Bookstores celebrate on Aotearoa New Zealand Bookshop Day

Booksellers around the country will celebrate the joy of reading with a host of fanfare events on Aotearoa New Zealand Bookshop Day, Saturday 11 October, as they continue to hold their own in a tough retail environment.

Readers are encouraged to look out for events taking place at their local bookstore that day. They include tattoo artists offering book inspired body art at Enamoured Books, Remuera; a silent Reading Rave and a Bobo Doodle print collab at Time Out, Mt Eden; and a day-long Book Feast including author visits and a Book Character Hunt at Dorothy Butler Children’s Bookshop in Ponsonby. Readers have a chance of winning two $350 bookshop tokens by taking part in the Auckland Bookshop Tour between the 3rd and 11th of October.

Further down country there’s a book treasure hunt at McLeod’s Books, Rotorua, and a book character dress up competition complete with baking and treats is on offer at Schrödinger’s Books, Petone. Christchurch bookstores are going all out, including author appearances, blind dates with books, and the chance to win a Big Bookstack at Scorpio, and an I Spy Window, Lucky Book Dip, and character-themed dress-ups will take place across the courtyard at Telling Tales’ store. And if you carry on down State Highway 1, there’s a 12-hour Read-out-loud-athon with prizes to be won at Timaru Books.

Readers across the country can also win one of eight $250 prizes by writing a love letter to their local bookshop – entry forms available in all participating bookshops.

Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand association manager Renee Rowland says booksellers nationwide are going all-out to share the fun and freedom of reading with booklovers.

‘Creating and sharing stories is fundamental to being a human and a bookshop is a marketplace for those stories. Books and bookshops enrich peoples’ lives, and we want to showcase that on October 11. Bookstores keep things real! Real books, real people, real lives, real connection with others.

‘Bookstores are much more than just retail spaces,’ adds Rowland. ‘They’re community and cultural powerhouses. They help to keep high streets alive, promoting a positive sense of place and bring foot traffic to town centres.’

Financially, bookstores like most retailers are feeling the pinch. In the year ending 31 March 2025, physical bookstore sales were down by 5.3% nationwide, but online sales increased by 6.5% compared to the year prior*.

‘We’re seeing the benefits of booksellers’ skills in selling books online, but we’d obviously like to see their hard work pay off with increased sales in-store, too.

‘Overall, it’s a pretty good result given New Zealand’s well documented challenging trading environment,’ says Ms Rowland.

There were 5.9 million books sold in NZ in the 12-months ending 31 December 2024**. This is down 3.2% on the year prior, ‘a pretty healthy result,’ says Rowland ‘given the economic headwinds facing the entire retail sector.’

‘As a country with a literacy problem, it is in all of our best interests to keep buying and reading books,’ she adds. ‘Bookstores are vital reading-enablers, offering an abundance of fun and forward-thinking books for children and teens.’

* Appended from NielsenIQ BookData’s PANZ Market Size Survey conducted across March/April 2025. **source: Nielsen Bookscan NZ.