Coronavirus: Bookshops struggle as delivery costs curb online sales

One morning last week a greeting card was pushed under the bolted door of the Village Bookshop in Terenure, Dublin. It was from an occasional customer.

“A very nice, quiet, well-spoken lady . . . I didn’t even know her second name,” says shop owner Alice Walsh.

Inside the card was a cheque for €500. Walsh felt her “knees go to jelly” as she was so touched by the gesture.

“The lady wrote in the card that it was to help me with my cash flow in these awful times to come, and to thank me for giving Terenure the luxury of a bookshop,” she says.

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“The money obviously means an awful lot, but the fact that she would think of that and do that . . . It made me feel part of the community.”

Since being ordered by the Government to close to help halt the spread of coronavirus, Walsh says sales have halved.

“But I’d say the goodwill towards me has doubled.”

Orders and queries have fallen to three or four a day by phone or online since the measures came in. Walsh is delivering free of charge, where she can, by foot, bicycle, car or bus.

“I’d go to Wicklow to sell a book at this stage,” she says. “We are very small and I have to hold on to my customers.”

Walsh has been in business for almost eight years and hers is one of about 300 bricks-and-mortar bookshops in the State facing an uncertain future. Such is the shock from the pandemic that even big cogs in the industry wheel are grinding to a halt.

Publishers

“When this all kicked off, I thought even when every bookshop in Ireland closes, at least I’ll have Amazon,” says Conor Graham, managing director of publisher Merrion Press.

“But I’ve stopped receiving orders from Amazon. They’re still selling books but not re-ordering once stocks run out, because they’re so overwhelmed with the amount of online shopping.”

Amazon said last month it was hiring 100,000 extra staff to cope with the surge in demand, but it is prioritising orders of food, health products and items needed to work from home.

Graham has not been told when Amazon, his third-largest customer, will re-order. He says turnover has fallen by a “catastrophic” 90 per cent due to the pandemic and online sales have “gone down rather than up”. However, he believes things will improve “once people get their heads around the situation” and that some turnover can be clawed back.

“Inevitably, boredom will kick in and sales will increase.”

For now, all Graham has to sell are e-books on the Amazon Kindle store, which make up just 5 per cent of his normal turnover.

One title – Coping with Coronavirus – was written in five days by clinical psychiatrist Brendan Kelly and is selling at almost cost price – 99p. Graham says it is being published "for the greater good . . . effectively forgoing profits".

Book launches

Merrion has shelved the launch of two books scheduled for this month. Three other books are on hold. Publishers are looking for new ways to promote sales beyond the usual bookshop signing sessions.

Ruth Hallinan, manager at Lilliput Press, was supposed to launch Adrian Duncan’s A Sabbatical in Leipzig last week.

Instead of an event at Dubray Books on Dublin’s Grafton Street, she has arranged “virtual events” to coincide with the cancelled appearances. Authors have been interviewed on social media with viewers then directed to a shop’s online store. It is a new and “slightly experimental” time, she says.

John Keane, the Booksellers Association of Ireland chairman and general manager of Eason in central Dublin, says chain stores like Eason – which has closed 70 outlets – have been hard hit by the pandemic, but the independents are “more of a worry” with cash flow, rates and job security with which to contend.

Keane estimates about 180 smaller Irish bookshops do not have a full online store. The fear is that the expected surge in book sales through the slicker online operations – run mainly by big chains offering free delivery – will decimate the smaller players.

Postal costs are critical for the independents, Keane says, and big companies can absorb these given their scale, while the costs “absolutely cripple” smaller traders.

A suggestion circulating in the industry is that An Post could temporarily reduce postage costs for smaller traders, given most believe an upturn is imminent. Online sales of children’s books are rising as parents try to find ways to occupy stuck-at-home youths, and this is expected to widen to adults in time.

In Terenure, Walsh is taking it one day at a time.

“I feel if I don’t keep going, that will be the end of it,” she says. “When this is over, everything is going to look different. But I sincerely believe that books are really necessary in this time.”