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“The tide is turning” on bookshops’ attitudes towards stocking self-published titles, new developments suggest.
The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) founder Orna Ross agreed there had been “movement” as a result of ALLi’s #OpenUpToIndies campaign earlier in the year. The initiative called on bookshops, libraries, literary event organisers and reviewers to “open up” to self-published authors.
“There is definitely movement on the issue,” Ross said. “The tide is starting to turn. The pace of change in the literary world—and by that I mean publishers, libraries and bookshops—is generally not moving as quickly as authors themselves are moving, but it is moving. I do think there is a natural alliance between indie bookshops, indie authors and indie publishers, and I think there is a lot of creative thinking that we can do together that will benefit everybody.”
Ross‘ comments follow the news that the Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green, London, planned to create a shelf dedicated to self-published titles and books from small presses, from the beginning of October.
It is a commercial venture: the shop will charge £1.50 per book, per month to display the title, stocking a maximum of three copies. Simon Key, co-owner of the Big Green Bookshop, said: “It is just a different way of doing it. People contact us all the time and say: ‘I have written this book, it is really good.’
I want to be able to support them but it is very difficult for us to take a punt on titles. We need the space and if they don’t sell, we are potentially losing money.”
He added: “I also have to keep a business going, and this makes good business sense, because we are saying: ‘We will take your book but you are going to have to help sell them by promoting them on social media and sending people into the shop to buy it’, which will increase footfall. It is no different to what W H Smith does and what Waterstones used to do: asking publishers to pay for promotional space.”
Earlier this year, indies Dulwich Books in London and The Bookshop Kibworth in Leicester agreed a trial deal with self-publishing company New Generation Publishing to stock selected titles by indie authors in return for a fee. However, neither shop seemed overwhelmed with the scheme.
Debbie James, owner of The Bookshop Kibworth, said: “There is a financial incentive, which is not to be sniffed at. We don’t have to stock them if we don’t want to, and some authors have come into the shop to see them and have been really chuffed.
“However, it is a real dichotomy because I pick everything that comes into my shop but I do not pick these titles. I am aware companies such as W H Smith, and before that Waterstones, used to charge publishers extra to have their books face out—that is the opposite of what our shop is about. People come to us because of the books we choose to showcase. But it is only five books a month, and that is fine for our shop.”
James added that some titles have sold “really well” but “we have probably not sold as many as we would if it had been a frontlist title from an established publisher.”
Sheila O’Reilly, owner of Dulwich Books, said: “Some of it works and some of it doesn’t. Around 25% of the books have sold. We are going to be very tight for space over the next four months in the run up to Christmas, so we shall have to see how it pans out.”
Other indies said they would be cautious about increasing their range of indie-authored titles.
Emma Milne-White, co-owner of the Hungerford Bookshop in Herefordshire, said: “If it is a book by a local author and we think it will sell, then we will buy it in to sell. Those books are nearly always written by a local person who is proficient at promoting it and letting people know it is in the shop. But most indie [bookshops] are quite small and space is an issue, so we want to make sure we are stocking books that are going to do well.”
She added: “I would really be unsure about taking payment. Waterstones used to accept payment from publishers and we like to differentiate ourselves by saying every book in here has been selected by us, often because we have read it and loved it.”
According to Nielsen’s Books & Consumer survey, self-published titles gained a greater market share last year. Self-published titles accounted for 0.9% of the physical book market in 2013, rising from 0.5% in 2012; and 19.6% of the e-book market in 2013, rising from 12.6% in 2012.