We have travelled the country to learn how people are coping with the recession. Watch the video interviews, or send us your own videos and tips, at nzherald.co.nz/go/surviving09
In troubled times, it seems, people are turning to books for escape. Or maybe, says Unity Books co-owner Jo McColl, they're just ravenous for "brain food".
Unity, with a store in both Auckland and Wellington, is like the majority of independent bookstores throughout the country - keeping solidly on its
feet in the downturn. "Independents know their customer base and they know how to react," McColl says. The owners are working in the stores - including herself in Auckland's High St and Tilly Lloyd in Willis St, Wellington - so they know exactly what to re-order and which new releases will sell. "People are desperate for brain food, because I don't think TV is giving it to them," says McColl.
In the Unity stores, men are out-buying women, non-fiction is flying out the door and hardbacks are selling well.
"Our customer base is 60-40 men to women, which is against the trend. I'm of the belief that the male market isn't really being catered for," McColl says. Men are essentially buying non-fiction, but more biography than the self-help genre.
Sales at Unity's Auckland store are on a par with last year, but Wellington is already "well up" on what were improved sales in 2008.
"Every year in the 20 years I've been at Unity, the two stores have alternated having great years. It's never coincided, and we've never been able to work out why." Last year and this year have been Wellington's stellar years, so McColl reckons it must almost be Auckland's turn to top the best-seller list.
As well as increasing book sales, another sign that literature is alive and well was last month's Auckland Writers and Readers Festival, where ticket sales far exceeded the previous year and book sales prospered.
"Writing has never been so exciting," says McColl. "The store is full of books from all around the world; where 20 years ago we could hardly push an Australian novel down people's throats, that's definitely changed. New Zealand books have never been better either."
While Unity hasn't stumbled in this recession, it has taken the hits when chains such as Dymocks and Borders opened stores in downtown Auckland. "On each of those occasions we got a whack that would sometimes last a year. But my whole attitude is to carry on as though nothing has happened," says McColl. "People will always go and have a look, but they always come back.
"This time we've been a bit more wary about taking really large numbers of books. But we've kept the attitude of carrying on as normal."
With many of its suppliers retrenching to Australia, Unity has benefited from new sale-or-return agreements.
"At the moment, the dollar is quite good for us so we are doing a huge amount of importing from the United States ourselves. American imports are a really big part of our business - we bring in a lot of books that aren't available in other stores. A lot of the books selling well are ones local suppliers haven't even decided to bring in yet. So many of our customers read overseas magazines and travel a lot and see the books that are available in the States. Unity has always been about customers' passion, not what we want to buy, so special orders are quite a big slice of the business."
McColl is the perfect example of a woman who loves her job - it's the only place she has worked since she left university two decades ago.
"I think we have the best staff we have ever had; we all love books," she says.