Takeover
I've remained pretty quiet on the story about my former employer's making a bid for rival bookstore chain Ottakar's recently. It is difficult for me to comment on because it could too easily be interpreted as sour grapes or the grinding of the axe (hey, I have no axe to grind, honest - my Viking mate Vegar is the axe man in our gang, I prefer a good sword myself).
Suffice to say I am not in favour of it - not because of my own experiences, but because I believe it can only be bad for readers, authors and publishers (and for many booksellers). Even if I still worked at They Who Shall Not Be Named - indeed even if it was more like the company I first joined years ago I would oppose it. No one bookchain should have such a stranglehold on the high street and on suppliers. It will harm large publishers as even higher discounts and fees for displays are demanded and will crush independent publishers who already struggle to get their books represented in the stores (a result of both business practises and the degrading of local buying - central purchasing and the erosion of expert local buyers in branches have meant it is harder and harder for local publisher to sell their books in local stores owned by chains (not just in my former employer's chain I must add in fairness, others too).
However, I am not going to go on about it except to point out a few spots where more has been said about it, such as this very emotive piece over on the Overgrown Path and some words from Ariel, which includes a link to the OFT where you can send your thoughts for consideration on the ancshluss; and it will be like annexing another country - I recall when they 'merged' with Dillons but promised they would run alongside the company, yet not long after the ones which did not get closed were all re-branded and Dillons vanished. I really don't want to see this happen to Ottakar's too.
Do we really want one uber-bookchain feeding us an ever-diminishing range of promoted titles at the expense of variety, diveristy and range depth? With independent bookstores finding it ever more difficult and new authors struggling to be picked because publishers must come up with books they can sell in big numbers to recoup the amount they give away in fees and discounts to chains our literary world is about to get smaller and that is a bad thing. The Telegraph also posted an interesting piece on the subject here, which I found via Cheryl's excllent weblog on Emerald City. I thought Alan Giles' comment that publisher weren't forced to do business with They WHo Shall Not Be Named was hilarious - who, especially given this attempt to take an enormous chunk of the British high street booksales, are they supposed to sell their books to? This attitude is exactly why this merger should not be allowed by the OFT - it will harm the booktrade, deny readers choice and put even more pressure on the remaining independent sellers and publishers.
Seems to me we need something like the organic food movement or farmers' markets to promote real books, not just the ones that W's main man chooses. But how?
ReplyDeletesupport independent bookshops... in Edinburgh go to word power in west nicholson st - they will order for you online as well. www.word-power.co.uk
ReplyDeleteHaving worked for Dillons and Waterstones at seperate stores i have no problem with the take over of Ottakars (where i currently work).
ReplyDeleteUltmately any bookstore is as good as its booksellers and management. There is no argument about customer choice as far as range is concerned as the ordering by Ottakars is even more centralised than Waterstones.
Ottakars at present has a very poor I.T systems (A recent virus took down the customer order database for over 3 weeks). My store has become a joke in the last few weeks, an exodus of staff whiling down there last few weeks by doing very little work and having pub visits at lunch time - so leaving staff like myself hoping for some strong leadership asap. In its present mess Ottakars offers nothing to anybody.
Ottakar's certainly have had some problems for a while and I'm not mad on their centralised buying either/ However a takeover will leave readers with less choice because many will only have a Waterstone's to go to for books. In Scotland it will be worse because both companies have a large number of outlets - if they become one company choice of where to shop for books will be very limited, especially since so many independent bookstores have closed.
ReplyDeleteOn which note, totally agree that Word Power in Edinburgh is an excellent independent bookstore and a place where the staff are obviously into the books and not doing it just as a job. Chains are becoming more like any other form of retail rather than bookselling.
Yep 'organic farmer's market' style bookstores would be nice, but indies are a dying breed largely these days; you could probably do OK if you set up a specialist bookstore such as an SF, crime, kid's or Scottish literature store but other than that its hard to see how you could do much. So I guess we should use and enjoy the good indy bookstores we have left or else they too will go.
What about the online scene? You don't say much about that. I don't just mean online booksellers like Amazon, which are pretty good in my opinion, but also a site like Lulu.com, which offers writers a means of publishing their work without the exploitation involved in vanity publishing. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on these.
ReplyDeleteOnline is certainly a viable option for small publishers and also offers the chance to do more than simpy have a sales site by using recommendations and personal reviews, interviews etc. I try to do some of this myself on the FPI graphic novels site and the blog.
ReplyDeleteThe example of Lulu.com is a good one - I know of a graphic novel being sold there that I'd like to be able to sell but it doesn't have a distribution deal in the UK. The writer contacted me and I saw some great pages, but until they can get it distributed only a few sites may get it, but at least it is being sold.
Naturally I'll list it as soon as they can get it distributed and I try my best to list as many independent titles as I can. Most of those often have a creator's web site with sales offers too, so I reckon the web is certainly a good way to offer sales on specialised, small press titles and to show samples pages etc too. But like a lot of readers I still want to be able to browse an actual physical bookstore too.