Bookselling industry

Almost 4m books were sold in the UK in the first six days after bookshops reopened last week - a jump of over 30% on the same week last year as desperate readers returned to browse the aisles for the first time in three months.

After a tiny increase in 2017, figures show their ranks swelled by 15 stores last year in the face of ‘an increasingly challenging landscape'

The joy of the bookstore lies in what might be called the analog experience of the physical space: Hushed page-flipping; the sound of two covers sliding against each other as a book is returned to its spot on the shelf; the quiet murmur of, "Have you read this one?" Luddites and Twitter junkies alike need insulation from the glare of screens and the sounds of speakers.

"Bookselling was and is for me a cultural and political expression, an expression of progressive change, of challenge to oppressive authority, of a search for a community of values which can act as an underpinning of a better world.  Read more

Readings first opened in 1969, and it was a partnership of three - Ross Reading, his wife Dorothy Reading, and Peter Reid. At the time, Australia had a very small local publishing industry and most books came from overseas, as Australia was regarded as part of the British Commonwealth via UK publishers.  Read more