assembly has not announced a relaxation of lockdown measures. She warned: “I hope things are going to be different here, as I expect there to be another spike in the next two or three weeks. We’re in an older area and in a tourist town. Even if we do open, it will just be me [staffing the shop] for a while because I don’t think people will want to spend a long time browsing.”

BA calls for support
Meryl Halls, m.d. of the BA, said its members were facing an “existential crisis” and the journey back to business would “test the fortitude of tirelessly inventive bookshop owners and booksellers already reeling under the onslaught of the Covid crisis”.

She said: “In order to prepare bookselling for this challenge, we clearly need the trade to rally round. We need a sustained commitment to the re-establishment of high street bookselling by publishers and suppliers, in the certain knowledge that trade support will be crucial to their surviving this transition. We need to maximise the number of bookshop windows we preserve and sustain through this period, so that we can all continue to break new authors, promote new titles, reach consumers via live events and create book-loving communities. This will require imagination, sympathy, patience, creative commercial thinking and inventiveness across the supply chain, and we fully expect our trade partners to step into the challenge with us.”