Green shoots

13.01.12 | Neill Denny

Last week we pointed out that although the mood music right now is pretty bleak, the year ahead looks reasonably solid, so today it is doubly pleasant to point out a few green shoots poking through. And, for once, they are not digital.

The announcement by the level-headed Foyles c.e.o. Sam Husain that he is looking to expand his chain at the same rate in 2012 as it did in 2011, when he added two stores, shows that there is still optimism to be found in classic bricks-and-mortar retailing.

Meanwhile, a successful leitmotif of the last decade reappears with news that a prominent ex-Waterstonian, Wayne Winstone, is taking the plunge and setting up as an independent; with one store to start but plans to expand further. We wish him well.

The week has also seen publishers, whose core business model is increasingly under pressure, exploring new ways to make a living. Random House is dipping its sizeable toe into the speakers market, setting up a bureau through which authors are hired out for speeches. This is an approach already being tested by Ed Victor, leaving authors at the centre of a tug-of-love between publishers and agents. Meanwhile, HarperCollins has struck an eye-catching deal with McDonald's to give away Michael Morpurgo's Mudpuddle Farm series with Happy Meals. Purists may sneer at the association, but as a way of giving six- to eight-year-olds books—some of them from households which, frankly, are not heavy book buyers—it has a tremendous merit: some nine million titles are set to be sold and be distributed within a month. A concurrent Happy Meal voucher scheme with WHS may also encourage more Murpurgo titles through the tills, if only at that retailer.

The news from the wider economy this week is also less gloomy than might have been expected, with the British Retail Consortium trumpeting a “dazzling” December that saw overall retail sales rise 4.1%. And although printed book sales were down 4% over the same period, it is worth pointing out for the nth time that this figure excludes, and indeed may be completely offset by, digital revenues.

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