As SA unfurls from the enforced hibernation of lockdown, the public is gradually ticking off milestones on the journey to normalcy. There was the first hug, the first walk on the beach and the first meal in a restaurant. For many, another milestone is approaching: the return of the Franschhoek Literary Festival.
From Friday to Sunday, May 13-15, 120 authors — local and international — will converge on the historic winelands town to discuss and dissect this year’s literary offerings. Many festivals have not returned following the pandemic, so the prospect of clinking wine glasses and cordial debate on character development will have bibliophiles salivating.
So to what literary world is the Franschhoek festival returning?
In short, the signs for physical book sales are positive. “We’re back to pre-pandemic levels. It was going in the opposite direction, to be quite honest with you, so it’s nice to see some growth,” says Exclusive Books CEO Grattan Kirk.
Global trends back up this sentiment. Book sales in the US have risen steadily since 2012 and, despite fears that the closure of bookstores in 2020 would wring out what life was left of the industry, the pandemic offered an unlikely boost.
“We’re definitely seeing a return to print sales in SA, and I think that’s a consequence of screen fatigue. People are spending hours a day staring at screens, sitting in meetings, [so] for their leisure they’re choosing to read. I think Covid led to a rediscovery of reading as a leisure pastime,” says Eugene Ashton, CEO of Jonathan Ball Publishers.
The pandemic also changed what South Africans read, if only briefly. According to Ashton, the “rump” of the business — around 60% of income — is nonfiction sales, with a particular focus on current affairs. During the pandemic this shifted.
“There was a drop-off in the sale of political exposés. People were looking more for comfort and the familiar. Easy escapism, rather than gruelling escapism,” says Nicky Stubbs, head of sales & marketing at NB Publishers. The trend has begun to normalise, with Stubbs noting that two local true-crime stories have recently seen sterling sales: On the Devil’s Trail by Ben Booysen and Moord op Pofadder by Charné Kemp.
TikTok provides an unexpected boost for the sale of books
— What it means:
Aside from readers turning to the comfort of a paperback during the darker days of lockdown, the biggest boon to book sales has come from an unlikely source: the social media app TikTok. “We noticed in the past six to nine months, books that were five, 10 years old, people started asking for them. The books were trending under #booktok. We ended up scrambling around local publishers for these titles, basically from nowhere,” says Kirk.
The effect TikTok is having on the book trade is huge. Books by unknown authors that did not sell well are plucked from obscurity by an influencer, and regularly end up in the top 10 bestsellers list. Exclusive Books even has a “#booktok Recommends” section in its stores. “It’s like the Harry Potter series in the way it’s introducing people to reading. It’s trendy and cool and sexy to read, which we all hope for,” says Kirk.
While the internet is embracing reading, the book industry is itself modernising. “During the hard lockdown, we saw an overnight swing to both online sales and publicity, which has now corrected [to an even split between online and instore sales]. It was a useful disruption, though, in accelerating the inevitable move to online. It wasn’t an option, it was a necessity,” says Stubbs.
Publishers had also long viewed e-readers and the internet as direct competition to physical copy sales. Opinions are gradually shifting. “[Booksellers] used to refer to the internet as the devil incarnate, flippantly of course. They saw it as a race to the bottom. But I saw it as an opportunity. If you read a book online, you’ll end up with a physical book at some stage. You just get tired of reading on a screen. The smell of a book, the feel of a book, people like to physically hold them,” says Kirk.
The appeal of a physical copy of a book is something the book industry feels can be relied on. “[Readers] want to hold books in their hands, they want to put them on their shelves. There’s a lot of nostalgia around it. There’s a saying in the industry: the Kindle is like the microwave in the kitchen; it doesn’t kill the oven,” says Kate Rogan, owner of independent bookstore Love Books.
There is cause for optimism in all corners of the book industry. The return of book launches has also helped smaller retailers recover and thrive. Interest in books is growing once gain. Just ask the 8,000 readers who are set to spend a weekend in Franschhoek indulging in the joys of the written word. And Kirk concurs: “We’re here to stay. We’re still kicking.”
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