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After encouraging sales despite bookshops’ closures in the first lockdown, the market in Ireland has responded remarkably well since, with sales of Non-Fiction and Children’s titles particularly solid.
In last year’s Irish Country Focus, we noted that the territory’s print market looked surprisingly resilient. Having just emerged from lockdown, when it was not yet known as “the first” lockdown, in mid-2020, print was already mostly recovered from its (not-apocalyptic) Covid-induced decline. Though bookshop closures saw volume sales plummet 43% week on week for the first week of lockdown, each week recovered strongly afterwards.
The BBC adaptation of Normal People, by Sally Rooney pictured above, which became a lockdown phenomenon on both sides of the Irish Sea, gave the market a welcome shot in the arm in mid-May 2020. In Britain, the furore was more than enough to push the 2019-published paperback back to the Official UK Top 50 number one spot, but in Ireland, records tumbled.
By July 2020, when The Bookseller’s Country Focus was released, the market had bounced back to just a 1.8% drop in volume, and a 1.9% fall in value, against 2019 for the year to date. Just a few months before, the very idea of high street bookshops closing would have struck fear into the heart of any publishing or bookselling professional (and did), so evidence that print had not fallen into a black hole was cautiously welcomed.
But of course, just over a year on, with many more lockdowns and a double vaccination under our belts, things look very different. For 2021 to date, Ireland’s book sales have rocketed 14% in volume and 15% in value year on year, with 6.4 million books sold for €75.3m. Similarly to the UK, which posted a post-Lockdown 3.0 bump of 8% in volume and value up to the half year, Ireland’s print market has transformed over the pandemic. Compared to the old normal of 2019, sales are still up by double digits (12% in volume and 13% in value).
Of course, we know now that fiction sales spiked over the initial lockdown period, as worried book-buyers in both the UK and Ireland stocked up on reading material for a long, undefined period of isolation. The Irish Adult Fiction category jumped by double-digit percentage points for the two weeks leading up to the announcement of restrictions in March 2020, as the UK category jumped 32% in volume for that same week. A mid-lockdown Nielsen consumer study found 41% of people in the UK claimed to be reading more in quarantine, with 25% stating they had bought more books. In Ireland, Adult Fiction had more than recovered by the half-year, with sales 3% up against 2019, and sub-category General Fiction up 9%.
However, unlike sourdough bread-baking and Zoom quizzes, this fiction boom wasn’t just a Lockdown 1.0 thing. For 2021 to date, Adult Fiction has continued to climb, selling 1.7 million books for just under €19m, posting jumps of 12% (in volume) and 11% (in value) against 2020. Of course, Covid-19’s second wave has meant Ireland has been in lockdown for much of 2021 so far, but the enduring growth of fiction sales points to a reading renaissance. (Let’s keep in mind Adult Fiction is up 12% in volume year on year before Rooney’s new title, Beautiful World, Where Are You, thunders into the charts in September.)
Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library is Ireland’s fiction number one for 2021 to date, with 23,552 copies sold; 2020 hit Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing charts second. Marian Keyes’ Grown Ups also places highly, with its paperback repeating the success of its 2020 hardback. Louise Nealon’s début Snowflake hit sixth in the fiction chart, following in the footsteps of Rooney’s Conversation with Friends and Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times.
Interestingly though, both Non-Fiction and Children’s have grown more than Adult Fiction over the past year. Non-Fiction, with 2.1 million books sold for €30.4m, is up 18% in volume and 19% in value year on year, after sliding 3% in volume and 1% in value for the same period in 2020. The overall bestseller chart is nearly wall-to-wall Non-Fiction, which claims eight of the top 10.
Irish book-buyers leaned heavily into mental health guides, and after the past year, who could blame them? Charlie Mackesy’s soothing illustrated title The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse charted top of the Irish bestseller chart for the year to date, mirroring its canter to the 2020 number one in the UK. Dermot Whelan’s meditation guide Mind Full hit fourth overall, becoming the second bestselling non-fiction book of the year, with Vex King’s Good Vibes, Good Life and Gerry Hussey’s Awaken Your Power Within also hitting the top 10.
Children’s also soared after a tough 2020. With the School Textbooks category slumping 40% over the first half of last year, the category as a whole fell 5% against 2019. But for 2021 to date, kids’ books have surged by 12% in volume to 2.3 million units sold, and by 12% in value to £20.3m. Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man 10: Mothering Heights pipped David Walliams and Tony Ross’ Megamonster to the post in Children’s, in contrast to the UK. TikTok-assisted Adam Silvera’s They Both Die at the End and E Lockhart’s We Were Liars also charted in the kids’ top 10, as the social media site boosted Young Adult Fiction around the world. Comedian David O’Doherty, a.k.a. “Ireland’s David Walliams”, zipped into 13th place with The Summer I Robbed a Bank, illustrated by Chris Judge.