Status: October 19, 2021 12:12 p.m.
The book industry has left the hard times behind: There was still a big minus in the first half of the year. In the meantime, the pre-Corona level has even been exceeded in some cases.
Even in the lockdown, when not a single customer was allowed to enter the “Buchladen am Markt” in Offenbach, bookseller Andrea Tuscher has not lost her optimism. “But that was more because I am always confident about the future,” says the bookseller. Recently, the business figures have also given reason to look ahead optimistically. “Since the end of August, beginning of September, I’ve been making sales like before Corona,” says the boss. The chapter on short-time work has now been dealt with for your six employees.
The bookstore is an example of the industry trend, as the current analysis that the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels published today on the occasion of the kick-off of the Frankfurt Book Fair: In the balance sheet for the first half of 2021, the local booksellers still had a minus of 22.9 Percent reported compared to the pre-Corona period. According to the latest survey, the drop in sales has now melted to 13.3 percent. “The backlog is reduced week by week,” is how the Börsenverein sums up the latest development.
Children’s books in demand even in times of crisis
It looks even better for the book market as a whole, i.e. with e-commerce and sales outlets at the train station or in department stores: In the first half of the year, business fell by 3.7 percent. There is now a sales increase of 0.7 percent compared to the time before Corona. “So the chances of a positive annual result are good,” says the industry association.
After the corona shock, travel literature is also looking up again, which was hit twice by lockdown and travel restrictions. Frank Schwarz can see that directly from the sales figures for his “CityTrip Rome” travel guide: In the six months before Corona, it sold 3800 copies, in the second half of 2020 there were just 175 copies. “For weeks the numbers have only known one direction,” says author Frank Schwarz. “To the top. The desire to travel is back and travel guides are in demand again.”
In addition to the bare sales figures, another completely different trend is generating a lot of confidence in the industry: young readers everywhere. On the one hand, there is children’s and youth literature that benefited from Corona. Compared to the first half of 2019, sales here increased by 8.3 percent in the first half of 2021. Books for children and young people are among the winners.
Customers are getting younger
But the trend goes far beyond this book segment: In general, customers are getting younger, Andrea Tuscher notes in everyday sales. By “young”, she understands everyone under 40. “When I talk to these customers, many say: I am now deliberately buying from you instead of on the Internet in order to support the local book trade.”
The picture at the Gutenberg Book Guild, a kind of book club in Germany and Switzerland, is very similar. The approximately 60,000 members get their own books or licensed products at preferential prices, and in return they have to buy at least one book per quarter. For a long time, young people had little interest in this sales model. An example of this is the Bertelsmann Book Club, which was closed forever in 2015. The number of members of the book guild also decreased over many years, the existing customers got older and older.
“Real trend reversal”
That is currently changing: Before Corona, two thirds of all new members were older than 50 years. Two thirds of the new members are now under 50 years of age. “A real trend reversal,” says Ingmar Weber, head of digital and direct marketing at the book guild. “Before Corona, our membership steadily decreased, now we are continuously increasing.”
Higher sales and more success with the younger ones. The book industry has two reasons to be optimistic about the coming weeks with the all-important Christmas business. And bookseller Andrea Tuscher is now really relaxed. “From an economic point of view, Corona is over for me,” said the bookseller. “I personally put a tick on it.”