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…
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December 8th, 2009 @ 9:36 pm
Yes, I found you with a simple search when the link did not work over on the other blog! And I will follow this with great interest Vanessa because the state of independents in Australia has recently been under debate in our media. Thanks for starting this up and I will pass the link on to our local indie!
December 8th, 2009 @ 11:41 pm
Oh, the Hub, the Hub, the Hub…
I was at the RHCB Christmas party last week, bending every ear I could find on this subject. At one time, even with the big chains like Waterstones, the local retail manager had some degree of autonomy and could choose at least some of the stock. Sure, there would be the core range that all stores would carry, but reps could still get in through the door and promote from their lists. This meant that if non-established writers could get their books into just a few stores there would be a chance that they would sell on merit, and that the work would become more broadly available as word spread back up through the chain. Not a perfect system, but as fair as any new author could expect.
With the advent of the Hub, and central buying, book reps have virtually disappeared, and any new author whose work doesn’t make the cut is severely hampered. Waterstones are not only as ubiquitous as Starbucks, they operate to the same system, each carrying more or less identical Hub-approved stock. ‘Monetizing’ they call it, selling to the most popular market, and what sells of course is trash. So the Hub effectively becomes an arbiter of taste – a disproportionately powerful and thus very dangerous body. What then are publishers to do? Produce more of what the Hub requires? More Strictly-Come-Cheffery? And will they begin to steer their authors towards the kind of writing that pleases the Hub? Will publishers eventually become quasi literary agents?
I do believe that there’s an intelligent public out there who would embrace the idea of a better book buying experience than is currently on offer, and one thing that we might eventually hope for is a resurgence of the independents. I see a need (Vanessa!) for an off-High Street chain, a retail outfit big enough and brave enough to distance itself from this chicken-fillet mentality.