Inside the Australian and New Zealand book industry

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Pages & Pages to close

Pages & Pages Booksellers in Mosman, Sydney, will close on 30 August following the owners’ decision not to renew their lease.

Chris and Phil Page first opened the store in the Sydney suburb of Belrose in 1995 before taking over the Moscraft Bookshop in Mosman in 1999. In 2015, their son Jon and his wife, Kate, took over the running of the bookshop. Jon Page served as president of the Australian Booksellers Association from 2010–2013.

In an email to customers, the Page family said it is ‘with great pain and sadness’ that they decided not to renew the store’s lease when it expires on 30 September.

‘We have fought the rise and rise of online shopping and we met the challenge of ebooks head on,’ the Pages said. ‘We have adapted and innovated to all the changes that have occurred to bookshops over the last 25 years. However we have weathered one storm too many and we have decided that now is the best time to wind the business down before it becomes too late to leave on our own terms.’

They said the retail recession, changing consumer behaviour, rent costs, rising wages and business debt ‘have all reached a point where we have decided that renewing our current lease is too risky a proposition’.

In 2013 Pages & Pages became a co-owner of online retailer Boomerang Books, but the bookshop sold the online retailer earlier this year. In late 2018, following the consolidation of Pages & Pages’ children’s bookshop into the main bookshop, the former children’s shop was turned into a dedicated event space.

The Page family thanked the sales reps, publishers and suppliers who supported their store. ‘And a big thank you to all our fellow booksellers out there who have shared ideas and passed on their experience and friendship at industry association meetings and conferences,’ the Pages wrote.

Pages & Pages was awarded the ABIA for best independent book retailer in 2014.

The Pages said they are open to ‘all and any’ offers for the bookshop.

 

Category: Local news