Bookselling industry

If a publisher's titles aren't available on Amazon, it might as well close shop and find a new line of business. Even the biggest publishers are no match for Amazon's death grip on the book market.

This week the Guardian suggested that books could continue to outperform other entertainment goods as the wider economy faces financial uncertainty, asserting that readers would return to books as other more expensive modes of diversion are cast off.

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.