QBD Books records sales uplift despite slow industry growth

QBD Books chief executive, Nicholas Croydon has said it is focusing on its in-store customer experience, as the book retailer records an uplift in sales amid tough economic conditions.

QBD Watergardens Shopping Centre is the company's 87th store

Despite slow growth in the business of selling books, Australian owned and operated book retailer QBD Books has unearthed a 4 per cent lift in sales compared with the same period last year.

QBD Books chief executive Nicholas Croydon said the company’s growth is being fuelled by its brick and mortar retail expansion, as well as investing in its in-store customer experience, partnerships with publishers and digital processes.

“People have been telling me for 25 years that I was about to lose my job because books were dead,” Mr Croydon said. An avid reader and author himself, he has proved the critics wrong. This attitude and belief in the enduring appeal of the category has served the QBD Books business well, as it continues with its retail expansion plans.

Mr Croydon and a group of investors purchased QBD Books in 2016, which then had 54 stores dotted across the country. Just a few weeks ago, its 87th store was opened at Watergardens ­Shopping Centre in Victoria. The ambition remains to reach 100 stores nationally.

In 2023, Nielsen BookData’s BookScan, which tracks retail sales for print books, estimated the overall book market was down 2.1 per cent in total sales value to $1.33bn in Australia. It also reported total units sold in 2023 was $69.8m, down 1.7 per cent.

QBD Books chief executive Nicholas Croydon

Last year, Mr Croydon explained that book sales across the industry were propped up by a series of high-profile and top-selling books, such as Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, and Nagi Maehashi’s RecipeTin Eats: Dinner cookbook, which sold 254,000 books and totalled $6.6m in sales across all retailers in Australia.

Some genres at QBD are performing particularly well, including “romantasy” (a blend of romance and fantasy fiction), young adult, anime and manga.

While the company has an online shopping capability, more than 90 per cent of QBD’s sales are transacted in its bricks-and-mortar bookshops.

For this reason, Mr Croydon places a significant value on the in-store customer experience. It is also a reflection of the size of the investment made in expanding stores, which totals $20m since the company was purchased in 2016.

“All these genres we do particularly well in. And that’s because our staff members are really interested in it themselves. They get to talk to customers (and) like-minded people,” he said.

“If you’re after history or fiction, there’s always someone in the store who knows about the books.”

Mr Croydon said the business is investing more money in its ­customer experience than AI.

“We’re investing in technology to save time, but that time isn’t to reduce hours. It is to reduce the time it takes to do operations. And then that frees up time to go and speak to customers and find out what they really want and to make suggestions. That’s where the money is. The money is in ­customer experience,” he said.

“I don’t want you talking to ­robots. I want you talking to human beings.”

The majority of digital investments totalling “several million dollars” are going towards QBD’s digital sales, marketing such as newsletters and operations.

The business is continuing to position itself as an Australian ­ independent bookshop, but one that houses a considerably large range of titles, with around 15,000 available in each QBD store.

QBD has also co-branded some of its stores with Australian Geographic in recent years, which Mr Croydon said was part of a move to attract new customers to QBD stores. It also runs a national program to spotlight Australian authors across a range of genres.

Even in tough economic times, Mr Croydon said books still offer good value for money, and that “value” is inextricably linked to the operation and marketing of the business, which sells books at discounted prices.

“To read a novel takes an average reader about eight or nine hours. And you can get (a book) from us for anywhere between $10 and $30. So it’s quite good value.”

Mr Croydon also knows the competition for people’s attention is fierce in an information and entertainment-saturated world: “We compete against other forms of entertainment,” he said.

“Getting teenagers off their phones, getting off of Netflix. They’re all competing for time. That’s why we have to have a well-curated range. And people who know what they’re talking about.”