'We haven't seen anything like it since Harry Potter': UK bookshops report record week | Booksellers - The Guardian

Alison Flood, Guardian's books reporter says, With books delayed by the pandemic reaching shops alongside other titles aimed at the Christmas market, the trade has seen sales boom.

‘Just the start’ … a customer exits a Waterstones bookshop in Walthamstow, London.
Photo: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images

Booksellers up and down the UK are reporting a boom in sales since readers returned to bookshops after the lockdown, with the first avalanche of Christmas titles giving them their best first week of September since records began.

New books from authors including Richard Osman, Elena Ferrante and Raynor Winn helped last week, with 590 hardbacks published on 3 September, dubbed “Super Thursday”. Many of the bestselling titles had been delayed from earlier in the year due to the coronavirus. Trade magazine the Bookseller said it was the best first week of September on record, with the books market making £33.6m over the week to 5 September, an increase of 11.1% on the previous seven days.
Despite stringent social distancing rules, quarantining of books handled by readers and gallons of hand sanitiser, book lovers have been quick to return to shops since they reopened in June: the first week back saw 3.8m print books sold, for £33m, up 31% compared with the same week in 2019. Eight weeks after shops reopened, print book sales were up 9% in volume and 11% in value when compared with 2019, according to the Bookseller...

With major new books including Philip Pullman’s Serpentine and JK Rowling’s The Ickabog still to be published this year, McHale at Waterstones said that last week’s Super Thursday was “just the start” of the autumn’s bookselling.
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Source: The Guardian