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| WH Smith at Gatwick Airport | |
Bookstore chain WH Smith will not be opening any more U.K. High Street stores, focusing instead on airports and train stations there, as well as opening new shops in the U.S. and Europe, the Guardian reported.
"We've got a very healthy High Street business in the U.K.. But we've got no ambitions to grow that," CEO Carl Cowling told BBC World Service Marketplace Morning Report, adding that the company currently operates about 550 U.K. High Street stores and opening more "would just be a duplication.... When you look at the main cities across England, Wales and Scotland, we are present in those cities."
Cowling noted that WH Smith's biggest growth market is the U.S., where it bought Marshall Retail Group and InMotion in 2018 and 2019, respectively, and has captured about 12% of the retail market in airports. "Our ambition is to get to 20% over the course of the next four years and then that will mean probably only the best parts of 150 stores," he said, adding that the company will spend about £120 million (about $150 million) this year opening shops in the U.S. and Europe. "So in the first half of this year, we opened 30 shops in North America and opened another 30 shops in the second half of this year."
Cowling added the rise in interest rates has increased the costs of the company's investments: "It's something we have to think about because we bought two businesses in the U.S. and and of course we have debt in the purchase of those businesses. But our business has come out of the pandemic in a good place. We're very cash generative, and we haven't got a ceiling on our investments at the moment."
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French book publishers' sales fell 5.4% last year, and the number of units sold fell 7.7%, according to the French Publishers Association (Syndicat National de l'Edition). The Bookseller reported that "the comparison sounds worse than it is, because 2021 was an exceptional year as the world rushed to catch up after the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, compared with the pre-Covid reference year 2019, the French book market grew last year by an inflation-adjusted 3.1% and 3.7% in numerical terms, the SNE said."
French national statistics office (INSEE) figures show that retail book prices rose by only 1.48% between 2021 and 2022, against 5.9% for all consumer goods over the period. Editorial production increased by 1.8% from 109,480 titles from 111,503, but this was due mainly to reprints as the number of new titles fell 2.9% from 2021 and 15.3% from 2019.
"This shows publishers are trying to manage their editorial policy better in order to limit the increase in new titles and not saturate the market," the SNE said. The Bookseller noted that market saturation in France has long been a sore point for booksellers. In addition, the average print run for all books shrank by 4.8% and by 10.2% for reprints.
Looking ahead, SNE director Renaud Lefebvre said current indicators suggest sales will rise this year: "It is difficult at this stage to give a forecast, particularly in view of inflation, but we think the increase could be about 2%."
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A new survey commissioned by Swedish online bookstore Adlibris has shown that almost 70% of Swedes intend to read a physical book during the upcoming summer. The European & Independent Booksellers Federation's Newsflash reported that "thrillers and detective stories are the most popular summer reading genre, especially among readers aged 60–64, while the younger generations prefer fantasy and romance."
"There are also differences between the genders, where women mostly read to relax and men to a greater extent read for knowledge," said Taru Raita, manager for fiction at Adlibris.
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"This London bookstore lets you try the recipes before you buy," Great Big Story reported in a video profile of Book for Cooks in Notting Hill, which was launched in 1983. Heidi Lascelles "came up with an intriguing concept, a bookstore with a small kitchen that could put cookbooks to the test. A different book would be chosen every day and recipes from that book would be cooked and served for lunch in-store. Regular customer Eric Treuille would frequent the shop hoping to get the attention of a charming staff member named Rosie and before he knew it, they would eventually take over running the store together." --Robert Gray