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While sales have steadily picked up in Germany in the run-up to Christmas, the jury is still out if this will be enough to finish the year on a positive note. With three and a half shopping days left until the shops close at 1p.m. on Christmas Eve, most booksellers would have been quite optimistic until the terror attack in Berlin on Monday (19th). How much this has dampened consumer confidence is everybody’s guess.
Going into the all-important holiday season, sales for the year were up slightly by 0.8% after 11 months, pushed by strong growth of 7% in November. But while the market has been rising steadily week-on-week since then, the upward curve has been markedly less dynamic than last year.
The German Christmas period is traditionally defined by the four Sundays before Christmas Eve. With shops closed on Sundays, statistics compiled by the trade magazine Buchreport in co-operation with Media Control measure sales from Monday to Saturday, with Friday and Saturday by far the most lucrative days of each week. This Friday (23rd) is expected to be the most lucrative shopping of the year.
Four weeks into the holiday season booksellers have consistently reported week-on-week double-digit growth of around 20%, with last week climbing to 28%. But year-on-year the picture is quite different: combined sales for the four weeks were down 5% compared to 2015 - while week one was up 5.6%, the following week sales were down 11.4%, then up again marginally by 0.6%, and last week down 8.9%.
All hinges on the next few days. But with the general consensus that Germans leave their Christmas shopping, especially books, later every year, many booksellers don’t seem to be unduly worried as yet.
And what sells in Germany? While last year colouring books for adults were all the rage, 12 months on consumers are buying across the board with no specific must-have Christmas book emerging from the shelves. Not surprisingly Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is December’s top-selling title, followed by Das Paket (The Package), the latest psychological thriller by Sebastian Fitzek. Much later than in the UK German readers are also about to begin a love affair with Elena Ferrante, whose novel Meine geniale Freundin (My Brilliant Friend) is ranked fifth.