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Another nail in the coffin of choice?

edited March 2007 in - Reading

Comments

  • Just reading the Guardian business section and saw this:

    http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2033102,00.html

    I was particularly irked at a few lines some of the proposals intended. Not a good sign.
  • Good grief, if Waterstone’s are reducing their business in face of competition, where does that leave the small independent book shops?
  • gracious! i feel for them! ONLY £50 million in profits this year- how will they ever make ends meet?
    i love internet shopping as much as the next person, but i still like the idea that i can go into a shop, look at the merchandise before i buy it, then spend my hard-earned cash by approaching a real person. big companies like waterstones have put the little independent shops out of business with their chain-store bulk-buy bargains, and now they're moaning that they're getting out-done by internet outlets. they need to get a grip. they've made their proverbial beds, and shouldn't make the everyday consumer suffer because they don't want to lie in it. 
  • When I worked at [high street bookstore chain, seen also at every rail station], the mark-up was 60% on books.  Must have been crippling for the dear things...
  • Diddums.  £50 million quid.  My heart bleeds. 

    I have, to this day, never bought a book online.  I have bought a CD online because it was either that or join the band's fan club, so buying from the website was cheaper.  The only reason I'll buy a book online is if I can't get it from a shop, but I'll have a bloody good look round first.  If Waterstone's are paring down their range of so-called high-brow books, it'll be even harder to find the books I want than it already is (TT knows - I read some weird sh**).  I have no time for what tends to be popular, unless it's popular because it's good rather than because it's fashionable.

    The fact HMV own Waterstone's is not something I'm jumping for joy about anyway - this just proves my theory that once it happened, things would go downhill. 

    Don't get me wrong - I can easily spend hours in Waterstone's - for now.  If their range gets pared to the bone, I won't be so eager.
  • I have a soft spot for Waterstone’s because I’ve just done my book signing in the Cardiff Hayes branch – and I think that though the idea of a big business chain book shop is abominable, the shop itself is good or bad depending on the individual managers and workers. They get to decide the stock, although they are more restricted than the independents, and they do what they can. I’ve known a few book shop workers and they all love books so I don’t hold where they work against them. I wouldn’t mind £50 million myself - but it's not the workers that get it, is it?
  • I phone many bookshops asking them to stock my books. I am getting heartily sick of them telling me that they won't stock (or re-stock) my books because "they don't sell fast enough".

    What is happening is that the bookshops only want to stock best-sellers. This leads eventually to shops selling nothing else (you know, like Tesco's) and this means less choice for the book-buyer. It also means that, having no other choice, book-buyers buy more and more bestsellers, making those best-sellers even BETTER sellers, which exacerbates the whole attitude.

    It's obvious to me that the books I have chosen to publish - viz, specialist women's history - are not going to be fast-selling books, but they are books that do have a market. Now that indie bookshops are closing down at a fast rate, and Waterstones, National Trust, Tesco, Smith's Borders etc will only stock the best-sellers, specialist books like mine simply won't be on offer for much longer.
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