Elizabeth Knox's The Absolute Book continues to sell despite Covid's best efforts.
The local book industry was hit hard this year by Covid-19 but signs of recovery are very hopeful, writes Finlay Macdonald
Book publishing in a tiny market like New Zealand is never the easiest proposition. It costs roughly the same to make a book here as it does anywhere but the likelihood of it selling in sufficient quantities to cover those costs and make a profit, let alone the kind of margins international publishers want to see, is limited by simple maths. Adding a global pandemic to the balance sheet certainly doesn't help.
On the other hand, what better companion during long lockdown days and nights than a book? The generally dystopian undertones of the year made many of us feel like we were living in a novel anyway, so the consolations of reading seemed more necessary than ever. If anything, it was the inverse of escapism — when the world is unrecognisable, the page in front of you can be doubly reassuring.
What an irony, then, that when the country shut down and the Government decreed what goods and services would be considered essential, books (and magazines) missed the cut. Claire Murdoch, head of publishing at Penguin Random House NZ, probably speaks for all local publishers when she calls it "that white-knuckle, zero-income lockdown month".
Like most of us when that nationwide "closed" sign went up, publishers and booksellers struggled to make sense of the new abnormal. Tilly Lloyd, co-owner of Unity Books in Wellington, remembers donning latex gloves and unlocking the shop to recover staff laptops in early April. "When I turned on the lights, the science table said, 'I told you so.' History said, 'Yeah.'"
And yet books have proved more resilient – essential, you might even say – than might have been expected. Once online sales could be processed and the Unity website was turned back on, says Lloyd, customers "went into white-water levels of book-buying". When the doors finally opened again in May, "people were in like a shot".
"I've lost track of the number of times a book trade person has told me since June that it's 'like Christmas', says Murdoch. "That's no small thing in an industry that traditionally does the lion's share of its business in that holiday period."
Some readers had also stockpiled before lockdown, she says, and strong orders since have combined to produce a remarkable uptick in sales. "Pinch me," she says, "It's a hockey stick!" This seems to apply to the smaller independent publishers too. If Fergus Barrowman of Victoria University Press (VUP) isn't quite as bullish, he is at least relieved: "We've produced close to the list we thought we would."
Did books and reading become a kind of literary sourdough – one of those things we'd all been meaning to do but never had the time until Covid-19 changed our priorities? Murdoch thinks so, with local authors and publishers notably benefitting, including Māori titles and "the rise and rise of te reo Māori language learning books". Unity has seen that trend, too, says Lloyd: "Local publishing sales – including NZ fiction, which is in pretty good nick by the way – are higher than 25 per cent of our total sales."
Part of that local success, says Barrowman, has been the way strong titles from 2019 have continued to sell well. VUP hit "the trifecta" with rocker Shayne Carter's excellent memoir Dead People I Have Known, which won awards, was praised by critics and became a bestseller. But other novels from last year, such as Elizabeth Knox's The Absolute Book and Carl Shuker's A Mistake, as well as non-fiction titles, have kept on selling. "I don't think we've ever done so many reprints," says Barrowman.
Sales seem to be shared among genres, although Unity has seen increased interest in speculative and science fiction, says Lloyd. "Not really a surprise. Environment and capitalism are bigger than usual – and they're usually big. Travel books still sell, especially travel writing. No surprise there either – we still dream."
And we still cook – increasingly from a plant-based menu, it seems. Raw & Free, by Sophie Steevens has been a hit for Allen & Unwin, as have independently-published titles like Margo and Rosa Flanagan's Two Raw Sisters and Nadia Lim's Vegful. Chelsea Winter's vegetarian hit Supergood will have kept the Penguin Random House bottom line looking supergood, too.
If our appetite for reading has stayed healthy, though, it's the business of actually printing, shipping and promoting books that has tested the industry most. Publishing is far from alone in finding how fragile supply lines and just-in-time deadlines work in a crisis, but the challenge now is to adapt.
There's a degree of irony in all this. Local publishing went through various painful restructurings in the past decades – closing warehouses, cutting workforces, becoming more reliant on overseas printers and freight logistics. There's no simple way to unmake that bed.
"What would we have to do," asks Barrowman, "if we wanted to rebuild the self-sufficient publishing and bookselling industry we had when I started here? Build a big new Auckland warehouse? Reinvest in the printing industry? Start making paper again at Mataura?"
With planes grounded everywhere, says Lloyd, the switch to marine cargo "reminds older booksellers of the analogue heyday of the late-80s", particularly when ordering stock from the big international publishers.
"Right now there are some almighty bottlenecks – gridlocked ports, overwhelmed rolling stock and disarray in the New Zealand transport depots. Fancy it taking more than six weeks to get the new William Boyd in-store from Melbourne. Our new storage site is still sitting idle but the avalanche will arrive. It's a domino effect, coming our way."
At the same time, publicity events, launches, author tours, festivals and visits by big-name international authors have all been disrupted by the pandemic, meaning publishers and retailers have had to double down on digital and social media publicity. But it's just that much harder to be noticed. "'I didn't know you'd published that' is something I've heard too often in the last couple of weeks," says Barrowman.
As the recent success of local lit-fests Word Christchurch and Verb Wellington have shown, however, a little real-world engagement can go a long way. With the book trade's traditional harvest season upon us, it's safe to say everyone is dreaming of a level 1 Christmas. And if you want to know if this story has a happy ending, you'll just have to keep reading.
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