The Bookseller.com

8th September 2008

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Indies keep up with the Joneses

26.06.08 Tom Tivnan

Pop into an independent bookshop next week and you might see Jilly Cooper behind the till, Alan Titchmarsh stocking shelves or Gyles Brandreth packing returns.

No, these writers are not supplementing their incomes with part-time summer jobs, they are participating in Strictly Come Bookselling: nine authors will spend part of a day working on the shop floor in stores throughout the country. It is one of the more creative initiatives of Independent Booksellers Week (IBW).

Running from 1st to 8th July, IBW is the inaugural nationwide event aimed at boosting the profile of independent booksellers. The week is being co-ordinated by the Booksellers Association through its Small Business Forum, the working party aimed at getting independent shops to collaborate, co-operate and exchange ideas. As The Bookseller went to press, 335 out of the approximately 1,500 UK indies had agreed to participate.

Strictly Come Bookselling is a just a small part of the IBW festivities. About 500 events are planned up and down the country, including signings by big-name authors such as Jacqueline Wilson, Kate Mosse and Joseph O’Connor, as well as lesser-known local authors. Other events scheduled include literary festivals based around the week, quizzes, talks, book clubs and “girls night ins”—late-night shopping with chocolates provided by Galaxy.

The BA, in conjunction with wholesalers Bertrams/THE and Gardners, is making IBW p.o.s. material available to participating shops, branded with the “Love Your Local Bookshop” slogan thought up by Hertfordshire indie Books@Hoddesdon. Toolkit packs are also available, which include tips for indies such as making book signings more successful, expanding the customer base and marketing to the local media.

IBW is one of a number of initiatives banding independent bookshops together. Other recent examples include the rise of independent booksellers’ buying groups driven by Bertrams/THE, the Faber Alli­ance and Leading Edge; and the sharing of IT and web resources through programmes run by Gardners and The Book Partnership.

Yet, while this collaboration might help meet the challenges, including from the supermarkets and Amazon, which make 21st-century book retailing so risky, it has worried some. Is there too much collaboration? And does participation in events such as the IBW water down an indie’s uniqueness, and indeed, its very independence?

The idea for IBW was first mooted by Torbay Books owner Matthew Clarke in his column in The Bookseller. His shop is planning a raft of events, including signings by Mosse, Benjamin Mee and a “Hodder and John Murray Book Boffin Quiz” at a local hotel. He admits the “break-even figure is a ­little hairy” for the week, but claims that the added publicity his shop, and shops nationwide, have received will more than make up for it.

He also says that IBW has brought added benefits to the sector. “What has been an interesting side bit, and I think extremely helpful to a lot of shops, is the BA being proactive and giving useful advice with things like how to do windows, displays and book signings,” he says. “Indie shops have to get off their backsides. Some [owners] sit behind their desks, smiling, hoping the business will come to them. And this week will help.”

Clarke says that publisher response to IBW has been “mixed” and many will wish they had done more with the week. “I think publishers are beginning to wake up to the fact that if they do signings and events at well-run, professional independents, they will get more sales than at the chains because the independent will have the local contacts.”

Yet the very notion of a nationwide initiative does trouble some indies. Ginny Waters, proprietor of Essex-based Wivenhoe Bookshop, who also sits on the BA Small Business Forum advisory panel, says she is “not doing too much” for IBW. She adds: “I’m a bit worried about the corporate look to IBW and the Love Your Local Bookshop. The whole point of being an independent bookseller is that we are unique.”

Vivian Archer of east London’s Newham Bookshop admits to being conflicted about the Love Your Local Bookshop branding. She says: “What does it mean? It is an empty phrase if we don’t back it and prove it on the ground. What indies can do this week is tailor great events around their community and use IBW to ­celebrate our differences.”

While IBW participation numbers are certainly impressive, many shops are not signing on. Crockatt & Powell, the south London indie that has recently opened a sister store in Fulham, will not be joining in. Co-owner Adam Powell calls IBW and Love Your Local Bookshop “a bit naff”, and says he doesn’t see a need for a nationwide campaign: “What are we going to have in common with a bookshop in a market town in Herts? Except for maybe some serious book buyers, customers aren’t going to necessarily travel to seek out independent shops. We need to focus on our own business, our local customers and the half-mile area around our local shops.”

Powell is also not convinced of the benefit of joining up with independent buying groups, precisely because it waters down the indie offer. “The choice of books tends to be exactly the same as the kind of range you get in Waterstone’s and Borders,” he explains. “Although with Leading Edge you can order the books you want, that becomes public knowledge and I don’t think we really need to share that information.”

Leading Edge, launched in the UK in May 2007, offers bookshops a choice of about 175 discounted titles every month for a fee of around £40 a month. General manager Paul Henderson says the selling point of his company is the ability of the shops to remain independent. “The difference between us and other buying groups is that we give shops the ability to make their own decisions and to meet the needs of their own markets.”

Tim Walker, owner of Walker Bookshops, directs the Independent Buyers Group (IBG) with Bertrams/THE, which gives extra discount to its 125 bookshop members. He agrees that shops should remain “fiercely independent”. “But the IBG is a recognition of how very difficult it is in the current market conditions to stand alone,” he adds. “It is a tool to help indies to survive.”

IBG has recently implemented measures to widen its scope, partly to make the range of titles more “indie-friendly”. The extra discount offer—-which ranges between 50% and 52.5%—has been expanded to selected backlist. The core frontlist range, which had been chosen by six IBG members, is now picked by all 125 members.

“A buying group is a strange paradox,” says Patrick Neale, owner of Oxfordshire-based Jaffé & Neale Bookshop and Café. “We want to have independence and a buying group doesn’t always give us that. What we need to do is concentrate more on customer service and our expertise. That is still the way we can separate ourselves from all other retailers. If customers just buy on price, we are doomed.”

Another area where indies are increasingly using the same resources­ is in “back-room” IT functions and web resources. Gardners recently rolled out easyentertainment.co.uk, a web-hosting service for bookshops. The distributor provides shops with a website template that they can customise with their own branding—it includes transactional functionality, and titles are distributed, of course, from the Gardners warehouse.

The Book Partnership (TBP) provides booksellers with website hosting and web-based order management systems linked to Nielsen BookData, and Bertrams/THE and Gardners. It also runs an online portal through localbookshops.co.uk, on which any independent bookseller can list its website, for a fee.

Though shops do provide their own branding for Gardners and TBP-hosted sites, the templates are similar, and there can be an overall “identikit” feel to them. Is using similar IT resources diluting indies’ uniqueness?

TBP m.d. Chris Conway says: “It’s something we think about, and it’s an issue that should be raised. However, what makes indies independent is their own personality—and that comes out in what books they support in their shops, the writers they promote instore and how they relate to the community. It is not necessarily the back-room support.”

IBW looks set to be one area where indies will continue to collaborate, with the BA aiming to make it an annual event. Meryl Halls, the BA’s head of membership services, says: “We want it to be something that shops can hang their hat on year-on-year. To use it as a national platform to plan their local events.”

“Ultimately,” Torbay Books’ Clarke says, “it is about raising our profile. Already we have had much more local media coverage than we usually have. Whatever happens in terms of sales for the week, it has been a success.”

 

IBW — SELETED HIGHLIGHTS:

Silverdell Bookshop, Kirkham, Lancashire
The town of Kirkham will run an Independent Week alongside the SilverDell bookshop’s IBW promotion, bringing together all independent retailers. There will be an independent market day on 5th July, an Independents Welcome to Kirkham pack, and the mayor will raise the Kirkham flag.

The Forest Bookshop, Coleford, Gloucester
The Forest Bookshop is running its first literary festival, which will include the launch of local author Julia Gregson’s latest book East of the Sun (Orion), which has just been named as a “Richard & Judy” Summer Read, and a talk by John Griffiths based on his book Tea: The Drink that Changed the World (André Deutsch). Authors Lesley Pearse and Andrew Taylor will also try their hand at bookselling in Strictly Come Bookselling events.

Torbay Bookshop, Paignton, Devon
Torbay Bookshop’s week will commence with an exclusive pre-publication launch of Riverford Farm Cook Book (HarperCollins) by Guy Watson and Jane Baxter, and Benjamin Mee will be signing copies of his book We Bought a Zoo (HC). Leslie Thomas will be giving a talk and will do a Strictly Come Bookselling event. Bloomsbury is also donating pencil cases for every child that visits the shop during IBW.

Simply Books, Pocklington, York
The inaugural Pocklington Book Festival will run during the week, and will include an open mike poetry competition, a creative writing workshop and a teddy bears’ picnic and book trail.

books@Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire
The line-up includes an evening with thriller writer Frederick Forsyth and the first-ever @Big Books quiz, with prizes sponsored by Penguin.

Hayling Island Bookshop, Hayling Island, Hampshire
Kate Mosse will be signing copies of Sepulchre (Orion) and holding a writers’ clinic for invited sixth-form students. Other signing sessions include saga writer Dee Williams and crime writer Pauline Rowson.

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