Bookselling

If you're strolling down the Marylebone High Street in London, you'll stumble across a popular bookstore called Daunt Books. Inside, sunlight pours through stained glass windows, dappling rows of books organized by country, rather than theme, to appeal to armchair travelers who want to explore the world through reading.  Read more

"Booksellers are constantly giving their patrons extraordinary bargains. In London recently a copy of an early edition of Keats' Poems, originally bought from a dealer for 2s was sold for £140, and a first edition of Burns' Poems bought in Edinburgh for 1s 6d brought £350."  Read more

After soaring 18.9% in the first half of 2021 over the comparable period in 2020, unit sales of print books retreated in the first half of 2022, dropping 6.6% from 2021 levels. According to NPD BookScan, total first-half print sales were 362.6 million, down from 386.6 million a year ago.  Read more

More than 60 bookshops launched in the UK and Ireland in the past 18 months - but who would open one in a pandemic? We asked five to share their stories, while bestselling author Val McDermid remembers the bookshops of her youth.

James Daunt, the managing director of Waterstones, discusses Covid-19 closures, paying staff the living wage and saving Europe's largest bookstore.