The Bookseller.com

7th January 2009

Laurence Orbach is chairman and c.e.o. of Quarto.

A happy medium

01.12.08

Do publishers need booksellers? It may sound like a silly question but, given the containing chatter surrounding where and how books are sold, the search for revenue through internet sales, digitisation of content, the repurposing of material, and the like, it is serious.

Cheapening books may have broadened the market but, so far, hasn't deepened it, as booksellers are placed under threat.

I've been in publishing long enough to recall the surprise, awe, and the sense of opportunity that existed as Waterstone's, Barnes & Noble, and Borders populated the landscape. Publishers rushed to fill the pipeline of newly available shelves with newly-minted books. Here we are, some two decades later, with publishers and booksellers barely able to contain their exasperation with each other.

If the book superstore concept is not dead, it is certainly in need of an overhaul. If it is dead, the publishing community is in for a nightmare scenario. Without the bookstore, how can the book, a low revenue, special interest product, attract the marketing spend necessary to bring it to the attention of a target audience? Through the internet? I don't think so. Perhaps that's a viable option for a small number of titles, but to rely on it for the profusion of titles being created would be to sorely try the reader's tolerance.

I visit superstores where books are displayed almost entirely face out, not for visibility and marketing reasons alone, but to disguise the thinness of the inventory held at store level. Clearly, there are huge problems with inventory turn, and publishers and booksellers need to get together, at the highest levels, and in a less adversarial manner, to explore whether there is a better way to serve mutual interests. Radical solutions may need to be considered, not to counter any particular threat posed by digitisation and the internet, but to recognise a book is not simply "content". Nor is it simply the physical format and presentation. It's the whole package. Many years ago, Marshall McLuhan argued that "the medium is the message". While it's a truism that each new medium uses existing material—developed for other media—to establish itself, unless it soon creates its own content and format, it ceases to exist. So, the whole package that represents the book, with its content and purpose, is part of its message. The continuance of robust and profitable booksellers is central to book publishing.

When you think about it, booksellers were among the earliest speciality retailers. Without them, book publishing would lose its vibrancy, and miss out on feedback. It has to be in the self-interest of publishers to find a way to make bookstores lively, accessible, and successful.

 

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