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Christmas Book Sales the best they’ve been in Ten Years

By January 8, 2017News

In recent years the news has regularly been filled with tales of dwindling book sales, drastic drops in people reading and a slow and steady decline in the numbers of physical bookstores that can be found in our towns and cities so any positive news is always gratefully received by we booklovers and that’s just what we have for the Christmas book sales figures.

According to Nielsen BookScan who collects the retail sales information from point of sale systems in more than 35,500 bookshops around the world UK print book sales alone topped the £83.3m mark in the run up to Christmas which is the highest they’ve been since 2007.

It’s not only the Christmas period that has seen the number of physical book sales rising Nielson’s figures show that the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child script by Jack Thorne was the bestselling book of 2016 with sales of 1.45 million copies earning £15.8m and these sales figures are also represented in the numbers of high street bookshops that are in our towns and cities.

Booksellers Association CEO Tim Godfray said: “The graph for booksellers is starting to move up after a very difficult period.”

“Thank heavens so many were … wide of the mark when predicting the death of the physical bookshop and the demise of the printed book. I have been hugely heartened by the anecdotal sales reports from our members in the UK and Ireland. Consumers do appear to be coming back to the printed book and bookshops.”

Let’s hope this is just the start of a trend that sees the return of bookshops on every corner.



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