Has the editor of The Bookseller compared the fall of print sales of adult fiction since 2009 by more than £150m with the massively declined budgets of public libraries over the same five-year period (The writing’s on the wall for adult fiction in print, 14 January). This is also conditioned by the number of closures of public library branches and the radical changes in book selection due to the serious loss of qualified librarians. The problem facing traditional publishing must have been exacerbated by such austerity in local government, just as it affects the profits of retail supermarkets – and it’s time for real attention to be paid to Keynesian economics instead of finding blame everywhere but in the most obvious place. The villain is not always the internet. Should the austerity continue to such an extent that public libraries disappear, then publishers of fiction – and their authors – will go with them. As will, of course, hundreds of once very familiar journals.
Ralph Gee
Nottingham
• Thank You, Brian Lake, president of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association, and thank you Guardian for publishing his letter (12 January). What a relief to know I’m not the only old bird reading an actual book, the World’s All-Time Best and Irreplaceable Present.
A very long time ago, after every Christmas, either my mother or my best friend’s mother would take us to Bumpus (RIP) to spend our book tokens. It took all day – for Jennifer and me it went by in a blinding flash and nothing could match that quiet (silent, actually) delight. Do they have book tokens any more? (I still have most of my beloved books.)
Thank goodness for public libraries and for bookshops.
Ann Hawker
Ham, Surrey
