Between the Covers: What's really going on in the world of books

Not for the first time, Britain’s book lovers are stubbornly refusing to follow fashion. This year, apparently, is the year that we acknowledged we have hit “peak stuff”.

So said Steve Howard, the head of sustainability at Ikea, who thinks that in the west we really do not need any more home furnishings. And Orla Kiely, the Irish designer behind all those retro printed goods (ask your wife), who is down on “cluttering”, and says “the world is full of stuff and it is too much”.

Meanwhile, the Japanese “organising consultant” who sold five million copies of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying has launched another book telling us to throw our stuff away – and it is number three on Waterstones’ hardback non-fiction bestseller chart.

Mario Kondo’s new title is Spark Joy: An Illustrated Guide to the Japanese Art of Tidying, and once again it tells British hoarders to stop hanging on to all their belongings. Including books. Including even Kondo’s books.

To most book lovers, the thought of getting rid of books just because you won’t read them in the next few weeks seems ridiculous, if not a bit sinister. And according to our favourite second hand bookshop, Halcyon Books in Greenwich, they are characteristically ignoring the advice.

“Maybe people have taken it seriously and binned their copies,” says the bookseller, Matt Hubbard. “I have not seen it yet, but if I get loads I will make a sculpture out of them.”

The new book, with its minimalist white cover, would indeed make for a handsome sculpture. “This lovely hardback edition comes complete with a green elastic ribbon to wrap around the front of the book to keep it neatly closed in between reading,” the blurb confirms. Perhaps that is why all those tidy bookish people are still hanging on to their copies.

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In the week that Google generously volunteered to pay some taxes in the UK, the American Booksellers Association and Civic Economics have published a report explaining why Amazon and other online retailers are responsible for a $1bn “tax gap”.

Around $625m in lost revenue is down to the failure to collect full sales tax on Amazon sales, reports Publishers Weekly; the rest because 100 million square feet of retail space has gone undeveloped, which would have employed 136,000 workers and generated $420m in property taxes.