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The Covid-19 pandemic contributed to a steller year for the Irish book trade with sales and revenues higher than at any time since the Celtic Tiger days.
The lockdown was an ill wind that blew some good the way of Irish publishers and bookshops with sales of €161.5 million, a figure only surpassed in 2008.
It represented a €14 million increase on revenue from 2019, according to the Neilsen Bookscan Irish consumer market (ICM) 2020 summary.
Sales are all the more impressive as book shops, where the bulk of books are still sold, were closed for months last year, culminating in the lowest ever recorded book sales for a single week which was recorded during the lockdown in April.
This was countered by 21 weeks of double-digit percentage increases on the same weeks in 2019, suggesting that customers were buying in bulk when they had a chance.
Sale volumes reached 13.1 million, almost one million more than in 2019, an increase of 7.8 per cent.
With value growing at a stronger rate than volume, the average price paid for print books went from €12.11 to €12.31, the highest it has been since 2007.
All five top-selling books outsold even the top selling book of 2019.
The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse by Charlie Mackesy (Ebury Press) was Ireland’s overall best-selling book with 67,926 copies sold in total, just ahead of Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, which sold 63,200 copies. This compares to the top selling book in 2019, The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris, which sold 41,627 copies that year.
Seven books sold over 40,000 copies, more than every year apart from 2009.
The top selling Irish book at number three was Champagne Football by Mark Tighe and Paul Rowan, about John Delaney and the Football Association of Ireland. It sold 49,000 copies.
Old Ireland in Colour by John Breslin and Sarah-Anne Buckley sold 48,000, the highest for an Irish hardback. It was also the only book to earn more than €1 million for the year.
Home Stretch by Graham Norton (46,000), Beyond the Tape by Marie Cassidy (41,000), Normal People by Sally Rooney (40,000), Code Name Bananas by David Walliams (39,000), The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman (34,00) and the Guinness World Records 2021 with 34,000 sales made up the top 10.
In total, books published in Ireland sold 2.3 million copies, bringing in €32.1 million. About a third of sales came from school textbooks and study guides.
The leading six Irish titles were all trade non-fiction, helping that sector to grow 19.9 per cent in value and 11.2 per cent in volume for the year. The largest non-fiction category for Irish books was autobiography.
In its summary BookScan stated the lockdown contributed to the surges in books for entertainment, distraction, home learning, activities, self-improvement, comfort.
It concluded: “There was a lot about 2020 that was anomalous, runaway growth for many weeks will not necessarily become the ‘new normal’, but the book market in Ireland was already in a positive position heading into 2020, pointing to a strong base beneath additional pandemic-fuelled growth.”
The same five publishers make up the top of the list as in 2019, with four of those five growing their sales in 2020. Penguin Random House increased their share to 20.1 per cent of market value, with growth of 12.5 per cent, followed by Hachette up 18.9 per cent, growing to 12.5 per cent share, and HarperCollins (now including Egmont) with 8.2 per cent of the market and 7.7 growth. Gill Group represented 5.8 per cent of the overall ICM (but 29.1 per cent of books published in Ireland) and grew 12.3 per cent compared to 2019. Pan Macmillan followed up their highest year on record in 2019 with only minor decline of 0.4 per cent.
Books published in Ireland sold 2.3 million copies, bringing in €32.1million. About a third of sales came from school textbooks and study guides. The leading six Irish titles were all non-fiction. The largest non-fiction category for Irish books was autobiography, more than 80 per cent, led by A Light That Never Goes Out by Keelin Shanley.
Educational publishers suffered, with Edco, Folens and CJ Fallon down about 20 per cent, while Veritas was down over 58 per cent. Merrion Press, however, had a stellar year, up over 300 per cent, largely thansk to Old Irleand in Colour’s huge success.