It's no Blue Monday for books

Books, and bookshops, continue to buck the trend.

Corporate / Blog / It's no Blue Monday for books

Image by Nikki Cooper.

The science behind January’s so-called ‘Blue Monday’ – said to be the unhappiest day of the year – may be questionable at best, but there’s no doubt that it’s a hard month for many.

And yet the book industry has once again bucked the gloomy trend, with not one, but two encouraging reports emerging hot on the heels of the year’s saddest day – which it clearly wasn’t for those of us lucky enough to work with or love reading books (and, let’s face it, usually both of the above).

First, as joyfully summed up by the chart-topping Richard Osman on Twitter, was that 2022 “was the most successful year in history for fiction sales in the U.K.”. Osman went on to thank all the industry players who’ve contributed to the heartening news – not least the readers themselves, who for a number of speculated reasons have been turning increasingly to books since the first lockdown in 2020 (life has, after all, felt a fair bit stranger than fiction for some time).

Osman’s tribute to “amazing booksellers”, meanwhile, came as our friends at the Booksellers Association revealed their own positive story: independent bookshop numbers have reached a 10-year high. Great news for the thousands of National Book Tokens recipients who’ve been out in force post-Christmas – and for those looking to spend their gifts and rewards in the months and years to come – who are enjoying the biggest range of books, and bookshops to buy them in, for more than a decade.  

Written by Lisa Bywater