Book sales resist big freeze

27.12.10
The last full week of sales before Christmas raises hope for the last few days of the year.
Spending at UK booksellers jumped 12.3% week-on-week last week, despite widespread reports that the big freeze had badly affected bookselling in the last month (a Synovate footfall estimate of a 20% drop in shoppers).
According to Nielsen BookScan data, spending at UK booksellers during the seven days to 18th December totalled £74.1m, up £8.1m on the previous week and down just 2.1% (£1.6m) on the same week last year, beating the annual figure of a 3.6% drop in book spend.
The situation is much better than one may have expected following the Synovate report that footfall across the UK was down 24.3% on 2009 on Saturday—the biggest shopping day of the year—and down 20.5% week-on-week.