The Bookseller.com

12th October 2008

A CRAWFORD

Andrew Crawford is m.d. of online retailer The Book Depository.

Pedlar power

03.07.08

Bookshops are a relatively new development in the history of the book. Indeed, the word “stationer” derives from booksellers operating on a fixed spot, not from the word for a paper and office goods supplier.

Some 200 years ago most booksellers were pedlars plying their trade from street corners (some successful booksellers even went on to be granted university charters). You still see this kind of bookselling in the Middle East and India where the majority of books are sold out on the streets.

Recently we heard that British Bookshops & Sussex Stationers were closing seven stores, partly due to high rents. This is not surprising: the rent on their small Windsor shop is more than £100,000 p.a. Add rates, staff and working capitals on ever-dwindling margins and that means they need to sell a book every two to three minutes to make a profit.

At The Book Depository we have looked at running physical stores and realised how hard it is to make them work in the high street. As most indies know, people will travel to less popular side streets to browse in bookshops, so they will not die. But the death knell is surely tolling for high street bookshops in prime locations. The maths just do not add up.

Perhaps one way to flourish is to stop competing with coffee shops and mobile phone operators for space, and to go back to the roots of bookselling. The Book People have built a successful £100m business on the back of independent, ­roving booksellers. These are our modern-day chapmen, hawking their wares from company receptions to factory canteens.  A bookseller with a small van, making 25 calls a day, can sell an astonishing £300,000 of books a year.

Anyone with a pedlar certificate can, under the Pedlar Act 1871, trade on foot, without any horse or other beast drawing burden, going from town to town or to other men’s houses, carrying to sell or exposing for sale any goods, wares, or merchandise.

Obviously, local authorities strongly discourage this activity from high streets, but as long as pedlars follow the law and travel to trade rather­ than remaining static there is little the police or council can do. Napoleon said: “L’Angleterre est une nation de boutiquiers”, and we have laws to keep us trading.

This might be an opportunity for someone. Either way it’s clear that bookshops need quickly to evolve to compete with supermarkets and online booksellers.

However, there is a glimmer of light. The coming recession may spell gloom but inevitably it will translate into falling retail rents. Will any chains emerge out of these ashes?

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