Book Sales in Europe Are Gaining in Tough Times (Published 2009) (2024)

PARIS — Some people are seeking explanations for the global economic crisis. Others want to escape into the fanciful world of vampires. Still others are just looking for a nice plate of comfort food.

Whether they are picking up “La Crise, et Après?” by the French economist Jacques Attali, one of the countless translations of the American author Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” series, or “Jamie’s Ministry of Food,” by the British television chef Jamie Oliver, they are buying books. As the recession leaves other media industries in tatters, the oldest mass medium of all is holding up surprisingly well.

“It’s a happy message,” said André Breedt, research and development analyst at Nielsen BookScan, which tracks book sales. “People have been reading and they will keep reading, no matter what happens.”

That resilience has been particularly evident in Continental Europe. After a dip in the fall, the number of books sold in France rose 2 percent in December from a year earlier and 2.4 percent in January, according to Livres Hebdo, a trade publication.

The trend has been similar in Germany, where the number of books sold rose 2.3 percent in January, according to the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, a trade organization. Analysts say many other European markets have also shown gains.

In the United States and Britain, book sales have been slightly less robust, falling by a fraction of 1 percent in both countries last year, according to Nielsen BookScan. Sales in the United States were down about 1 percent in the first 10 weeks of this year.

Still, given that many other industries are struggling with double-digit sales declines, even those numbers look pretty good. To angst-ridden publishers, they are particularly surprising because comparisons with 2007 were bound to be difficult. Sales that year benefited from the publishing industry’s equivalent of an economic stimulus package: a Harry Potter novel.

Publishers and analysts offer a variety of reasons for the relative strength of the book market. Compared with a new television or video game console, books are inexpensive. With unemployment on the rise and working hours in decline, people may simply have more time on their hands. After the excesses of recent years, reading is an activity well suited to a more contemplative era.

“Books are a very cheap treat,” said Helen Fraser, managing director of Penguin Books in London. “When you are reading all this dreadful news in the paper, a lovely 500-page novel by Marian Keyes or a classic by Charles Dickens takes you right away from all that.”

So far, books have also been largely unaffected by the wrenching changes that digital technology is bringing to other media. So-called e-books are gaining adherents, as are electronic reading devices like the Kindle by Amazon, but most people still read books the old-fashioned way.

That is not to say that all is well in publishing. A number of New York publishing houses, including HarperCollins, Random House, Simon & Schuster, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Macmillan, have recently announced layoffs or executive shake-ups — or both.

One reason things look worse in publishers’ offices than on bookstore floors is that retailers have been cutting back on their orders in anticipation of slower sales. As tracked by the Association of American Publishers, wholesale book sales in the United States fell by 2.4 percent last year. Orders for adult hardcover books — that is, new mainstream titles — have been particularly weak.

Christine Ferrand, editor of Livres Hebdo, said she had spoken with historians to ask them how the French book business responded to the Wall Street crash of 1929. There was no immediate slowdown at the time, she was told, but several years later, as the Great Depression deepened, book sales plunged and many publishers went out of business.

“Now we are asking ourselves, will it be like that again?” she said. “There is still a sense of fragility.”

But downturns have also created opportunities for publishers. Penguin was founded in 1935, during the Great Depression, by the publisher Allen Lane, who wanted to sell quality books for roughly the price of a pack of cigarettes.

Not everything is selling well. The market for travel books has been sluggish. And while comfort food is in, dieting is out, along with books about fitness and fashion, Ms. Fraser said.

“It just feels too sybaritic and selfish to buy books about how to lose 100 pounds or to run a marathon,” she said.