Online retail contributes some 25% to 30% of the book market put at EUR80 million to EUR100 million in Romania, according to available data, so mortar and brick bookstores continue to dominate. There are also online stores with significant book sales such as libris.ro and elefant.ro.
“With the lockdown in place and the social distancing recommendations, Romanians and especially the young ones turned to buying books online. Libris.ro therefore saw growth of 30% in sales in March 16-April 16 compared with last year. The increase in the number of orders from 18-24-year olds was 85%,” the officials of libris.ro, one of the largest book retailers in Romania, say.
This period brought many new readers online, some of which used to shop for books in bookstores, but there are also people who turned to buying books as a novelty.
“Some of them will definitely stay once restrictions ease. I hope to see a greater number of people who read in Romania when this period ends for the book market to be able to bounce back fast. Online growth does not offset the offline decline, physical bookstores normally generate ore than 70% of the annual book sales,” says Laura Teposu, development director and co-founder of Libris.ro
Carturesti for instance, one of the largest actors in the industry, closed all its bookstores. Diverta, on the other hand, kept only one store open out of 29, when the malls closed. Online sales, despite the surge, are not enough to offset the loss of sales generated by the physical stores, Diverta officials say.
Online or mostly online retailers are doing well at this time. For instance, Elefant.ro, one of the largest online retailers in Romania, sold more than 120,000 books on April 23, World Book Day. Each person who bought something that day had seven books in their shopping cart on average.
Sales were 60% higher in volume than in 2019.
The officials of the retailer say that 61% of the orders were placed via the mobile phone and 51% were paid by card.
“The more than 120,000 books sold in one day are an all-time high for elefant.ro, beating even the book orders placed on Black Friday. Appetite for reading is overwhelming at this time. The explanation is relatively simple. First of all, many of us are staying home so we have more time to read. Second, since this was a book celebration day, elefant.ro came up with really attractive offers for book lovers that people loved,” says Sergiu Chirca, CEO of Elefant.ro.
The books in highest demand at both elefant.ro and libris.ro at this time are been fiction books. Children’s books and self-help books saw a rise in sales, too.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)