“The stores have lost 80 percent of their turnover. That is significant, because the margins are narrow,” says the director of the Royal Booksellers’ Association Anne Schroën. “It is not possible to catch up with the decline in turnover in one, two, three. The bookshops need support from the government.”
On the surface, the damage is not that bad, few bookstores have gone bankrupt. But according to Schroën, this gives a distorted picture of the malaise. “We see dozens of closures. Booksellers are retiring early. Other companies, also healthy ones, are closing because the recovery can take three to five years.”
No cucumbers
Because the bookstores were closed for months, the store still has old stock. Half of them are more or less dated. “Books are not cucumbers and therefore can be kept, but customers expect new supply after a period of standstill.” The publishers’ offer is “great, fantastic”, but to show that financial support is needed from the government, says Schroën. “Bookstores make Dutch writers visible.”
The Book Week, with the theme fight, lasts until Sunday 6 June. The Book Week Gift What we saw by Hanna Bervoets is free when you spend at least 15 euros. The Book Week essay By genocidefax from Roxane van Iperen costs 3.75 euros. Babs Gons wrote the Boekenweekpoem ‘Polyglot’.
–
