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Publishers rally to support Blackwell
01.01.70 | Charlotte Williams
Publishers have heeded warnings that academic booksellers had "months to survive" by offering greater support during this year's academic season, the m.d. of Blackwell has reported.
David Prescott said publishers have been willing to work with the high street and campus bookseller by supporting stockholding and promotional discounting. "This year publishers seem to have understood that if they want a physical window for their products on campuses and on the high street then they have to be more supportive of booksellers," he said.
"In Blackwell's terms the vast majority have been supportive and willing to talk about creative ways of doing that. However, there is always more you can do and we will carry on talking to those publishers who are willing to innovate." He added negotiations had made the chain able to compete more effectively online.
Graham Taylor, director of educational, academic and professional publishing at the Publishers Association, said "the pressure is on" in the textbook market, with the lead-up to university funding changes next year and the shift to digital. Taylor said while he did not know the intricacies of the commercial negotiations taking place between publishers and booksellers, it was "encouraging" to see publishers responding to booksellers' needs.
He said: "The policy changes impacting higher education in the UK are the most profound in a generation and they are arriving next year. It will be interesting to see how these changes follow through in the provision of learning resources. With the funding changes we are reaching a time of innovation and change in the sector, and it is a time for both publishers and booksellers to work together and realise the opportunities that might be there in those changes."
At the Booksellers Association's Academic, Professional & Specialist Bookselling Group (APSBG) conference in March this year, the then Waterstone's m.d. Dominic Myers warned publishers that academic bookselling in bricks and mortar shops had reached a "crisis point" in which 2011 would be a defining year.
Myers called for more support with margin, funding consignment stock in shop windows and for more collaboration between publishers and booksellers.
His negative forecast was backed by the BA's APSBG chairman, Blackwell store manager Iain Finlayson, who told the BA's a.g.m. in June that he also believed academic bookselling on the high street had reached a "tipping point".
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They might be supporting Blackwells but apart from exceptions most academic publishers seem content to let the specialist academic university bookseller fade away.They seem unable to grasp the fact that this part of the trade is and will disappear in the next two years unless they change the way the academic bookshops are supplied.
They have the power to make change, but weak leaders with no vision seem content to live in the past and eventually will have only one route to market. We have traded for 37 years in our plymouth store providing an amazing service to academics... at little profit. The facts are 30 percent discount cannot fund stock on shelves, great staff and ever increasing overheads.It seems to me that we are not wanted ?
It is good to see that publishers are responding to one of the big players but let’s not forget the rest of us.
As an independent academic bookseller we still have the same responsibility to our lectures and students to have the books.
I can see innovation has happened this year, but I still feel that the industry as a whole may not have got the message that if they want printed books around campus, bookshops are the shop window, we talk to the customer and we do need them to be even more flexible in many ways.
We all need to be able to respond quickly, something that I feel some publishers may have lost this year. I am positive that this will happen let’s just hope it is not to late.
We telephoned Pearson yesterday to ask for extra discount on a £900 order for one of our schools (normal discount 17.5). A very helpful "agent" suggested we tell the school to go to the Pearson website as they will get 20%, but unfortunately we could still have only 17.5%. Crackers!
Charkin in his plenary to his APSLP buddies said that dealing with the digital ebook distributors 'made a nice change from having to deal with the likes of Blackwells.' That just about sums up the disrespect that senior profit-monger publishers have for the traditional bookseller.
They might be supporting Blackwells but apart from exceptions most academic publishers seem content to let the specialist academic university bookseller fade away.They seem unable to grasp the fact that this part of the trade is and will disappear in the next two years unless they change the way the academic bookshops are supplied.
They have the power to make change, but weak leaders with no vision seem content to live in the past and eventually will have only one route to market. We have traded for 37 years in our plymouth store providing an amazing service to academics... at little profit. The facts are 30 percent discount cannot fund stock on shelves, great staff and ever increasing overheads.It seems to me that we are not wanted ?
It is good to see that publishers are responding to one of the big players but let’s not forget the rest of us.
As an independent academic bookseller we still have the same responsibility to our lectures and students to have the books.
I can see innovation has happened this year, but I still feel that the industry as a whole may not have got the message that if they want printed books around campus, bookshops are the shop window, we talk to the customer and we do need them to be even more flexible in many ways.
We all need to be able to respond quickly, something that I feel some publishers may have lost this year. I am positive that this will happen let’s just hope it is not to late.
We telephoned Pearson yesterday to ask for extra discount on a £900 order for one of our schools (normal discount 17.5). A very helpful "agent" suggested we tell the school to go to the Pearson website as they will get 20%, but unfortunately we could still have only 17.5%. Crackers!
Charkin in his plenary to his APSLP buddies said that dealing with the digital ebook distributors 'made a nice change from having to deal with the likes of Blackwells.' That just about sums up the disrespect that senior profit-monger publishers have for the traditional bookseller.