ACHUKAblog
A piece in the Observer about the resurgense in book sales (particularly in children’s publishing) feautres The Book Nook in Brighton and the recently opened INK@84 in Highbury:
Indie bookshops turn a new page to fight off threat from Amazon
Spate of openings of ‘destination’ stores as owners offer drinks, performances and crafts to tempt customers away from Amazon
via Indie bookshops turn a new page to fight off threat from Amazon | Books | The Guardian.
Michael Kozlowski, who has been writing about e-books for quite some time, now considers the format doomed:
Major publishers have gained the ability to dictate their own prices on e-books and this has dramatically increased the cost to the customer. In many cases the hardcover is actually cheaper than the digital version and this is primarily due to predatory pricing.
Publishers have been making moves to capitalize on the convenience and instant delivery of e-Books by making them more expensive than their printed counterparts. I have talked to many high ranking executives off the record and they have told me that they foresee the destruction of the e-book market and are anticipating higher profits on print down the road.
There are many companies that are heavily involved in the e-book sector that have went out of business over the course of the last year. Sony killed off their consumer e-reader division and abandoned the Reader Store in every country, but Japan. Diesel eBooks, Oyster, Entitle, Txtr, Blinkbox Books and others have all closed up shop because e-books are no longer profitable.
further extracts:
The Kindle “has disappeared to all intents and purposes”, said James Daunt the head of Britain’s biggest book chain Waterstones. He also reported that print book sales lifted by 5% in December 2014 and that they plan on opening at least a dozen stores in 2015 . Foyles, the London chain of bookstores, said sales of physical books had risen 11% last Christmas. Across the pond, Australian bookseller Jon Page of Page and Pages said “Sales were up 3% last year, and will increase by 6% in 2015, which is fantastic because for the last three years we’d actually seen a decline.”
In a few short years most digital bookstores will be out of business and Amazon and Kobo will likely be the only players left. The only digital bookstores that will survive will be companies offering both hardware/software solutions and everyone else will be gone. The destruction of the digital book market has already been set in motion and there is nothing that can prevent the format from being completely annihilated.
via Publishers Initiate Predatory Pricing on e-Books to Destroy the Market.
Independent Bookshop Week (20th to 27th June 2015) is part of the Books Are My Bag campaign, and seeks to celebrate independent bookshops in the UK and Ireland.
Excellent Evening Standard magazine profile of Waterstones’ James Daunt:
We have a lot of different markets.’ In what way? ‘Much as Asda sells different things to Waitrose. If you pile up the latest celebrity thing in Hampstead for 1p, it ain’t going to sell. And if you pile up an esoteric history in Gateshead, it isn’t going to shift. We have different books on display in Harrogate than we do in Kensington, for blindingly obvious reasons. There’s a different economy outside London. In Middlesbrough half the high street is vacant and there isn’t a lot of money. It’s a town that’s in big trouble, but our shop has reinvented itself there; it’s got rocking horses and pretty much all day long pre-school kids are sploshing about with paint. It’s not the most profitable shop, but it’s got spirit.’
In the Kensington branch they sell a lot of Scrabble and Monopoly. In St Pancras it’s novellas that you might finish on your journey: ‘Those sell in huge quantities.’ In Trafalgar Square it’s Union Jacks; in Walthamstow, they shift ‘a ton’ of camera-lens mugs (left). Huh? ‘It’s a mug with a lens on it. We sell billions.’
So bookshops are surviving on mugs, wrapping paper, cards… ‘There isn’t a bookseller in the world that doesn’t sell stuff that isn’t books.’ He leans in. ‘Booksellers have it really tough in this country. I think we’re in the worst position in the world. We have Amazon, Kindle and fierce price competition with supermarkets and we don’t have any of the protection that booksellers have in the US and Europe. And we pay huge taxes through business rates. I’m in the tax brigade. We have responsibilities to the society in which we live and one is paying tax.’ Unlike Amazon… ‘And many other multinationals who do everything they can to avoid it.’ Amazon’s controversial Luxembourg registration, which entails five per cent tax or less, is coming to an end next year. ‘It’s already achieved its purpose, which was for them to achieve market dominance,’ Daunt shrugs. He’s too busy to lobby. He’s hoping to get Waterstones back into airports when BAA’s contract is up for tender.
via James Daunt: the man who saved Waterstones – ES Magazine – Life & Style – London Evening Standard.
The Spectator extols independent bookshops, just as ACHUKA prepares to publish our latest Indie Bookshop feature: The Kennington Bookshop – online later this morning
The pleasure of a book can be further heightened by the way in which it is bought. There is nothing luxurious about buying a book on Amazon, with its grim efficiency, bright white webpages and impersonal clicks. Likewise, there’s little pleasurable about paying for a book at the robotic self-service checkouts of the supermarket or WH Smith. These are places of deals and vouchers, built to maximise speed of transaction. By contrast, going into a good bookshop — and to have survived, they have to be good — is a joy. These are places where you are greeted by a real person, where the air is thick with the dusty smell particular to books, the hushed enthusiasm of conversations which meander delightfully unalgorithmically, and the thrill of discovery.
Moreover, a bookshop is where you come not so much to pick up the book you know you want, but to find the book you never knew existed. Unlike the digital world, in which we have seemingly limitless choice, the bounds of a bookshop’s physical space make it a place of curated selection. Booksellers offer the luxury of placing the perfect thing under your unsuspecting nose. Some shops, such as Heywood Hill and Daunt Books in London, and Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath, even offer a subscription service where, after an initial consultation, you are sent a book a month tailored to your taste.
14 Beautiful Independent Bookshops In London – a BuzzFeeed photo feature
And only one of them – Belgravia Books – featured thus far in ACHUKA’s own series of indie bookshop visits, so lots to keep us busy in London alone it seems….
http://www.buzzfeed.com/danieldalton/beautiful-bookshops-london
Follow @SarahJChapman and the twitter tag #IndieBookCrawl
This summer, author Emma Chapman will be setting off on an adventure to visit as many independent bookshops as she can in one month.
via Why we should celebrate independent bookshops | London bookshops | Red Online.
Only independent bookshops with a children’s section need apply…
James Patterson, the best-selling US writer, is stepping in to help the UK’s struggling independent bookshops with a £250,000 donation.
The multi-millionaire author of the Alex Cross thrillers will supply grants of between £250 and £5,000 to bookshops that have a children’s section.
“I believe we are at a pivotal moment in our history, a moment in which far too many children – the future stewards of our society – are at risk of living lives without books.
“To my mind, this translates to a risk of living in a world run by the short-sighted, the self-centred and the glib. It is as grave a peril as I can imagine,” Patterson said.
via James Patterson donates £250,000 to UK bookshops – Telegraph.
from The Bookseller:
[Louise Doughty] will be speaking at The Great Bookshop Debate during Independent Booksellers Week on 2nd July from 7.30pm-9.30pm at the new flagship Foyles shop in Charing Cross Road, which will focus on the future of bookselling.
…
Doughty said: “All authors are passionately attached to high street bookshops: the opportunity to browse, the expertise of the staff, the chance of a decent coffee while we are at it…but we almost all own e-readers and, like any other book buyer, love the swift access of online shopping as well as loving other people having access to our own works.” She added: “We are a greedy breed: we want both outlets to thrive. Does the battle for bookselling need to be Godzilla versus the Mutos or can the two come to a cheerful accommodation? Authors are very much hoping they can.”
Besides Doughty, panellists will include author Mark Forsyth, author, Kate Gunning, key accounts manager for Penguin Random House, Siôn Hamilton, retail operations director at Foyles, Robert Hiscox, founder of Hiscox Insurance and co-owner of the White Horse Bookshop in Marlborough, Wiltshire and Nicholas Lovell, a writer, consultant and gamer.
The debate will be chaired by New Statesman editor Jason Cowley.
The event is being held as part of Independent Booksellers Week – an annual celebration of independent bookshops nationwide, which takes place from 28 June-5 July.
via Industry gears up for The Great Bookshop Debate | The Bookseller.
A mini UK bookshop boom appears to be under way as a fifth new store opening is announced in a week.
Winstone’s, owned by Wayne Winstone, is to open a second branch in the South West seaside resort of Sidmouth in Devon at the end of this month.
The 860 sq foot store will stock 8,000 titles at its location on the high street and be managed by Carl East, formerly of Waterstones in Exeter.
The news follows the recent opening of the new flagship Foyles branch on London’s Charing Cross Road last weekend (7th June), and the announcements this week that Waterstones will open a branch in Lewes and a Hatchards shop will open in St Pancras Station this summer. Former Borders boss Philip Downer has also revealed he is to open a second branch of Calliope Gifts in Alton, Hampshire, following in the footsteps of his first shop opening in February last year.
Winstone, a former Waterstones employee, currently owns Winstone’s in Sherborne, Dorset, which opened in 2012 and has twice been named the South-west Independent Bookseller of the Year at the Bookseller Industry Awards.
He said he planned to support local writers and societies in his new Sidmouth store, while hoping to raise the profile of books and reading within the town, focusing particularly on children’s literature.
via 'Bookshop boom' under way as Winstone's opens second branch | The Bookseller.
