Almost eight million books were sold in the Netherlands in the first three months of this year, a drop of 11.4% on the year-earlier period.

The decline was largely due to the collapse of the Polare and ECI book shop chains, retail research group GfK said. The first quarter was ‘one of the most difficult periods for book sales in the past few years.’

Sales fell 10% to €102m.

Sales of ebooks rose 29% to 426,000. That means roughly one in 20 books now sold is an electronic version.

Most of the Polare book shops have since been relaunched under new names.