By Siobhan O’Leary

Much as the weather was unseasonably cold in Germany in May, book sales experienced a bit of a chill in comparison to last year. Due in part to the fact that there was one fewer shopping day this year and that the May 1st holiday fell on a Saturday — meaning stores were closed on a typically busy shopping day — sales dropped a total of 6.5% over May 2009. According to Buchreport, only about 4% of that is attributable to the reduced shopping days and overall sales for 2010 thus far are down an average of 5.5% over 2009.

June, however, is expected to show signs of improvement, with an extra shopping day over 2009 and a very promising start to the latest release in the Twilight series, Bis(s) zum ersten Sonnenstrahl (Rising Sun), which hit #1 on the bestseller list in Der Spiegel the day it went on sale. This all assumes, of course, that shoppers will be able to drag themselves away from the World Cup!