Mr Byrne said they had definitely seen an increase in sales.
He said the last decade had been a tough time for some independent book sellers, who didn't have the safety nets of franchises to help them survive, but it was great to see good times returning.
"It seems to be coming true that after a decade of going towards e-readers they're now tiring of them and rediscovering physical books."
While he didn't think they would return to their heyday, he believed the current swing was a positive step. He believed 2015 would show that physical books were back to stay.
Bookshops with integrity and which could afford to hold the line would survive and should be positive about the future, he said.
Atlantis Books owner Fraser Newman said business was booming.
The store has been open less than a year, so he couldn't compare this year to previous years, but "definitely we have been doing well out of it".
Mr Newman said since opening Atlantis less than a year ago, they'd expanded with stores in Whakatane and Tokoroa.
He believed the move back to traditional books was a combination of people ditching their e-readers as well as others who had moved away from buying books online from overseas suppliers.
"I think it is partly in response to people being burned by [overseas book suppliers] by getting the wrong book or it being late."
With three new shops in less than a year, Mr Newman said there were still areas he'd like to expand into - but that was probably a year away.
Booksellers NZ chief executive Lincoln Gould said recent Nielsen figures showed an uplift in Christmas sales by value of 10.5 per cent over 2013, which has helped drive an overall annual growth in value of 0.1 per cent.
Booksellers have not seen figures like this for a few years, and they come despite doomsayers telling tales of e-book and off-shore online sales heralding the death of the bookshop."
Mr Gould said there had been a certain degree of rationalisation within the industry, perhaps more so among publishers than booksellers. But the latest figures demonstrate the basic resilience of booksellers in meeting the challenges of the last few years.
The re-discovered attraction of books and bookshops is not restricted to New Zealand, with the booksellers associations of Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom all reporting record Christmas sales and an upturn in overall sales in 2014.
"There are still issues and risks. New Zealand booksellers, like all small retailers here, remain competitively cramped in competing with off-shore online retailers who do not collect GST on sales.
"And the e-book/reader phenomenon has not gone away, although it is clear that the gloss is fading. The e-format is becoming just another aspect of the market," Mr Gould said.
