Are you IndieBound? We’re Going to Be.
Posted on March 7, 2010 by Vanessa
In 2008, the American Booksellers Association (with a membership comprising several hundred independent bookshops) launched their IndieBound programme with the intention of promoting the idea of shopping locally and with independent retailers, starting with bookstores. It’s a brilliant scheme and one which we’ve been watching for a while – we love the material they’ve produced to enable bookshops to explain why shopping indie is better sustaining the local community; the economy both local and national in the form of jobs and taxes; why it encourages entrepreneurship; makes use of people’s expertise and promotes diversity – after all, who only wants to shop at Tesco? Indiebound started with bookshops but has spread throughout neighbourhoods and is proving to be a really effective movement within America to celebrate the unique and independent. This piece on the ABA website shows how they launched it and what initial responses from booksellers were.
The neighbourhood of Edinburgh where our bookshops are – Bruntsfield – is largely made up of independent businesses ranging from cheese shops to a hardware shop to boutiques to restaurants to delis to florists to bakeries and a sports equipment shop. We have some chains of course – the pharmacy, the bank, the ubiquitous branch of Subway – but overall it’s a vibrant community where the quirky rubs shoulders with the practical and turnover of premises is comparatively low with vacant properties being snapped up. It’s an area which attracts students, actors, writers and artists as well as the usual Edinburgh inhabitants such as lawyers and bankers and the Indiebound ethos should be a perfect fit.
In the next month or two, the Booksellers Association will start rolling out Indiebound among its independent bookseller members and most people I’ve spoken to have been quite enthusiastic. It’s also something we’ve been advocating since last summer’s pathetic attempt to develop bookaholism as an industry-wide marketing concept (see how we suggested using the Eat, Sleep, Read slogan here).
However, the ABA’s campaign is uncompromising in it’s attitude that independent is good and chain is at best bland and at worst unethical and it will be interesting to see whether the BA can manage to maintain an ‘Indie is Better’ stance when they also include members with diametrically opposed views – WH Smith, Waterstone’s, Tesco etc. And those members are powerful; BA membership subs are calculated according to turnover so Tesco and Waterstone’s will be paying an amount which gives a lot more clout than those of us at the lower end of the scale.
I really want IndieBound to work and I firmly believe that we’re seeing the beginning of a resurgence in the fortunes of the independent bookseller but whether indies can thrive as part of a trade body which is trying to represent everyone or whether we need an organisation that is solely concerned with the needs of independent booksellers is something that will be need to be considered as we see how successful IndieBound UK is.
Will Britain’s Bookstores Survive? We think so.
Posted on March 5, 2010 by Vanessa
In this week’s Scottish edition of The Big Issue is a feature about the likely future for brick-and-mortar (as opposed to on-line) bookshops. It draws heavily on an interview with Andrew Bentley-Steed, manager of The Edinburgh Bookshop and you can read it here.
Andrew speaks for all of us when he says that he thinks that independent bookshops are a growing force to be reckoned as booklovers become disillusioned with the limited range in supermarkets and the inceasingly mainstream offerings in chain bookshops. As he says, the book is “old technology, more than than 500 years old, and it’s lasted so long because it works. It’s a very private experience. All the feedback I get from customers is, ‘I like the feel of paper, I like the smell of bookshops, I like the sound a hardback makes when you crack it open’.”
Gatekeepers of Last Resort
Posted on February 11, 2010 by Vanessa
I read this post on Jane Smith’s excellent blog a few days ago about the roles of literary agents as gatekeepers to the publishing industry and also as a primary filter to ensure that what is submitted to publishers is actually the genre they’re interested in, that it’s of an appropriate standard, that it’s saleable* both to the publisher and ultimately to a paying customer.
But between the publisher and the reader is the bookseller. And whilst there may be booksellers who’ll buy most anything a publisher tries to sell them, either because they have soooo much shelf-space to fill or because they haven’t got a handle on their customer base or maybe they just have too much money to spend, most of us are harder to sell to.
Take our shops for example. We’ve seen three reps so far this week from major publishers and we’ve ordered in some lovely books which are coming out in April and May. What we do buy is good literary and middle-brow fiction, Radio 4-type non-fiction, biography, history, interesting foodie and craft titles (making stuff is very popular), good crime (nothing too gory, Scandinavian crime in translation is hot at the moment following the success of Stieg Larsson) and more quirky titles – Umberto Eco’s The Infinity of Lists? Well yes, madam, here it is. And yes, I know they hadn’t got it in Waterstone’s. Sometimes we buy in books knowing exactly which customer will buy it and we’re often spot on. For example, we have a regular two-year old customer who is obsessed with diggers and we know who will buy Middle Eastern history titles.
However, it’s interesting to look at what we haven’t bought. Quite a large number are titles we don’t have a market for – for example, we sell very little chick-lit (and what we do sell has generally been by read by Becky or I and chosen because we liked it – it doesn’t tend to hit the shelf until then); we don’t sell celeb autobiographies; we take hardly any celebrity chef titles because they’ll be half-price or less on-line or in the supermarkets and so on. If a rep tells us that a book will be in a Waterstone’s promotion we tend to bypass it or just take one copy.
Sometimes we don’t buy because the covers are so unremittingly awful and sometimes it’s because the rep just couldn’t sell the book to us (and there’s an art to selling books that’s quite different to say, double-glazing) and sometimes we’ll look up from the AI (Advance Information sheet) with a simultaneous “what the fuck?”. And in some of those cases, the rep will shrug and say that that’s been a fairly common response… It isn’t a bad thing for them to admit that to us by the way – it builds trust and means we have more respect for them and are more likely to believe them when they say that a book we’re not fussed about is really good.
And it’s a shame for the average books with the unexciting covers or the WTF books because they and their author have spent years going through the publishing process – agents, editors, acquisitions meetings, editing, type-setting, cover design… and much money has been spent quite apart from the author’s advance. But no-one thought about how this could be sold to a bookseller and whether it was something we could in turn sell to a customer.
So there you go – agents might be a primary filter but booksellers are the filter of last resort. And when you browse a bookshop full of titles you loved or which make you want to read them remember that we’ve worked hard just to make sure that they’re there for you.
* and yes, I don’t care how marvellous you think your novel is; if there isn’t a market for it, it won’t find a publisher. If it is constantly turned down then it’s either not good enough or not enough paying readers will want to buy it and the book trade is just that – a trade. Agents, publishers, booksellers are all in it to make a living, just as we assume that most writers are.
Predictions for 2010 – well one at any rate.
Posted on January 2, 2010 by Vanessa
On Monday I shall be on BBC Radio Scotland’s Book Cafe programme (ooh – get me!) and one of the things they apparently want me to have an opinion on is what bookish trend we’ll see in 2010. I think they mean in terms of books that are published in which case I hope to see more literary fiction and good non-fic and less sleb chefs and C-list sleb biogs. And I hope that people realise that buying a book ‘written by’ Katie Price merely demonstrates that they have an IQ in single figures. And are quite common. Just like her then*.
I’ll have to give this some thought before Monday, especially as I’m on the programme with Stuart Kelly, Literary Editor of Scotland on Sunday, but I do have one prediction. It’s something that struck me a few weeks ago when I read about Waterstone’s falling profits. If Waterstone’s continues to depress the overall performance of the HMV group, it doesn’t take much to realise that the parent company will reorganise it. It may be hived off, bought out by venture capitalists asset strippers and implode as Borders has recently done.
Alternatively, given that the best performing areas of Waterstone’s are in non-book areas such as stationery and E-readers, and the worst performing are books due to constantly reduced margins as the chain tries to compete with Amazon, HMV might absorb some branches into their record shops (are they called record shops now that no-one buys records any more?). It has already been mentioned on The Bookseller’s website by one commenter on a thread about Borders that in Newcastle the store has been bought and “it will be an HMV with a small Waterstone’s included in store” (thanks to Book Monkey for pointing that out).
Might this be the one of the first indicators that Waterstone’s presence on the High Street will be shrinking as Gerry Johnson’s bosses realise that a policy of cutting prices to the bone and still seeing falling sales isn’t maybe the way forward? Retaining market share shouldn’t come at the cost of increasing losses. Maybe the route to profitability is to reduce range still further, shrink shop size and concentrate on a narrow range of highly-discounted titles on sale in huge “media megastores” alongside the cds, dvds and games consoles that already fill HMV branches?
That would suit us very well…
* Now I’ll probably get people leaving semi-literate comments informing me that actually she is a literary talent of Nobel Prize-winning standard. In capitals. Just like they did when I wrote about how I thought Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series was a badly-written pile of poo which also had alarming opinions about what the perfect boyfriend is. And it isn’t standing in your room watching you sleep – that’s a stalker, that is, and you need a restraining order.
Classy, really classy, Waterstone’s
Posted on December 31, 2009 by Vanessa
This morning, savouring our Christmas break but still committed workaholics, Andrew and I met at Brown’s on George Street to spend a very pleasant hour or two over tea and toast making plans for bookshop events and choosing titles for our Book of the Week and Book of the Month promotions (the only titles we discount don’t you know and all chosen because we think our customers will love them rather than because we’re paid to promote them – unlike, ahem, certain bookshop chains). Afterwards, we decided to wander down the street to see how Waterstone’s sale was going.
I’ll come on to that in a minute but first I’d like to share with you the decidedly tasteless poster that was adorning their front window. As one chain crashes and burns and hundreds of people lose their jobs two days before Christmas (and just along the street the Wesley Owen Christian bookshop is having a closing down sale because they’ve gone into administration) gloating about it really is classy isn’t it? It isn’t as though everyone in the trade who even glances at the trade press is unaware of how Borders staff are feeling and given that hundreds of people were made redundant at Waterstone’s earlier in 2009, you would think that the Big W would hesitate before indulging in such schadenfreude, wouldn’t you? Especially when figures like these are being released showing that Waterstone’s itself is hardly in rude health.
And the Waterstone’s sale? Well, they’ve got an awful lot of Jeremy Clarkson and Delia’s new Christmas book lying around – we counted well over a hundred copies of the latter – but what was surprising was the amount of discounting going on on titles that shouldn’t really need to be discounted – titles that have been selling well for us at full price such as Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson and Climbing the Bookshelves by Shirley Williams – so it looks as though they’ve over-ordered on those and discounting heavily makes a smaller loss than the costs involved in returning them to the Hub and then back to the publishers, with all the attendant problems that have been experienced getting books out of the Hub, never mind back in and out the other side. And the shop was a mess which never gives a good impression when combined with knock-down prices as they chase Amazon to the bottom of the market – after all, who wants to look like a bargain basement?
All in all, our visit made us feel quite pleased with how the first few months at The Edinburgh Bookshop have gone – not complacent by any means, but positive and we’re enthusiastic about the new year. But that poster in the window – that really gave us an opportunity to feel morally superior.
Merry Christmas
Posted on December 27, 2009 by Vanessa
It’s been a frantic run up to Christmas in both shops and we’re delighted with how things are going – especially at The Edinburgh Bookshop which is hitting targets we didn’t expect to reach until next Christmas.
So have a lovely festive period and we’ll see you next with our predictions for the book trade in 2010.
Me Me Myerson
Posted on December 12, 2009 by Vanessa
Since Borders went into administration there has been a flurry of newspaper articles considering the future of bookselling. These have ranged from talking heads romanticising the Tim Waterstone days at the eponymous chain, to features about boutique-style shops in posh areas of London to trying-to-be-controversial pieces telling us that bookshops and the dead-tree media that they purvey are an anachronism destined to disappear as we download all our reading matter from t’interweb.
But one thing leapt out. In the Observer print edition, accompanying that second article about the Lutyens and Rubinstein bookshop in West London was a sidebar in which Julie Myerson was quoted as saying:
“I buy all books on Amaz*n now because of the huge price difference. But I still use bookshops as places to go to first – to remind me of what’s out there and to look at and touch the books.”
This is Julie Myerson - Guardian columnist of the ‘all about me’ type, Newsnight Review contributor – writer of lit-fic novels which generally don’t get masses of attention beyond positive broadsheet reviews and being long-listed for various awards. Not that a Booker long-listing is to be sneered at, but it doesn’t usually translate into masses of sales. No, Myerson’s books are the type which usually rely on word-of-mouth and hand-selling by booksellers who are passionate about them.
Until her last book. The Lost Child is a lightly fictionalised account of her son’s drug-taking and subsequent ejection from the family home aged 17 and garnered many column inches (accompanied by pics of JM looking meaningful and some interviews with her understandably pissed off son) due to the dubious morality of exploiting one’s family situation for financial gain – is it really any different to Katie Price’s apparent inability to conduct her life without a film crew on hand? This publicity meant a huge increase in sales and Myerson probably feels that she doesn’t need to concern herself with independent bookshops any more.
I don’t mind people buying books from Amazon if they’re cheaper – it’s one of the reasons why we don’t waste space on glossy sleb chef cookbooks and we skip on much best-selling hardback fiction with its over-inflated RRP (to allow for the massive discounting that goes on), but I do object to people using us as Amazon’s shop window as Myerson is advocating. Come, browse, pick up the new Dan Brown on-line or in Asda if you wish (because they’ll be selling it for less than we can buy it in for), but spend some money with us and don’t just pay lip service to the fluffy, romantic idea of having a local independent bookshop. Especially if you’re a writer of less than entirely commercial fiction such as Myerson’s because you really should appreciate what the word of mouth of booksellers can do for sales – not for nothing is Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses our best-selling fiction title.
Myerson would have done well to remember is that when she’s no longer able to promote her books by prostituting her family circumstances she’ll be hoping that us indies are going to support her and embrace her efforts. Right. Think you might have shot yourself in the foot on that one Jules.
Entitlement
Posted on December 7, 2009 by Becky
I made my own LOLcat: the only time bad grammar is funny...
In fact, someone could probably do an interesting anthropological study on the types of bookshop customers. For example:
1. Those who do not know the difference between a bookshop and a library: we don’t mind parents and children reading a few picture books to see which ones they like. We don’t even mind if they do that and come back a different day/week to buy one. We do mind when they a) read a pile of books bigger than their child, b) let him or her roughly bend the pages and make the books grubby and c) come in every single week and never buy anything.
2. The phone detectives: we have number of people calling to ask for book recommendations. Which we are more than happy to provide, but not when they use the phrase, “thanks, I can order that from Amazon now”. Amazon are cheaper for a reason: they don’t have shop overheads. We do.
3. Amazon listers: the same ilk as above, but who come in with a pen and paper. None of us came to bookselling by way of a turnip truck, yet they don’t seem to realise we know what they are doing!
4. Free stuff magpies: on our Birthday, we gave out balloons to all the children, and goody bags to children whose parent spent over £10. You would not believe the number of people aggressively demanding a goody bag (which included at least 4 free books, stickers, bookmarks, a whoopee cushion, pens, etc) when they had spent £1 on a bookmark. It’s obviously up everyone individually to decide how best to spend their own money, but it’s amazing the number of people who agonise over a £4.99 book for their child, when we see them spending £15 in Starbucks three times a week.
5. Charity prize hunters with an air of entitlement: we are in a nexus of schools, nurseries, churches and universities. We are in general happy to give out prizes for raffles, tombolas, etc, not only because giving to charity is A Good Thing, but because we are part of the local community and should support community projects. However, there is a polite way and downright rude way to ask. For example, threatening to tell all your friends to “never, ever shop here” unless we give a good prize is most definitely a rude way.
As Vanessa mentioned in a previous post on the Fidra blog, we are knowledgeable: we are, in effect, a resource. People seem blissfully unaware we are a resource they will lose unless they are willing to spend money with us - they cheerfully write down titles then head off for their computer. I’d be willing to bet that if we didn’t exist they’d bemoan the lack of us, but wouldn’t twig the connection. Maybe it’s partly our fault – we need to market the value of what we offer better. But there does seem to be a culture – perhaps started by the ability to get a lot of things free online – of entitlement. The attitude that as long as someone does x or y, I don’t need to bother, I can reap the benefits anyway.
On the upside, we were talking only the other day about how we could all write a Black Books-style programme, but more about the customers than the staff. Frankly, the daily business of an indie bookshop could provide more than enough material…
Bookselling after Borders
Posted on December 5, 2009 by Vanessa
Borders was a great chain of American bookshops when they first opened in the UK just over a decade ago. It was comfy sofas to slump in while you browsed and made your selection; it was hipper than Waterstone’s with their dated black ash bookshelves; it was Friends, lattes and Amazon hadn’t begun to flex their all-crushing muscles. Their Glasgow store and the Charing Cross Road branch in London were fabulous. However, in the last couple of years things have been troubled; they lost their direction, the supplementary products such as cds and stationery suffered from on-line downloading and a loss of originality respectively and even the efforts of former Channel 4 chairman and pizza supremo Luke Johnson couldn’t help.
A management buy-out a few months ago, funded by venture capital company Valco (whose parent company, specialist liquidators Hilco, were last year involved in the closing down of MFI and Woollies) led to down-sizing/asset-stripping and the selling off of some of the chain’s prime sites while book stock became less comprehensive and other stock became tackier (giant Barbie heads and jewellery boxes in the shape of chaise longues anyone?). In the last week WH Smith walked away from the potential purchase of some of the more desirable branches, the chain was advertised for sale in the Financial Times to no avail and finally, on 26th November the administrators were called in. It’s a horrible time and although we’re independent booksellers and although we may well pick up some of Borders’ customers we’re really sorry to see this happen and have tremendous sympathy for Borders’ staff.
The demise of Borders (although that description may be premature and a buyer might be found) has changed the face of British bookselling. Now, there’s WH Smith for all your Katie Price, sleb memoirs and misery-lit needs; Tesco and Asda with a similar remit although lightly seasoned with Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver; Waterstone’s, who seem to be losing their way with the nightmare that is the Hub and the shrinking of their stock range; and independent bookshops ranging from small chains such as Foyle’s and Daunt’s to ambitious newbies such as ourselves by way of the boutiques, the radical and the specialist. It’s an interesting time to be a bookseller and I think we could see a renaissance in independent bookshops as customers realise that we can offer levels of service and a depth of range that can’t be found elsewhere on the High Street.
And that ‘interesting time’ is probably a good place to launch this, our new blog, State of Independents (geddit?). We’ve found for a while that the Fidra Blog, whilst widely read and a great way of marketing ourselves has been an uncomfortable mixture of information about what we’re up to in the bookshops and our publishing house coupled with pieces really only of interest to the book trade. So, welcome to State of Independents – we’ll be keeping the Fidra Blog up to date but now we’ll all be writing here about bookselling and the wider book industry as well where we can be as opinionated and outspoken as we like. And if there’s one thing we have it’s opinions…