Christmas fails to cheer German trade

After a bleak Christmas in 1997, German booksellers appear to have fared better during the 1998 festive season, writes Anja Sieg.

But celebrations in the trade were muted, because it is unlikely that any sales gain in December—expected to be in the region of 2%—will be enough to compensate for a moderate year overall.

Final figures for December and the whole of 1998 will be available later this month. But initial reports suggest that the performance of the retail book trade was in line with that of general retailers, who reported brisk business throughout the Christmas season with particularly heavy traffic on the four Saturdays before Christmas. While book sales during the week were generally flat, all four Saturdays brought bookshops year-on-year increases in customer footfall and sales.

According to statistics compiled by German trade newspaper Buchreport, booksellers had their best day on 5th December: sales were up 9% and customers up 6%. Surprisingly, throughout the season east Germany fared slightly better than the west.

Once again there were no big Christmas books. All the fiction hardbacks on the influential Der Spiegel bestseller list sold well, according to booksellers.