January 18, 2011

More trouble for UK Booksellers

by Melville House

Following the announced closure of 20 Waterstone’s branches last week on MobyLives, a report from The Bookseller suggests that the UK book retail sector was actually one of the most resilient globally, with falls in sales of 8% in the US and 6% in Germany, compared with 3.6% in the UK.

However this apparent resilience didn’t stop British Bookshops & Stationers entering administration last week following poor Christmas sales. The small chain, which has 51 branches located across Kent, Surrey, Hampshire, Essex and Sussex has had a tumultuous year, after being bought in early 2010 by John Simpson, and it looks like there’s more in store. As of this week, online trading has ceased, and some publishers have stopped supplying the chain.

British Bookshops & Stationers employs around 300 people across the South East of England, and their stores will continue to operate as normal in the hopes that a buyer for the chain will be found.

4 Comments

BB at 9:43 am on January 18, 2011

Perhaps the bookstores of the future will sell Doritos and Haagen Daz etc. as part of their merchandise, just as large pharmacies (CVS, Duane Reade, etc.), and even top-tier magazine stores (see the main one at Grand Central, which dumped many of its more intellectual and foreign magazines and journals to make way for shelves of Power Bars, do now. It’s mind-bending to think of a city like London without book stores, or with only a paucity of them. No matter how lively intellectual life remains on the Internet, life on the streets will be duller. At least the museums will stay open, but of course you have to pay a hefty price to enter most of them.
BB at 9:43 am on January 18, 2011

Perhaps the bookstores of the future will sell Doritos and Haagen Daz etc. as part of their merchandise, just as large pharmacies (CVS, Duane Reade, etc.), and even top-tier magazine stores (see the main one at Grand Central, which dumped many of its more intellectual and foreign magazines and journals to make way for shelves of Power Bars, do now. It’s mind-bending to think of a city like London without book stores, or with only a paucity of them. No matter how lively intellectual life remains on the Internet, life on the streets will be duller. At least the museums will stay open, but of course you have to pay a hefty price to enter most of them.
Peter Garner at 10:22 am on January 18, 2011

Maybe we’ll see something like a “Fahrenheit 451” scenario in the future, where printed books are not necessarily banned, but are hidden away in numerous small establishments where proprietors fuss and care for them like rare animals. The cognoscenti will know where these shops are and will spend hours browsing, and occasionally buying, safe in the knowledge that The State can’t delete them, nor selectively remove text…

The High Street (if that concept still exists) bookstores will be reduced to e-media download points for the masses and the equivalent of large cinema lobbies where patrons sip expensive, poor-quality coffee and buy brightly-coloured confectionary of no nutritional value while reading endless celebrity autobiographies.

Not that I’m a pessimist 😉
Peter Garner at 10:22 am on January 18, 2011

Maybe we’ll see something like a “Fahrenheit 451” scenario in the future, where printed books are not necessarily banned, but are hidden away in numerous small establishments where proprietors fuss and care for them like rare animals. The cognoscenti will know where these shops are and will spend hours browsing, and occasionally buying, safe in the knowledge that The State can’t delete them, nor selectively remove text…

The High Street (if that concept still exists) bookstores will be reduced to e-media download points for the masses and the equivalent of large cinema lobbies where patrons sip expensive, poor-quality coffee and buy brightly-coloured confectionary of no nutritional value while reading endless celebrity autobiographies.

Not that I’m a pessimist 😉