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High street booksellers are banking on a late Christmas to boost turnover after year-on-year book sales registered a decline for the first time since records began. Sales have worsened, particulary on the high street, with footfall monitor Synovate Retail Performance predicting that shopping traffic in December for non-food products would be down 7.3% on 2007.
Figures from Nielsen BookScan showed that the rolling 52-week sales data to 22nd November was down 0.2% in revenue terms, compared to the 12-month period before that. This is the first time that book sales have slipped into negative territory since Nielsen started tracking Total Consumer Market data in 2001. Sales have been declining over the past five weeks by an average of 4.5%.
One sales director at a major publisher said that sales were strongest online and through supermarkets. He singled out Asda and Tesco as the standout performers and said sales at W H Smith were also “good". Kes Nielsen, Amazon’s head of book buying, said recent sales at the online retailer had resulted in “the most competitive fourth quarter that I can remember".
Tesco category manager David Cooke said “more-so than usual it has been a celebrity-heavy Christmas, which is ideal for the supermarkets and mass market". He said Tesco’s year-on-year sales were growing, a trend matched at Asda.
Asda book buyer Steph Bateson said that there could be an increase in trading this weekend when most people will have been paid. Financial consultancy Deloitte has claimed that consumers are shunning credit cards for cash.
Both Waterstone’s and W H Smith are in pre-close periods ahead of trading statements and declined to comment about sales. However, high street retailers privately expressed concerns about sales being behind the levels achieved this time last year. “Given the state of the economy, you would expect it to be a very late Christmas this year," said one.
One publishing sales director noted that the leap year could provide a last-minute boon, giving retailers an extra two trading days in the crucial final week before Christmas. “Whether that will be big enough to counter the slow start to Christmas remains to be seen," he said.
Independent booksellers were remaining “cautiously hopeful". John Hudson of Fordingbridge Bookshop, Hampshire, said: “Christmas trade has had a faltering start, but last week it really picked up and today [Wednesday] it’s buzzing."