The Bookseller has a long feature article about the plight of independent bookstores in the UK. Their numbers have been dropping over the last few years, from 1,483 in 2006 to 1,099 in 2011. The article puts this down not only to Amazon and e-books, but also supermarket competition and the down economy in general.
But even so, most of the remaining booksellers don’t seem to subscribe to the gloom and doom going around that e-books are going to kill bookstores altogether. They think they have at least a good chance of sticking around for years to come.
The article discusses the possibility of holiday sales giving independent bookstores a boost, and actions bookstores are taking to try to alleviate some of the most pressing non-Amazon problems facing them (such as high parking rates that don’t give shoppers sufficient time to browse). It also goes into ways bookstores are looking at surviving in the long term, such as diversifying their inventory to add non-book items.
Of interest to telereaders is a section on how the bookstores are dealing with e-books, which a number of stores are finding their customers are starting to buy.
But meeting the new demand for e-books isn’t straightforward, says Frances Smith of Warwick Books and Kenilworth Books, who thinks independents need far greater support in their efforts. "We should be able to sell e-books but no one has been able to tell us how we can physically do it, or how we can make any money. At the moment it’s just not worth the candle." Jo de Guia of Victoria Park Books agrees that the days of independents selling e-books are some way off. "We’re far from technophobes and we’ve looked at it very closely, but the profits as they stand are tiny and the upfront costs make it totally impossible."
Apparently for UK bookstores, selling e-books alongside print books could be some distance away.
The bookstores also report seeing “hit and miss” support from publishers, complaining of the discounts publishers offer to the bigger chain stores, and the higher prices that result (so that publishers can offer those discounts and still make money). Others report having good relationships with and support from publishers, however. The stores seem to have similar mixed feelings about the Booksellers Association, which seems to have to support the supermarkets that are causing them problems as well as independent shops.
The article closes with ten survival tips for independent bookstores, which mostly seem to center around getting involved with customers and learning what they want, then stocking it.
We are in a time of transition for bookstores of all kinds. It’s hard to predict how many of them will survive, or what they will look like if they do. One thing to consider is that the UK seems to be at least a couple of years behind the US in development of its e-book market. I would expect that if UK booksellers want to know what the future holds for them, they should be looking west across the Atlantic to get some clues.
The blind leading the blind as they rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.