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Booksellers are bidding to get a share of the £2bn shoppers are predicted to spend today (25th November) to mark Black Friday.
Several book retailers are offering deep discounts on titles on their websites, with over half of the Black Friday spending likely to be online, according to online retailing association IMRG.
The Book People is offering its “biggest ever Black Friday sale”, with an extra 10% off over 1,600 products. Examples of deeply-discounted deals include a Puffin poetry collection which is being offered for £8 for 10 titles by authors such as Michael Rosen, saving customers a hefty £57.90, while a collection of the Man Booker Prize 2016 shortlist is being offered for £30, saving the customer £55.94.
Sarah Walden, group buying and merchandising director at The Book People, said the company aims to provide the best value in the market “at all times” and sees Black Friday as “an opportunity to demonstrate this to as wide an audience as possible”.
“We have strong offers each day with a deal of the day to entice our customers back for repeat visits,” she said. “We definitely see an uplift in sales and from our customer feedback, they definitely feel the benefit.”
Blackwell’s is offering “Fantastic Savings And Where to Find them” - a play on the recent J K Rowling film starring Eddie Redmayne - offering discounts on many signed edition books, such as John Irving’s Avenue of Mysteries (Doubleday) selling for £10 and saving readers £10. Other signed editions customers can get their hands on include Lauren Child’s One Thing (Orchard Books), retailing for £5, reduced from £11.99, and Matt Haig’s A Boy Called Christmas (Canongate), selling for £7.50 down from £12.99.
Amazon has been running its Black Friday promotions for the last two weeks, offering its usual “lightening deals”, although these are mainly concentrated on electrical products.
Waterstones has extended its half-price offer on a range of titles, including Jamie Oliver’s Christmas cookbook (Michael Joseph), which is now selling for £13 reduced from £26, and Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run (Simon & Schuster), selling for £10 down from £20 online at the chain retailer.
WH Smith is also offering customers an extra 10% off when they spend £25 or more today until Tuesday 29th November and Foyles is holding a “Book Friday” promotion, persuading customers that “today is the day to buy books”.
However, Simon Heafield, head of marketing and brand development, said the company was concentrating more luring customers in with a string of events rather than deep discounts online.
“It is the start of the Christmas season and we want to make the shop as lively as possible and remind people there is always something going on in the physical space,” he said. “It is reminding people what is great about the in store experience.”
Foyles Christmas events kick off with Snowball, its first ever one-day winter children’s festival tomorrow Saturday 26th November, involving arts and crafts, storytelling and author visits from Matt Haig and Emma Carroll.
Altogether shoppers are forecast to spend £4bn once the weekend and Cyber-Monday (29th November) are included.
Independent booksellers meanwhile are gearing up for the “antidote” to the mayhem of Black Friday, “Civilised Saturday” tomorrow (26th November).