Booksellers do not feel less interested in books during the current anti-epidemic measures. The situation is facilitated by an online store. However, sales fell significantly in stores in large shopping centers. The pre-Christmas market will not help to catch up with the shortfall in sales from the spring, when the bookstore was closed for two months.
“Compared to pubs, we are definitely better at it, because now people read when they can’t go to the cinema and concerts. Now it’s just a matter of delivering books to them in some way,” said Kosmas sales director Ctirad Fuchs.
According to booksellers, the market failure in the spring will not be able to catch up. “We settled in the spring, we kept our commitments and we didn’t have to lay off. But the loss was quite significant. We had to limit investment, marketing, promotion and things like that,” Fuchs said. “However, if the recommendation not to take to the streets before Christmas comes, the drop in sales will probably be significant. If the stores were completely closed before Christmas or in the near future, it would be liquidation,” he added.
Booksellers are helped by the online store, which has seen significant growth, but is not large enough to feed the entire wholesale business. “The beginning of the summer was great, but in August there was a decrease compared to traditional sales to 75 percent. Fortunately, an extreme number of interesting Czech titles were published this year, such as Karin Lednická’s Leaning Church, which today won the second year of the Book of the Year reader poll,” he said. Oldřich Suchý from the bookstore in Prague’s Perlová Street.
According to Marcela Turečková, director of the Association of Czech Booksellers and Publishers, a number of booksellers and small publishers managed the spring, invested their reserves and believed that the situation would improve again. “We will see what really awaits us now, in autumn and winter. If there are further closures, it will have serious consequences for the entire book market,” she told MF Dnes.
Increased interest in sales on the network was also registered by antiquarians. The largest seller of used books Knihobot reports record turnovers. In the last week alone, customers bought books on their e-shop for more than 434,000 crowns, and the company’s weekly turnover increased by almost 20 percent.
“Already in the spring we recorded an increased interest in both the purchase of books and sales. In addition to spending free time on literature, the Czechs evidently cleaned and discarded unread titles. And the situation repeats itself – our couriers again pick up dozens of boxes of books for sale daily. “said the founder of Knihobot Dominik Gazdoš.
Knihobot was established in 2019 as an alternative to sales servers with used books as well as traditional bookstores and within two years of operation with the number one on the Czech market of used books. The Holešovice company helps to return books to circulation in the form of user-friendly sale and purchase of second-hand books, and has received over 170,000 titles for new owners.
The latest report on the Czech book market, published by the Association of Czech Booksellers and Publishers, shows that in 2018 Czechs spent 8.3 billion crowns on books, ie 250 million crowns more year-on-year.
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