This week sees a changing of the guard at both the Booksellers Association (BA) and Publishers Association, with indie bookseller Debbie James stepping up at the former, and Rebecca Sinclair, chief brand officer at Penguin Random House UK, becoming president of the latter.

For James, bookshops are facing an existential moment, not because fewer books are being sold or entrepreneurship isn’t writ large in the DNA of bookshop owners, but because of the tax rises imposed by the present government. Despite repeated calls from the BA, the government has not reconsidered the rates for bookshops in the way it has done for pubs. As James tells us: “It feels almost like a sort of penalty, where these bricks-and-mortar spaces that we  create in our communities should be more underpinned by things like cultural grants, as opposed to the hiking of business rates.”

In her speech to the PA’s AGM, Sinclair focused on the wider challenges around reading, threats from artificial intelligence and the ongoing attempts to erode copyright protection: “We must continue to oppose any attempt at all to weaken copyright law, and insist on increased transparency to enable strong commercial licensing.” 

We cannot take a free society for granted, Sinclair added. “In a world of fake news and polarisation, publishing is a source of truth, expertise and deep research that can help people to understand and navigate the world around them,” she said. 

Where the two associations join together, of course, is around the joy and importance of reading. Here, the National Year of Reading has helped, bringing with it a new energy around how we  talk about books and defend their creation.

The book trade is not a theoretical space and books have a real impact on lives

As Sinclair noted: “To anyone who says that books and reading are irrelevant, I say, they have never been more relevant. But, we need to make the case for books and reading – more clearly, more confidently and more powerfully – and the National Year of Reading gives us the platform to do that.” For James a key intersection is also about recognising booksellers’ roles  in the delivery of the campaign: “When we learned how it was going to be rolled out, it was obvious that it would be done by the existing channels, through which reading for pleasure, chances of discovery of books and reading are already in place.”

As I said last week, we fret a lot in this business, but the book trade is not a theoretical space and books have a real impact on lives. In our Scotland focus we note that 54 new indies have opened in that country since 2020 – a not insignificant number for a nation which buys 8.7% of all print books sold in the UK. One of these indies – The Bookmonger – opened after its owner Caitlyn Payne turned to books during a health scare. “Reading was my entire personality at that point,” she tells us, saying she wanted to give something back by opening her shop.

That’s the personal. But the political is in play too. In the US, Meta is being sued by five big publishers, including Hachette and Macmillan, for copyright theft in another test case of how courts over there interpret fair use – a legal get out we do not have over here. As Sinclair said: “If we don’t defend copyright robustly, we undermine the very foundation on which our industry is built.”

On Monday (11th May), The British Book Awards will once again bring the trade together for a night of celebration of all that, as well as – inevitably – an evening of defiance. This is a good-natured business, but one not scared to sharpen its elbows when necessary. Indeed, as the stakes get higher, so must the intensity of our response. This is a time to be counted, and a moment to make sure that it counts.