What a bookshop actually earns on a £9.99 paperback
A customer hands over £9.99. By the time the shop closes, somewhere between £1.10 and £2.40 of that is still in the till as profit, and the rent has not been paid yet. Three independent shops — in Hebden Bridge, Margate and Glasgow — opened their books for this issue on the condition that I publish the ranges rather than their individual figures.
Where the £9.99 goes
- £4.50–£5.50 to the wholesaler or publisher, depending on the discount the shop can negotiate. Volume is everything, and small shops have none.
- Nothing in VAT — books are zero-rated in the UK. It reappears the moment the shop sells a tote bag, which is one reason every shop sells tote bags.
- £0.22–£0.31 in card fees, higher than any of the three owners expected when I asked them to guess.
- The remainder, £4.20–£5.30, covers rent, staff, heat, insurance and the owner. In two of the three shops the owner is the last one paid.
“I stopped thinking of it as selling books about four years ago. I sell about ninety minutes of somebody’s Saturday, and a book is what they take home from it.” — bookshop owner, Margate
The number nobody volunteers
All three shops make more per square metre from events, coffee and stationery than from books. None of them lead with that publicly, and two were visibly uncomfortable saying it out loud, which tells you something about how the trade sees itself. The full profit-and-loss breakdown, with the events maths, is in the paid version of this issue.
Next week: what a small press pays a translator, and why the rate has not moved since 2016.
Devi Menon elsewhere