Mary O’Donoghue started off with €500 worth of books in her second-hand bookshop The Book Lady, which she claims is the smallest bookshop in Ireland. Now, she estimates that the tiny bookshop located in Boyle, Co Roscommon has about 7,000 books on offer.

O’Donoghue opened the shop in 2012 and has since been updating her stock mainly though buying from charity shops and car boot sales. She does not operate an online store or buy from any wholesalers which has made her bookselling trade more difficult in recent years.

“My job is actually harder now than it was a few years ago. Even though I’m more well-known, well not tremendously well-known,” says O’Donoghue.

Heightened competition among booksellers in Ireland in recent years has become a major battle for O’Donoghue’s bookshop. Supermarkets like Tesco have joined the bookselling trade while other major players in the market can afford to buy brand new stock in bulk, explains O’Donoghue.

“You walk into most shops and most shops are now selling books because they can afford to buy in bulk. That’s what happened recently in the last few years,” says O’Donoghue.

Along with an increase in booksellers and a larger supply of books, the pandemic lockdowns has caused immense pressure on O’Donoghue’s old-school bookshop which relies on in-person transactions.

“The other thing that’s happened in the last few years is that people are selling their own books online,” says O’Donoghue.

It’s the passion for bookselling that drives O’Donoghue to keep trading for as long as she can. Her bookshop is somewhat eponymous as O’Donoghue got the title after she worked for years in a charity shop in Co Roscommon after moving to Ireland from Birmingham. O’Donoghue was particularly fixated on the book section of the shop and always had it organised to the point that her fellow volunteers called her ‘the book lady.’

“You would only ever do this job in a small town like Boyle sitting in a tiny shop, it has to be purely out of love and that you love sourcing books,” says O’Donoghue. She adds that while she can do this in a small Irish town like Boyle, a bookshop like hers wouldn’t survive in the city with so many other options. The cost of running the place, even though she has no staff, is a burden too and she says it is only possible for her to do it because she doesn’t drive and sold her house in Birmingham before she moved.

Bricks vs clicks

Although times are tough for those who haven’t moved online and still rely on bricks and mortar and in-person trading, the months or even years post-Covid-19 could lead to a renaissance for these establishments. The in-shop experience that exists in many SME retailers cannot be reimagined online for consumers.

“I think what’s happened here is we have the eCommerce side, which has got so much money, so much traction and everything going for it that I think in about two years time. And the 22-year-old girl is going to say, well, hang on here I just don’t want another package posted into my house. I’d actually like to go touch the and feel it,” says veteran fashion retailer Ian Galvin.

“The future for retail and bricks and mortar is not over. It is adjusting itself to bringing back the meaning of a boutique. A boutique is something small, eclectic and it wasn’t a label. It was an image-driven thing. And people used to get a kick out of being able to find something there. And I think that is the way forward,” he adds.

His views on the importance of finding that in-store experience is one shared by others in the retail industry.

“What we recognised over Covid is more people are shopping online and what we have when we do that is a very unemotional experience and it’s important for brands and retailers to create that emotional experience in that offline world,” says founder and CEO of Propertee Lucinda Kelly during a talk last December on consumer behaviours during Covid-19.

“Shopping online and offline will continue, but it’s about what is that physical place or asset or bricks and mortar in that mix. I believe that place is about creating that experience,” she adds.

Research by the Irish-owned brand agency MCCP last year also showed that there is still a place for physical retail in the lives of consumers. The agency conducted online interviews with 120 participants broken down into three groups. These were young adults aged 22 to 29, parents aged 35-50 and those in their late 50s through to 60-plus.

The research showed that many consumers are missing the tactile experiences of retail that you can’t get online. Another emerging trend is that consumers are leaving items in their online basket and not following through with the purchase.

Consumers may be craving the in-store experience post-Covid-19 but online shopping does not look like it’s going away anytime soon for those in retail.

“Ultimately, I think, in retail, people will have their very strong online presence, which will be a global online presence, and I think then they will back it up with possibly maybe 20 very hand-picked unit shops placed sporadically around European capitals around the world,” says Galvin.

Online giants are also realising that consumers will always want that physical experience. Amazon, the world’s largest e-commerce store, and its other competitors have become the bullies on the block for SME physical stores. Book sellers are no different. Yet, in 2015, Amazon decided to move into the tangible bookshop space and opened it’s first store in Seattle in the US. The company now has upwards of 20 bookshops and has moved into the retail space.

“Everyone assumed that the book sector was finished. That it’s a totally dead sector and no one’s ever going to move into it again in terms of physical bricks and mortar. The irony, of course, is that Amazon has opened its own standalone bookstores. That in itself is a classic example of an online retailer that killed the original bricks and mortar format, then goes back into brick and mortar themselves,” says owner of UK based retail trend agency Echochamber, Matthew Brown.

Even with Amazon trying to dominate the bricks and mortar book space, booksellers are now fighting back against the company’s intimidating online presence with Bookshop.org. This initiative brings independent physical book retailers online into one space where they can create their own virtual shopfront. Co-founder of Literary Hub Andy Hunter came up with Bookshop.org which launched in early 2020 in the US last year and in November 2020 in the UK.

The company started off with 250 bookshops. Now more than 900 stores have now signed up in the US. By June 2020, Bookshop.org sold $1 million worth of books in a day. The platform has now raised more than $7.5 million for independent bookshops across the US. It has partnered with 130 bookshops in the UK.

What the virtual bookshelf means for booksellers

Those in the bookselling market who have both online and physical offerings have a much more positive story to tell about the impact Covid-19 has had on business. Showing that there is still an appetite for tangible books instead of digital ones.

Although threats like the impacts of Brexit and the decrease of footfall into physical stores caused by Covid-19 are still present, the book business has actually been quite successful over the last 12 months.

“Brexit has brought huge challenges, I think, for the whole book trade in Ireland. We’re trying to get an understanding of how things are going to go with deliveries coming from the UK. We get a huge amount in from the UK every week. The first three weeks of January have been a bit different to normal in that there were longer delays with new procedures at customs,” says Sarah Kenny in Kenny’s Bookshop in Co Galway.

Kenny’s Bookshop is something of a trendsetter as it decided to provide an online offering in 1994, even before Amazon did. Its physical store celebrated its 80th birthday last year.

“We’re now the longest book shop online in the world,” says Kenny.

The bookshop has survived crises before, but having the online offering during the pandemic enabled them to survive a year when many in hospitality and retail did not.

“We saw a huge increase in orders via our own website, and particularly the majority of our orders are in the Irish market. We do free delivery in Ireland so it’s very competitive, but we also ship worldwide,” says Kenny. This increase in online sales after there was collective online campaign leading up to Christmas for people to “buy Irish.”

“Online has continued to grow, and during the lockdown this has clearly been key. Having invested extensively in our online capabilities in recent years and reorganised our eCommerce platform during Covid-19, we have managed to retain a significant volume of book sales through our website during this challenging period,” says Group Head of Books, Marketing and eCommerce at Eason, Brendan Corbett.

“The fact that most book sales are now happening online is great in one way, as we are set up for that and we have an excellent relationship with booksellers like Kenny’s who work hard to boost Irish authors, but we’re worried that an online sales-only model cuts out booksellers who don’t have an online presence and is bad for the ecosystem of the industry.”

Lisa Coen

One of the main differences for some of O’Donoghue’s competitors is their online presence. Dubray books reported a 120 per cent jump in online sales just days after the initial lockdown was called in March. Those who remain focused on their bricks-and-mortar stores are therefore left in the dust. Especially with bookselling veterans like Eason, founded in 1866 and which calls itself Ireland’s oldest book retailer, continuing to grow. Last year, Eason bought Dubray books for an estimated €4 million but wants the bookshop to keep its name.

“The success in online and changes in consumer behaviour underlines the significant challenges faced by physical retail stores and should the migration to online remain substantially or even partially permanent, this is likely to have an associated impact on footfall in stores in the future,” says Corbett.

However, Maria Dickenson, Managing Director of Dubray bookshop, believes that readers will always want a physical bookshop to go into.

“As a counterbalance to the demand for the convenience of online book shopping, readers are increasingly valuing the comfort and interaction that comes with the browsing experience in local bookshops,” says Dickenson.

The move to online is more likely to stop further purchases as there isn’t the same browsing experience available that there would be in a physical store. This in turn will negatively impact authors and publishers.

“The fact that most book sales are now happening online is great in one way, as we are set up for that and we have an excellent relationship with booksellers like Kenny’s who work hard to boost Irish authors, but we’re worried that an online sales-only model cuts out booksellers who don’t have an online presence and is bad for the ecosystem of the industry,” says co-founder of publishing company Tramp Press Lisa Coen.

“If a person hears about a Tramp book and goes to buy it online, that’s usually the limit of the transaction, whereas if they walked into a bricks-and-mortar shop, they are more likely to buy more than one title, and good booksellers would help with that. I mean, if you walk into Hodges Figgis and get talking to Liam, there is no way you’ll walk out of there with fewer than six books,” she adds.

Coen explains that when the curatorial relationship with booksellers and customers is hindered, there are fewer backlist sales (books published by the publisher at earlier dates) for all publishers, which affects revenues, and is generally bad for writers, publishers, bookshops, and readers.

Eason states consumer behaviours pre-Covid-19 show that the online service continues to grow while footfall into physical shops drops.

“Covid-19 aside, we are in a constantly changing retail environment with lower store footfall, ongoing growth in online shopping, changing consumer behaviour and less physical stock being held in stores,” says Corbett.

Getting the books to the reader

The success of the book industry in the midst of a pandemic can be attributed to both retailers shifting to online and publishers adapting the publishing process to cope with threats like Brexit and Covid-19.

“Irish books were resilient,” says Coen about the sales of books in 2020. To be resilient though, several challenges had to be overcome.

Tramp Press’s title A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa had a particularly good year as it sold 13,000 copies in Ireland alone, after they postponed the launch to August and moved all of their events online. A Ghost in the Throat was named An Post’s Irish Book of the Year.

“Major challenges include the difficulty of working without or with less childcare for us and some of our authors, the inability to host live launches and events, which are an important part of sales and marketing and the difficulty getting books into and out of the UK and that’s due to Brexit,” says Coen.

Books published in Ireland sold 2.3 million copies, bringing in €32.1 million. About a third of sales came from school textbooks and study guides, so the decline for educational books will be contributing to the decline seen for Irish published titles overall, according to figures from according to BookScan Irish Consumer Market (ICM) 2020 Summary.

“Truth be told, we probably would never have gotten around to it if they hadn’t come to us first. Writing a book is one of those things you always say you’ll do when things quieten down, but things never actually quieten down.”

Sarah Breen

“The Irish book market is fortunate to work in partnership with a flourishing local publishing scene. Irish writing is having something of a golden age, and the benefits are seen both here and abroad,” says Dickenson.

Collaboration among Ireland’s publishing network ultimately helped the industry as a whole get through a tumultuous 2020.

“There is a very real camaraderie in the literature sector. People are sharing information, boosting each other’s work and really pulling together. It’s always been a strength of this sector and it’s what’s going to carry us through.

“In addition, the Arts Council has given increased support to the literature sector, and we’re seeing more authors having success with funding applications, so this hopefully means that down the line we will be seeing the fruits of the creative response to this very strange and difficult time. For Tramp Press, we are working hard to support and find excellent writing to bring to readers and to be ready for the next chapter of the story,” says Coen.

There was also a huge social media push for people to buy from Irish businesses in the lead up to Christmas which boosted the industry further. In addition to this, book releases in the last half of the year helped this push for the industry at Christmas. For example, journalists Mark Tighe and Paul Rowan’s book Champagne Football, which detailed corruption within the FAI, was released just three months before Christmas yet became one of the most successful titles of the year. The book sold 49,000 copies in 2020.

“This year was another very strong year for Irish publishing, culminating in great releases for the Christmas trading period, and this coupled with consumers looking to buy Irish books from Irish booksellers helped sustain our industry and thankfully we were very well positioned to meet this local demand,” says Corbett.

*****

Although last year may have proven the strength of Ireland’s book industry even in difficult times, there is an issue that could stop potential authors from pitching their stories. This is the overall financial benefit of becoming an author.

“I think it’s been universally acknowledged that the financial rewards aren’t great, unless your book is successful internationally. For many people, it’s impossible to make a living from writing and the result is we’re all being robbed of so much talent,” says Sarah Breen, co-author of the hit book series Oh My God, What A Complete Aisling (OMGWACA).

Breen and her co-author Emer McLysaght were approached by a commissioning editor from Gill Books who became aware of the Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling Facebook group that the two women set up. He suggested they have a think about putting a book proposal together.

“Emer and I decided that if we were going to commit something about Aisling to paper, we wanted it to be a novel so we could bring her to a wider, offline audience. Gill doesn’t generally publish fiction, but they liked the idea we came up with, which is basically the first book, so they offered us a book deal,” says Breen.

“Truth be told, we probably would never have gotten around to it if they hadn’t come to us first. Writing a book is one of those things you always say you’ll do when things quieten down, but things never actually quieten down,” says Breen.

Fit to print

Print books had a hugely successful year in 2020 as record sales were reached, states the ICM summary. The pandemic had a hand to play in this success as many turned to buying books online during the lockdowns. Booksellers in-turn became one of the few industries to experience a positive impact from the lockdowns.

“The steady growth we’ve seen in Ireland since 2014 could not be abated by a global pandemic, and was even seemingly accelerated by it,” read the summary.

While stuck at home consumers spent €161.5 million on books in 2020, the second-highest year on record behind 2008. Volume sales reached 13.1 million, nearly 1 million more than in 2019. Only 2008 to 2010 have posted higher numbers since BookScan began in 2002.

“Comfort reads were the strongest trend last year. Readers enjoyed disappearing into cosy crime novels like The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, the gentle wisdom of Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse, or the nostalgia of Old Ireland in Colour by John Breslin and Sarah Anne Buckley,” says Dickenson.

There are more players in the market offering more diverse ways for consumers to read their favourite authors and newest releases. These include the Kindle, owned by Amazon, and the increasing number of audiobooks. Yet, despite the endless lockdowns and the atomised world we live in right now, sellers are still optimistic about the future of the physical book and the lure of the book shop.