.Take it as read … shoppers peruse the shelves at Books Kinokuniya in the city - while the rest of the retail sector is having a hard time, book shops are reporting better-than-expected sales as customers pour in over the festive period. Photo: Wolter Peeters
IT'S the lunchtime rush at Books Kinokuniya in the CBD and the cash registers are working overtime. Extra staff have been called in to cope with the swelling crowds of shoppers who are madly buying presents.
While most of the retail sector is in a desperate slump this Christmas, bookshops across the country are experiencing an amazing revival and many are on track to record one of their best years in recent memory.
The head of the Australian Booksellers Association, Joel Becker, said this Christmas was proving to be a particularly strong one for independent bookshops. Early signs showed that sales would be well up on last year.
Mr Becker said the closure of Borders had reminded book lovers of the importance of supporting bookshops and many had embraced the e-book revolution rather than resisted it.
''I think that the market has become more concentrated but it has also been a wake-up call to people,'' he said.
''We are embracing the fact that bookshops sell books in various forms, whether that be a physical book or e-book readers and more and more stores now have the capacity to sell e-books, so there will be a mix of both.''
Mr Becker said there was a particularly good list of titles released this year, which had been a boon for retailers.
A spokeswoman for Kinokuniya, Eileen Chong, said there was no doubt sales this Christmas would top last year. ''We don't have exact figures yet, but sales are definitely up this year on last year,'' she said.
''Fiction and non-fiction are selling really well and so are our design titles because people love coffee table books.''
Steve Cox, the general manager of retail operations at Dymocks Bookstore, said its stores were ''trading ahead of expectations'' and sales had been ''better than we had hoped for''.
''The love of books has not diminished in any way and what we are absolutely finding is that people still love the physical book … they love that you don't have to turn it off on a plane when you take off and land,'' he said.