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Wales and the West is emerging as the area with the fastest-growing book sales of 2018 so far, according to fresh statistics from Nielsen BookScan.
Volume sales for the area are up 2% to 6.2 million books sold for the year to date, while value is up a healthy 4.5% to just under £50m against a UK-wide bump of 1.8% in value and just 0.4% in volume.
Central Scotland has also outpaced the rest of the nation with a 1.5% jump in volume—to 4.6 million books sold—and a 3.4% increase in value, to £37m. Northern Ireland likewise posted impressive figures, with value up 2.9% on the same period in 2017, while the South West saw healthy value growth with a 3.8% bump year on year.
All except two of the UK's 13 regions posted a jump in value against 2017, with only Northern Scotland and the Border territory showing value declines.
London's book sales have accounted for 29.1% of the UK's total volume for the year to date, and 32.4% of its value—a marginal increase in volume share and a marginal decline in value share year on year.
Outstripping growth in the rest of the UK, the performance of Wales, which accounts for the 62% of the region as a whole (with "the West" referring to parts of Somerset, Dorset, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, plus Bristol), should not be surprising, according to Welsh bookshops.
"There’s lots of positivity in Wales around bookselling at the moment,” said Bookish owner Emma Corfield-Walters, based in Crickhowell. "We’ve got some really, really good independent booksellers: Cover to Cover are doing brilliantly, Rossiter Books, Griffin in Penarth, Forum Books, Linghams Booksellers. There’s a lot of co-operation and it’s a really strong bookselling community.
"We’re all quite far away from one another but we all talk to each other and try to work together to bring author events into the region ... If you ask any indie these days, it’s the events that keep us going and get our name out there. People are looking for an experience and that’s been really well developed in Wales."
A contributing factor could be publishers' increased willingness to work with bookshops beyond London, suggested Corfield-Walters. "I think it's also that publishers are becoming a little bit more open to doing things outside of the M25. People have been working really hard the past two or three years to try and get really good author events on the M4 corridor. We do sell the tickets and we can get the audience - it’s the case of getting the confidence from the publishers, and they’re starting to realise this and work with us. It’s turning into something really lovely.
"Crickhowell Literary Festival ticket sales are going really well. And again we have more well-known authors coming along. It takes a while to grow a festival, but it’s looking really good and we’ve already started looking at next year - our fifth year - so there is much to celebrate here."
Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (HarperCollins), the overall bestseller for the year to date, came top of every single region's bestseller chart—except for the South West, which saw Eden Project: The Guide it's most-bought title. In Scotland, Val McDermid's Insidious Intent (Sphere) and Stuart MacBride's A Dark So Deadly (HarperCollins) also performed strongly.
London was the only region that saw non-fiction blockbuster Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens (Vintage) hit the top 10 most-bought for the area—in second place—with Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury (Little, Brown) relased in January, charting fifth.
Although more than a third of Fire and Fury's volume sales to date were purchased in London, Edinburgh Bookshop owner Marie Moser thought it was such hits that could make all the difference.
Reflecting on Central Scotland's strong performance for the year to date, she said: "Key titles can swing it. In January for us we had Fire and Fury and we sold something like 80 copies full price. That on its own is a great January! It can be as simple as that, if the right book catches the wind," she said.
Tom Kerridge's Lose Weight for Good (Absolute) and Lee Child's The Midnight Line (Bantam) occupied second and third spots in a number of regions in 2018, including in Wales and the West, the Border region, Central Scotland, East of England, Lancashire, North East, Northern Scotland, and Yorkshire. Also putting in a good showing was David Walliams' The World’s Worst Children 3 (HarperCollins), charting as a third-place bestseller for the year to date in the Midlands and Southern regions, while Marian Keyes' The Break took the third top spot in Northern Ireland.
Across the board, the figures show volume growth coming in lower than value growth.
When asked if this suggest that book r.r.ps are creeping up, Corfield-Walters said: "We're definitely noticing an increase in hardback sales, though at the cheaper price points. There's been a lot of really good hardback fiction and it's priced around £12.99/ £14.99. For example, Meet Me at the Museum [by Anne Youngson, Doubleday, RRP £12.99] is one of our bestsellers; it's a beautiful looking book and a lovely size. People seem quite happy to stretch from an £8.99 paperback up to that."
Moser said: "On the Christmas ordering you're very aware there is a lot more £25 [priced books] than £20. There are some being held at the £18.99 but with the bigger history tomes they're going the other way slowly. I think there will be a pinch short-term and then people will adapt."
Elisa Evans, bookseller at Cover to Cover in Swansea, added: “I think price points in the children’s book market may be increasing. With the quality of the print, adults are buying books because they are beautifully illustrated and they’re good for the children to read. When we were threatened with closure we had a lot of uproar, with people saying 'My children can’t grow up without a bookshop!’. They’re highly regarded and it feels like a lot of people are coming back to books to get away from all these devices.”