There are calls for New Zealand to start printing international books here because the supply chain has been so severely disrupted by COVID-19.
The average wait time for a book order has gone from days to a month.
It's because most are printed in Australia. They were flown over daily on passenger flights.
"Now, all the books have to come by ship which means they are taking three to four weeks," says Dan Slevin from Booksellers NZ.
"We are just asking all of our customers to be super patient," says TimeOut Mt Eden's Jenna Todd.
There's a lot of them at the moment. Some say Christmas-level demand. The order queue is overflowing at TimeOut in Auckland's Mt Eden.
"We have these huge piles of names on all of the books that are coming in so we don't really have as much stock for the shelves as we'd usually do," says Todd.
One desk in the store that would normally be full and stacked is only partially covered in books. Booksellers are also trying to make sure shelves don't look bare by turning books so their front covers face the customer, rather their spines.
"Booksellers are moving stock around on the shelves to try and hide the gaps," says Slevin.
The trans-Tasman bubble could largely fix the problem, but booksellers also want international books to start being printed here.
"We grow the trees here for the paper, we ship the logs off to China and then we fly the books back to us," Slevin says.
But most books by Kiwis authors are printed here, so now could be a great time to extend 'buy local' to 'read local'.
For booksellers, it's just the start to another tough chapter.
