British bookstores are struggling with a conspiracy to overcome a supply crisis.

Daunt Books on Marylebone High Street, with its glass ceiling and oak panel galleries, is one of London’s prettiest shops. But this festive season, Edwardian surroundings are a little less elegant than usual. Cardboard boxes and unorganized piles of books are placed between shelves and aisles in some sections of the store.

Like bookstores across the UK, Daunt is concerned that it will not be able to meet customer demand ahead of Christmas due to a global supply chain crisis. We’ve ordered a lot more stock than usual to reduce the chance of out of stock. The chain’s warehouses are almost full and there is nowhere else to put inventory.

General Manager Rose Cole warned that supply could still be short for some titles by the end of the month. “More titles aren’t coming out in time,” she said. “I’ll do it. [get] It’s getting worse.”

She has a right to worry. Further up the supply chain, the bottleneck has been running for months. “The pressure on the system is very high,” said Fabrice Holler, COO of CPI Books, Europe’s largest printing house.

The problem starts near the top of the chain where the raw material supply is tight. The paper industry has been in decline over the years, especially as the digitization of books and various other media have caused factories to close.

According to figures from commodity data provider Fastmarkets, the European sector has lost 1.3 million tonnes, or around 20%, of its primary production technology, the so-called mechanical grinding capacity, over the past five years.

Demand for raw materials has unexpectedly surged during the pandemic. The boom in e-commerce keeps retailers busy looking for cardboard, and book sales have increased as people under lockdown restrictions are starting to read again.

Lars Lundin, CEO of Holmen, one of Europe’s largest book paper producers, is still abiding by supply agreements, but says the Stockholm-based group is taking longer to deliver paper than it did earlier this year. He said he acknowledged the point.

This delay causes problems with the printer. CPI, which accounts for about 40% of Europe’s trade printing market, said it now took the company three weeks to produce a book, much longer than the usual seven days, due to difficulties in securing supplies.

Costs have also risen sharply over the past six to twelve months, Holler said. Paper costs increased by about 20-30%, energy costs by about 25%, and transportation, adhesives and plastic packaging costs by 15%.

“We should pass the increased amount as much as we can,” he said, adding that the printing company increased publishers’ prices by an average of 5%.

Holler said the demand for paper was so strong that CPI had to set sales caps for some customers as well. Amazon has been particularly aggressive in building inventory in both packaging and books, he added.

The stagnation of paper mills and printing mills is just the beginning. Publishers will also have to grapple with the same container shortages, port congestion and truck driver shortages that plague the broader consumer industry.

Factories in the UK can print plain black and white text, but lack facilities for color publications that must be imported. As a result, the risk of shortages is greatest in genres such as children, cooking and gardening. According to publishers and retailers, the title is a popular Christmas gift.

To reduce the potential for shortages, Daunt Books ordered significantly more inventory than usual, resulting in storage problems for its boxed piles of books. © Billy Barraclough

Shipping delays are “getting worse day by day,” said Karina Stevens, head of operations at children’s publisher Nosy Crow. She added that delivery times from Hong Kong have almost doubled from the usual five to six weeks.

In particular, small publishers lack the bargaining power to secure ship space. Larger companies, especially those with higher value stocks, may pay more for slots.

The ship has recently unloaded a container full of Nosy Crow products destined for Singapore’s Southampton, Stevens said. “They literally unloaded our containers from Singapore ports. We had to wait for the next ship to arrive in a week.”

“We tried to move the date forward and allowed more time. But there are limits to what we can do. . . There are still things that cannot be planned, such as closing the port at the last minute.”

Andrew Franklin, co-founder of Profile Books, a publisher of authors including Francis Fukuyama and Jonathan Dimbleby, said: Can I keep it printed? We do not know.”

Already the book release and autograph session had to be postponed.

Franklin said Brexit-related complications have created problems for exports as well as imports. “It used to take a day and a half to bring a book to Ireland. Currently, it takes about 6 to 10 days,” he said.

Publishers’ sales have increased in recent months as retailers like Daunt have rushed to pre-order. London-listed Bloomsbury, for example, posted sales of £111 million in the first half, up 29% year-over-year.

But given the difficulty of balancing supply and demand, publishers have warned that retailers are likely to return more unsold books than usual after the festive season. “We see a huge gap in what we order. [by retailers] Franklin added:

Meanwhile, consumers must order now to release their chosen titles on time for Christmas.

Cole said none of Daunt’s clients have ever experienced an unexpected shortage. But she added, “If you ask the same question a month later, it’s a different story.”

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