The Guardian (and it’s purely coincidental that I pulled almost all of today’s items from the same paper, honest) had a great feature yesterday looking at the state of independent bookselling in the UK, focusing specifically on certain shops and their take on where the industry is headed – and what their future is:
“Don’t pity us,” Valerie Glencross of the Sevenoaks Bookshop instructs [Stephen Moss.] She argues that the bigger the chains get, the greater the opportunity for independents. She turns predictions of the demise of stand-alone booksellers on their head: the chains are not eating the independents, she says, but eating each other. Tesco’s pile-’em-high, sell-’em-cheap move into bookselling has undermined Waterstone’s and Ottakar’s, which have felt obliged to join the price war. All the chains are struggling and rationalisation is under way, with Books etc (part of Borders) disappearing and Ottakar’s up for sale. Waterstone’s is keen to buy Ottakar’s, but it, too, has become a bid target. With too many outlets, vicious discounting and no clear strategy – what is the point of virtually giving books away? – it is arguably not the independents that are in flux but the chains.
Other indies profiled include the mammoth Foyle’s in central London, Bailey Hill Bookshop in Somerset and John Sandoe Books in Chelsea. It’s fascinating reading.