While the coronavirus pandemic has given many people a chance to catch up on their reading, the publishing industry is struggling with an unexpected side-effect: not enough paper.

The closure of shops and restaurants under lockdown rules led to a surge in home deliveries and a huge increase in the amount of cardboard packaging. It led to a scramble for pulp in which book publishers lost out to pizza chains, with some European factories switching production from paper to card.

‘My impression is that we have gone to the back of the queue,’ Robert Jan de Rooij, owner of Amsterdam publisher Wilco, told NOS.

‘The whole paper market is completely unbalanced. Usually when I want to order paper it takes a few weeks. Now I have to wait four months. So yes, publishers will sometimes have to wait for their books.’

While publishers in Europe are losing out to cardboard producers, in Asia the book trade is under pressure from the high demand for toilet paper. Shortages of glue and printing supplies are compounding the problem, but Martijn David, general secretary of the General Publishers’ Group (GAU), said it would not lead to higher book prices.

‘Printing only accounts for a small fraction of the price of a book,’ he said. ‘The biggest problem at the moment is reprints: is there enough paper available?’

David said buyers were more likely to be affected by limited choice. ‘We can’t call the printers on Tuesday and ask them to deliver a reprint of 3,000 copies by Thursday,’ he said. ‘My expectation is that more books will be temporarily sold out, so it won’t be “order today, deliver tomorrow”.’