Books for every taste

A recent UK poll of book sales showed that the ever-growing number of outlets that sell books are catering to vastly different tastes.

In other words, people buy different books in Dubray Books to the books they buy at Tesco. Sales at independent book stores were literary, book club-type books, while the glossier books aimed at women by Sheila O'Flanagan and Marian Keyes dominate the supermarkets. Which isn't surprising since the big stores sell very little else. What it does mean is that our book chart can be skewed in favour of the supermarket fiction, which is sold cheaply from prominent positions. Britain's independent bookstores will issue their own charts from now on – we will keep an eye on how this develops.