If you, like me, have been glued to those magical Netflix Christmas movies, you will know the drill. A lonely but overworked professional finds hope and/or love through a chance encounter with a charming opposite in some kind of seasonal environment, often a shop, bar or cosy hamlet.

Bookshops, of course, are perfect backdrops for all this. In Christmas Around the Corner, for example, a savvy venture capitalist from New York escapes to a quaint town in Vermont for the holidays and becomes a guest of the Fortenbury Bookstore. But the shop is threatened by closure, until – at the last – the spirit of Yuletide intervenes. In The Christmas Bookshop, a bestselling author clashes with a laid-back bookseller over their approach to the season. Love and books win out.

It is not just movies that offer up this festive fare. The Christmas Bookshop is also, of course, a novel by Jenny Colgan, who is a veteran of this genre. Indeed, according to my colleague Alex Call it is a market that was worth £500,000 last week. I would also recommend All Together for Christmas by Sarah Morgan, Let the Bells Ring Out by Milly Johnson and A Christmas Gift by Sue Moorcroft. Like many areas of the entertainment business, publishing is all over this trend, having kick-started it with Scrooge et al, A Christmas Carol, still among the chart-toppers 180 years post publication.

I write this slightly jovial fare not to diminish the efforts we have all made over the past 11 and a half months, a time during which we have battled everything and everyone from tech giants to our own government, to the European Union, through to those who would cancel us,  ban us, undermine us and even rob us. We know there are no saccharine solutions available to us in real life.

If this were a Christmas tale, a last-minute glitch would doubtless threaten the satisfactory and affecting denouement we all want

Nor am I writing this as a segue into the launch of The British Book Awards 2026, at which the industry will celebrate the achievements of the past year. With a nod to Johnson and Moorcroft who, along with other authors of romantic fiction, have questioned me on the lack of an award for their genre, it is a particular delight to be able to finally respond positively. It can be hard to predict what readers will choose, but one thing we can get better at gifting during the National Year of Reading is respect. Ditto then SFF and Graphic Novels.

Of course, it is a little presumptuous to be writing a valedictory piece with two trading weeks to go before the season ends. Yet with the Christmas perennial Guinness World Records rising to the top of the book charts, it feels like buying patterns are starting to take shape, with booksellers broadly positive. This year’s autumn publishing selection has been a gift for booksellers, noted  Waterstones’ head of books Bea Carvalho, a view not yet – I’d say – reflected in the numbers. But with the Amazon algorithm change still impacting publisher sales through that channel – the high street may be having better of it than the NielsenIQ BookData figures imply.

If this were a Christmas tale, a last-minute glitch – perhaps a distribution snafu or an unexpected tax increase – would doubtless  threaten the satisfactory and affecting  denouement we all want. But, luckily, not only are we  the recipients of the stories other tell, we are also creators of the magic. In our story, we are champions of the chance encounter, experts in hope and inspiration, and purveyors of cheer – whatever the season. So for now, as Milly might say, let the tills ring out.