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Retailers lobby for digital role

02.02.07 Alison Bone

Senior retailers have entreated publishers to stand aside and let booksellers be the first port of call for consumers looking for digital products. The demands came at the Booksellers Association's digitisation summit, which drew together 30 senior retailers and publishers to discuss the way forward for books in the digital world.

Conference chair Francis Bennett said booksellers at the conference, including the c.e.o.s of Waterstone's, Borders, John Smith and Blackwell's, had argued "very strongly" that they, rather than publishers, should be the route to digital products for consumers. "That's not to say the booksellers won, but it means the debate has begun."

"We are at the start of the biggest change for the industry since old Gutenberg invented the printing press," added BA c.e.o. Tim Godfray. "The aim of the conference was to get booksellers and publishers together and work out ways we could disseminate digital products to consumers through booksellers in the most effective way."

Bennett also said there was a feeling from booksellers that the major publishers are "doing their own thing" with digitisation plans. "There was an anxiety that there are too many versions of the same procedure--digital warehouses, for example. We have to try to standardise."

Results from the conference, held in Godalming on 17th and 18th January, include the setting up of a book industry digital task force, which will report to the BA/PA Liaison Group. Market research to ascertain consumer views and buying behaviour will also be commissioned, and the BA will produce a guide for smaller booksellers that do not yet have a web presence. "Something of this scale is a big challenge," said Godfray, "and we have not found it necessarily easy to deal with such big issues in previous years." Bennett added: "If we want to succeed, we have to work together in the way the book trade has historically found so difficult.

waterstone's Retailers digital Borders John Smith Blackwell's

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