Development of book sales

Closing the gap

14. Mai 2020
von Christina Schulte
Booksellers are trying to return to normal levels of turnover. Their efforts are only partially successful, as the losses incurred due to the coronavirus are continuing to have a heavy impact. New and exclusive figures provided by Media Control reveal the details.

Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures: in this case, intensive market research. To what extent and how quickly is the book trade narrowing the painful gap in turnover caused by the Covid-19 crisis? The market researchers at Media Control are currently investigating this question on a weekly basis, exclusively for Börsenblatt.

A glance at the figures across all distribution channels in the period from week 1 to week 19 shows that the difference in turnover compared to the same period in 2019 is currently at minus 13.6 percent. This means that booksellers were able to reduce their shortfall – which was at minus 14.4 percent in weeks 1 to 18 – by 0.8 percentage points (see chart).



In terms of product categories, fiction books caught up by 1.1 percentage points in weeks 1 to 19 as compared to weeks 1 to 18, with children's books and young adult fiction recouping one percentage point and non-fiction books 0.6 percentage points. Travel books, on the other hand, further increased their shortfall by 0.8 percentage points.

The latest figures show a minimal upward trend in book prices. In comparison to weeks 1 to 18, we saw a price increase from one percent to 1.1 percent (€13.75). A slight ray of hope may lie in the number of copies sold: in weeks 1 to 18, that number was down 15.3 percent as compared to the previous year, but in weeks 1 to 19, the shortfall was reduced to 14.5 percent. Unit sales in the fiction category, which commands a 35.6 percent share of sales, were at minus 13.2 percent in the first 19 weeks as compared to minus 14.2 in the first 18 weeks of the year. Children's books and young adult fiction, which represent 27.1 percent of unit sales, recorded a drop of only 5.8 percent compared to the previous figure of 6.8 percent.

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Bricks-and-mortar shops recovering at a similar pace

Bricks-and-mortar bookshops are also doing everything they can to make up for lost sales, with similar results as all sales channels taken together. Local booksellers have managed to narrow the gap in sales year on year by 0.8 percentage points – reducing it to currently minus 19.6 percent. This means that after 19 weeks, unit sales in bricks-and-mortar bookshops are lagging behind sales in all channels combined by exactly six percentage points.

In a comparison of weeks 1 to 18 and weeks 1 to 19 at bricks-and-mortar stores, the category of fiction performed above average, closing the gap by 1.1 percentage points, while children's books and young adult fiction gained 0.9 percentage points. Not all product categories were able to improve their numbers, however, with travel books once again bringing up the rear, increasing their shortfall by 0.9 percentage points to a total of minus 38.2 percent.

Baby steps on the road to recovery: in terms of an increase in the price of books, bricks-and-mortar stores generated a tiny increase from 2.7 percent to 2.8 percent up year on year in weeks 1 to 19 as compared to weeks 1 to 18. Slightly more progress was made in terms of unit sales, where the shortfall was reduced from 22.5 to 21.8 percent.

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A look at week 19 compared to last year

Week 19 marked the third week in which most bookstores in Germany were re-opened for business, and the figures for this week may give rise to cautious optimism. In fact, all sales channelstogether increased their turnover by 0.5 percent compared to the same week in the previous year. The category of fiction, for example benefited, with an increase of 4.3 percent, as did the category of children’s books and young adult fiction, which enjoyed a significant increase of 16.3 percent. These encouraging figures were primarily the result of a 2.5-percent rise in book prices (with a drop in unit salesof 1.9 percent).

Bricks-and-mortar bookshops were not able to land a comparable coup; instead, turnover in week 19 remained 6.8 percent below the figure for the same week in the previous year. There was even a 10.3 percent decline in the number of copies sold; still, a 3.8 percent increase in the average book price (from €13.44 to €13.95) at least partially compensated for that double-digit decline.

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