Irish authors to the fore as profits soar at Waterstones

Bumpers book sales by Irish writers Claire Keegan, Sally Rooney, Fintan O’Toole and Diarmaid Ferriter helped Irish book retailer Waterstones’ pre-tax profit more than triple last year to €3.8 million.

New reports from Waterstones Booksellers Ireland Ltd. show that the company saw the profit jump as revenue nearly doubled from €6.3 million to €12.13 million in the 53 weeks to the end of April last year.

Hodges Figgis on Dublin’s Dawson Street is Waterstones’ flagship store in Ireland and a spokesperson confirmed that Claire Keegan’s little things like this was the best-selling book in the outlet over the 12-month period.

He said that “sales have been excellent since last April”.

“We were resilient. We did very well. There were brilliant books for sale. That helps, of course,” said the spokesman.

Of the top eight bestsellers at Hodges Figgis during this period, six were written by Irish authors.

“As a bookshop we make sure that Irish authors are well represented,” he said

The top 4 bestsellers were all Irish with Ms Keegan’s Little things like this at the top followed by Sally Rooney beautiful world, where are youFintan O’Tooles We don’t know ourselves and Diarmaid Ferriters Between Two Hells: The Irish Civil War.

US author Madeline Miller The Song of Achilles took fifth place, followed by the winner of the 2021 Booker Prize The promise by Damon Galgut.

Maureen Gaffney’s Your only wild and precious life was sixth, followed by Colm Tóibín The Wizard.

Waterstones directors say sales and profitability have “improved significantly” over the past year.

The bookseller’s online business “continues to deliver strong performance.”

Covid-19 restrictions hampered the company’s performance last year but had a minimal impact last year as the government allowed brick-and-mortar stores to reopen in May 2021.

Waterstones Ireland – which also has stores in Cork and Drogheda – is currently planning to remodel the Hodges Figgis store.

The profit includes non-cash depreciation charges of €1.3 million and net financing costs of €514,000.

60 people were employed and personnel costs rose to €1.88 million.

Shareholder funds totaled €20.48 million while cash doubled to €5.89 million.