Independent bookshops are popping up all across the country with four new ones opening in the past month alone.
A selection of the books at new bookshop, Good Books. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Wellington in particular is reaping the benefits - with one bookshop already up and running, and another one due to open later this week.
The start of the pandemic - and the looming economic crisis - would have triggered some nasty memories for booksellers.
A decade ago, the Global Financial Crisis brought on a tough few years, coinciding with the rise of Amazon, and the emergence of e-books.
But the head of Booksellers NZ, Dan Slevin* said this time around people are re-discovering just what a good bookshop has to offer.
"They have book clubs, they have book readings, they have author tours and signings, and so people are rediscovering the customer service you get from a local independent bookseller."
More people are choosing to start up their own bookshop, and not just in the city centres. Alongside new booksellers in Wellington and Christchurch, independents have also popped up in Wanaka and Twizel.
Dan Slevin: "Booksellers are a central part of your community." Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Slevin said there would always be an opportunity for more bookshops, "as long as there are places that are under-served".
"Also we don't have a huge number of specialised bookshops here in New Zealand," he said.
"We've got three or four children's bookshops, but there could be more that specialise in serving those areas."
Wellington profiting
How Wellington's newest bookshop, Good Books, came to be, is a story in of itself. It started with a joke on Twitter between two authors - Jane Arthur and Catherine Robertson - after the long-running Marsden Books in Kaharore went up for sale in July.
"[Jane Arthur] just put a joke on Twitter and said, "will someone buy it for me?" Robertson said.
"And I suddenly thought, I've had all these sort of ideas about promoting New Zealand literature, and kind of having writers' residences, and just supporting Wellington's particular literary community, and I thought 'what better place to do that than a bookshop'."
Although they were unsuccessful in their bid for Marsden Books, by that point, the idea was already fully formed.
"I remembered that this space in Jessie Street was coming free, and I rang immediately, and I ran down, I ran from Victoria University down here, to pin the potential landlords to the wall, and said, 'Will you release this space?', and they said: 'of course!'"
Catherine Robertson is the co-owner of Good Books. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Good Books is now the third bookshop to open in Wellington in the past two years.
Appetite for books seems to be growing in such times.
"If you can't travel you've got travel books," Robertson said.
"If you want to be having people at home, you've got cookery books and things like that, and you've got escapist books, and fantasy and stories or you've got political books where you can try and understand what is going on in this world."
New kids on the block... but not for long
Although open for just a few weeks, they won't be the newest bookseller in Wellington for long.
Jackson Niewland and Carolyn DeCarlo have spent the past six years running Food Court, a poetry reading collective.
Now they're turning a new page, hoping to create a bookshop which provides something a bit different.
"The largest publishers that we're doing are the university presses in New Zealand, but going way down smaller to people who are handmaking books in their houses and stuff," Niewland said.
They're looking to particularly feature indigenous voices, queer voices, writers with disabilities, and books that are translated.
From next year, they will also start to publish their own material.
Jackson Niewland and Carolyn DeCarlo are planning a new book venture. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Their shop location is Constable Street in Newtown close to a number of other booksellers - but that's not creating any tension.
"We all support each other," DeCarlo said. "I mean, we haven't opened yet, so I don't know, but the vibe seems to be that we're all going to be supporting each other rather than thinking about it as some sort of book competition."
While a pandemic might seem a strange time to begin a new venture, data from Nielsen Bookscan showed booksellers are recovering well since the lockdown.
Since the end of May, book sales are week-on-week stronger than last year.
And while sales for the entire year are still down by 7 percent on 2019, that's not bad, considering shops were shuttered for that entire five-week period.
* Dan Slevin is also a reviewer and presenter for RNZ.
