The Bookseller - Editor's Letter - Editor's letter: Brought to book

In its welcome leader on-and eulogy for-the publishing group Bloomsbury, published earlier this week, newspaper the Guardian suggested that books could continue to outperform other entertainment goods as the wider economy goes through its "yeah but no but yeah" flirtation with recession. Quoting the venerable Bloomsbury c.e.o. Nigel Newton, it asserted that readers would return to books as other more expensive modes of diversion are cast off.

Maybe. The book trade has had such a good recent run through the travails of the world that it is difficult to remember that not every recession is the same, and not every book purchaser is ready to lean into the next book just because we need them to. The last big recession damaged the memoir market for a decade, and if the period that preceded that fall felt like a bit of a peak time for those kinds of books, we are not too far off a similar peak for the overall book market now. Certainly, the BookTok phenomenon, referenced by the Guardian, that has driven so much good business recently, has yet to prove its staying power.