Friday, January 10, 2014

Good Christmas sales enjoyed by NZ booksellers: sustainable into 2014?

BooksellersNZ


A New Year note to Members of Booksellers NZ by CEO, Lincoln Gould.

Was it the changeable weather driving people into shops to buy and indoors to read? Was it the massive popularity of The Luminaries?  Was it a general pick-up in retail sales with the economy on the rise?  All of these factors and more contributed to a Christmas better than recent years for New Zealand booksellers (and by definition publishers) – see detailed roundup by Jillian Ewart.

The big question of course as we enter 2014 is, can the pick-up in sales be sustained into the New Year? Time will ultimately tell of course, but there are some fundamentals that are likely to continue to strengthen the contention that 2014 will indeed be a better year for bookselling in this country – the strongly improving economy being the most obvious. Most economic forecasts predict New Zealand to be at the beginning of a year of very strong growth, and one I saw on a foreign business TV news channel yesterday predicted that New Zealand would be a top performer of the year in relation to OECD countries.



Whether we like it or not, we are a consumer society so “economic growth” means that people are loosening their purse strings and are buying more goods and services than previously, happily including books. Okay, so there are, in many people’s minds, dark tinges to this rosy picture, such as: online purchases from overseas retailers, e-books, and a decline and rationalisation of the presence in New Zealand of major international publishers. One senior employee of a major publishing house, told me privately that there are likely to be far fewer New Zealand books published in this country in the future, and indeed worldwide.
In  2013, New Zealand booksellers showed that they are up for these challenges. Most bookshops in New Zealand sell print books online – many with free shipping – as well as selling e-books and e-readers in store. Also, more stores are taking advantage of New Zealand’s open market in buying from overseas sources when locally-based publishers can’t or won’t supply books that customers want and will buy. Discounting is now common practice among independent stores, when once it was just a feature of chain stores. Thus, New Zealand bookstores are becoming more price-competitive with overseas retailers. And I don’t think it is all that gloomy in respect of New Zealand publishing.  Booksellers are among other organisations such as the New Zealand Society of Authors, helping budding authors with self-publishing, which is adding to the supply. Locally-based publishers would seem to be doing well – Victoria University Press is the obvious example with The Luminaries. New publishing companies, but with experienced hands on the tiller, such as Upstart Press, will fill gaps left by international publishers leaving these shores.

Of course, we still have the big elephant in the room, this being the dismal failure of Government to be an effective collector of its own taxes by not applying GST to all imported goods being bought from overseas online retailers.  Government is saying that they are “looking at the issue still” but that’s what they have been saying for years and Booksellers NZ, along with other bodies such as the Retailers Assn, will continue to push hard on the issue: perhaps even harder by getting our members to lobby their local MPs to emphasise the harm that this failure causes local businesses and communities.

So yes, 2014 has good prospects, albeit with challenges. But booksellers in this country have shown great resilience through tough times and now 2014 portends to be a year of opportunity rather than of simple survival.

Lincoln Gould, CEO, Booksellers NZ

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