MORE than 200m print books were sold in the UK last year, the highest figure since 2012 according to estimates from official book sales monitor Nielsen Bookscan.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The total value of books sold was up 5.5% over 2019, the highest in over a decade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some Cardiff bookshops also enjoyed strong sales in 2020 despite the pandemic, in which bookshops were repeatedly forced to close \u2013 first in March, then in October and again in December.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The year\u2019s bestselling titles was Charlie Mackesy\u2019s hugely popular The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, closely followed by Richard Osman\u2019s crime novel The Thursday Murder Club.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other strong sellers included Barack Obama\u2019s A Promised Land, Bernardine Evaristo\u2019s Girl, Woman, Other, Delia Owens\u2019 Where the Crawdads Sing, Hilary Mantel\u2019s The Mirror and the Light and Reni Eddo-Lodge\u2019s Why I\u2019m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sarah Baskerville, manager at Wellfield Bookshop, Roath, said she was a bit surprised by the high figures, but agreed that the local book market was performing well.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have sold a lot of books, more than usual,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I think this is down to the pandemic.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Hollie Aldridge, events and communications manager at Griffin Books, Penarth, said that despite good book sales, booksellers had been forced to invest more in working hours and infrastructure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m not surprised but I\u2019d say it\u2019s only part of the story,\u201d she said. \u201cWe definitely had a strong year. [But] what it doesn\u2019t show is the work that went into that. We did online events, free home delivery and staff are doing long hours.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The pandemic has also been tough on less established authors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCelebrity books will always fly because they have great marketing campaigns behind them. But authors who don\u2019t have that profile rely on events. Especially children\u2019s authors rely on school visits to sell books,\u201d said Ms Aldridge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019re hoping to do more of this year is do more virtual events with schools. We think there\u2019s possibly an appetite there to do more larger scale virtual events and to give that profile back to those authors because there\u2019s some brilliant children\u2019s authors out there in Wales and beyond.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More than 200m print books were sold in the UK last year, the highest figure since 2012 according to estimates from official book sales monitor Nielsen Bookscan. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":553,"featured_media":48699,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[176,3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[6737],"class_list":["post-48673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n