Live music venues have (mercifully) enjoyed a reduction in business rates before, and will now do so again - along with pubs and clubs - from April next year. But independent bookshops have been excluded - something that the Booksellers Association, with the backing of a number of high-profile authors, is quite understandably petitioning the government to change, on the grounds that they too "deliver significant community benefit" and therefore "deserve targeted support".
As the Guardian's Emma Loffhagen explains, the impact of projected business rates increases are already evident in terms of bookshops tightening their belts and avoiding investment in "stock, staffing, events or their premises". Closures will almost certainly also be a consequence.
One of those firmly behind the Booksellers Association's open letter is Philip Pullman: "In the current encircling corporate darkness, independent booksellers are lighthouses. They are almost the last beacons shining to remind us about private reading, personal discovery, and the life-saving joy of encountering minds and hearts that speak to us as one person to another." This glosses over the existence of public libraries - but of course those too continue to operate in the face of significant financial constraints.
In the US, the picture appears to be surprisingly positive, with a staggering 31 per cent more stores opening in 2025 than in 2024. Here in Cardiff, too, there are positive signs. I've long bemoaned the lack of indies beyond the likes of Troutmark, which only deals in second-hand books, but it now has Love Stories opposite, specialising in romantic fiction. (Incidentally, hope Alice Fraser had a chance to visit when she was in town last month.) What's more, on the way to Wellfield Bookshop recently, I came across a new shop on Crwys Road. If such places are to survive and indeed thrive, they need custom - but they also need the support of a sympathetic government.
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