Help navigation
- Wednesday, 19 June
Log in to TheBookseller.com
News
-
RELATED STORIES
-
Canongate buys Bergner on female desire
Canongate has acquired What...
-
Tax tops today's G8 agenda
Leaders at the G8 summit wi...
-
Price war sees Kobo mini cut to £29
A price war has been sparke...
-
Authors feature in Queen's Birthday Honours
Women's prize for ficti...
-
Poulter sparks BA debate on terms
A debate over how much publ...
Trade greets end of Waterstone's 3 for 2
01.09.11 | Lisa Campbell, Graeme Neill and Charlotte Williams
Publishers and trade figures have broadly reacted positively towards the scrapping of Waterstone’s 3-for-2 promotion.
As The Bookseller revealed earlier today [31st August], the offer is expected to be scrapped in September and replaced by discount off individual books. It marks the end of arguably the most recognisable book offer, which has been part of Waterstone's for more than a decade.
Ursula Mackenzie, c.e.o of Little, Brown and chair of the Trade Publishers’ Council at the Publishers Association, said Daunt's move was the right one as in difficult economic times customers are not necessarily looking to buy two books. She said: “Refreshing the offer will be a good thing, I’m not sure that the 3-for-2 is what people are looking for. They want one book, at the cheapest possible price.”
Kerr MacRae, executive director of Simon & Schuster, said scrapping the offer needed to be done. He said: “I don’t think anyone will mourn 3-for-2s to the depth and level that they ended up in Waterstone’s. When it started it was quite selective, sticking to specific authors or genres and it grew into a bit of a monster. It became the default position in terms of Waterstone’s front of store proposition. In scrapping it, it’s the first step for them to look at new and innovative ways to sell things differently.”
Scott Pack, publisher at The Friday Project and former buying manager at Waterstone’s, defended the offer on Twitter and said W H Smith would be "delighted" with its abolition. He said: “When we tried to reduce the number of books on the 3 for 2 offer it didn’t work financially, it didn’t make as much money. But that was a different time. This may be more of a cultural change...It is the end of an era. It is really fascinating how many people are talking about this – authors, readers, publishers. It is part of our cultural fabric.”
One indie publisher said: "If you get a book in the 3-for-2 offer it sells and sells and sells. Even though the margin is lower, it is a dream for us."
David Roche, former Borders c.e.o. and Waterstone's product director, said: “Love it or hate it, the 3 for 2 campaign became a treadmill that always resulted in a headache whenever you attempted to extricate yourself from it. It did sell a lot of books and over the years has boosted the career, or certainly individual titles, of many an emerging author.”
However, he added: “Having said that, everything has a sell-by date and there should be no taboo in replacing the 3 for 2 with something that might be more relevant to the current state of the market/economy and for the variety of store locations that Waterstone's currently operates in. The magic is to hit on a formula and balance that works better, or to have a range of scaleable offers and incentives that help put a spotlight on a curated selection of individual books (be they frontlist or backlist) and different authors, be they household names or new writing talent that needs championing. Carrying on as Waterstone's were is clearly not the answer so James should be applauded for trying something different rather than doing more of the same."
Some Waterstone's staff were told of the move earlier this week, with one source telling The Bookseller campaign books would subsequently be uniformly priced at £5, while another suggested a more staggered offer for paperbacks, with £3, £5 and £7 pricepoints available.
Jonathan Lloyd, c.e.o. of Curtis Brown, echoed those who said three books is not necessarily what customers always want. He said: “3-for-2 often meant spending enormous amounts of time looking for a third book you didn’t really want. Like so many activities, two is more satisfying than three.”
The news has seen coverage in The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian. Writing in The Independent, David Prosser said: "In axing Waterstone's three for two offers, Mr Daunt is steering the bookshops towards the sort of philosophy that has worked for him in the past." But he notedL "The three for two deal is an effective way to shift the work of lesser-known authors, to expand their audiences and to turn them into the bestsellers of tomorrow. Without the support of being thrown into promotions featuring today's star-names, those authors may find the going tougher."
The Guardian quotes the author Robert Muchamore, who said: "Multibuys have never worked for me with books because you need to find three eclectic non-identical products."
TheBookseller
©2012 Bookseller Media Ltd rights reserved.
Comments: Scroll down for the latest comments and to have your say
By posting on this website you agree to the Bookseller comments policy. Comments go direct to live please be relevant, brief and definitely not abusive. Report any "unsuitable comments by clicking the links"
Sort: Oldest first | Newest first | Readers' most recommended
Jonathan Lloyd, best quote ever!
But surely some customers spent MORE money buying a second book in order to get a third for free? I have done on numerous occasions. Also, the above quotes from publishing big wigs and story itself is somewhat meaningless as no publishing CEO is gonna tell the md of the uk's biggest bookseller his idea is crap for risk of losing business! Better to talk to customers on the ground surely?!?! That's a much more interesting story as it might show how synonymous Waterstones is with the 3 for 2 offer. Potentially Daunt could have played straight into WHS 's hands. Scott Pack's comment is where the story is!
Completely agree with you Neil and with Scott. This is going to be bad news for midlist titles which could see sales grow significantly when added o a 3 for 2. Interesting that none of the quoted publishers support the current 3 for 2 and yet they all scramble to get their titles in it.
Leko, your comment re publishers scrambling to get books into the 3 for 2 is a bit silly. They pushed for inclusion in the 3 for 2 because the promotion was a front-of-house placement on the tables, and due to Waterstone's having previously been so attached to it, it was one of the few ways to get their books at the front. They are likely at the moment to be welcoming new offers because it allows them more scope for individual selling - and the ability to negotiate with Waterstone's on discount.
I agree with Neil and the others though. As a reader, I did spend a lot of time searching for a 3rd book, which kept me in the shop looking at books, and I'd often end up with 3 discounted titles and one that wasn't in the promotion because I'd picked it out of the shelves to see if it had a sticker and then fallen in love with it. And I might have contented myself with only one book if it weren't for the 3 for 2 - so they sold a lot more books that way.
Publishers & the Bookseller.... This is not important.
Publishers should know better than to comment on retailer activity in the press.
I shop at Waterstone's, I used to work at Waterstone's, and the books I write are stocked and sold by Waterstones. From all three angles getting rid of the 3 for 2 offer looks like an excellent idea.
I cannot agree that the 3 for 2 was 'good for mid-list'. Far, far more mid-list titles exist than ever get into the 3 for 2 offer. What 3 for 2 did was give a boost to a very few mid-list titles at the expense of all the others, which languished spine-out while around them shoppers with sore feet and dimishing enthusiasm searched for a third yellow stickered book to add to the one that they came in for and the one that they thought looked quite interesting. This to the extent that the author of a well-reviewed first novel (not me) was told by their publisher that they would not be commissioning the next two books in the trilogy specifically because the first book had not got into the 3 for 2 offer, and as a result had sold less than they had budgeted for. (Leko, as long as the offer exists you would be *mad* not to scramble to get your titles on it, the difference between the sales of a 3 for 2 book and a non 3 for 2 book are so massive).
As far as I can see this is good news for readers, writers, and the shops themselves. Good news for range, good news for shoppers, who get a real choice not a limited one. Good news for returns; no more unsold piles of 3 for 2 titles to be sent back at the end of the month to the detriment of the environment and of publishers' budgets. Good news for writers, you have a chance of your book selling even if it's not on 3 for 2. Good news for employees of Waterstones who will hopefully be able to choose what to promote in their store instead of having to automatically put the 3 for 2s in pride of place.
I don't think Waterstone's *can* compete with Amazon on price. So they might as well stop acting like a discount warehouse and start acting like a chain of shops for people who like reading.
The amount of time spent stickering books and then destickering them is such a waste of booksellers time, this could be spent with customers. Other retailers such as supermarkets have promotions, whereby they have posters and point of sale signs and the reduced price indicated on the shelf, without the folly of individually pricing and then depricing each item; this is so labour intensive. Only Waterstones is that backward!
If 3 for 2 sold more books , even if the 3rd book was a random selection ,is surely a force for good. It got more books into people's hands .Critics who say they are fed up with stickering , or dont want to spend time on making a 3rd selection are really missing the point. To light book buyers [the vast majority] this is an attractive "come -on".Surely it is better to "tune" the 3 for 2 offers better to a more targeted selection perhaps, than to abandon them ?
As a former Waterstone's employee, I think this is a good thing at least for the simple reason as it means that staff won't be having to constantly put 3for2 stickers on everything: Bane of my life and an incredibly tedious process. Now I guess they'll just put "25% off" stickers on instead.
Get rid of 3-for-2 and those stupdid till offers, and while you're at it get rid of the sofas... it doesn't create a 'browsing' atmosphere, it just allows people to waste their time and the time of the bookseller by sitting in a shop reading a book and then not purchasing (how many times does someone use their smart phone to check online prices?).
Rant over.
Julian- It's not a reason, but it was tedious!
Julian, don't be an arse.
The process of stickering-destickering-restickering was very tedious at a time when many shops are understaffed and are finding it difficult to allocate time to this whilst still giving the best customer service they can... nothing more off putting than seeing a bookseller at a till with their head down, trying to peel old stickers off of a book.
Nobody said this was the reason why they are stopping the offer (if they did, I expect they thought people reading it would be able to see their point).
SIGH
Is it safe to assume that if the 3 for 2 is going to be replaced by £'s off then there will be just as many books to sticker, that is unless we sell less......
It's not because staff are lazy that the stickering-destickering was mad. It was simply that staff's hours, paid for by W'stones, was wasted. We were doing the sticky bit instead of unpacking stock - there simply isn't enough staff to do both. The same goes for the ridiculous mountains of returns - why did we ever need more than 50 copies of anything at the same time. Ordering is fast enough to restock when the pile gets to 5 copies. LAst year I stood beside a pile of Andrew Marr's tome as high as my shoulders. The same went for Madeleine McCann's story more recently.
If people actually read all three books they got under the 342,(which I doubt) they would have stayed out of the bookshop for a number of weeks. I'd rather the customer came in every weekend for a refill. They still impulse buy, but not by force.
Julian, I sometimes feel like you deliberately misunderstand people just so you can make a snide comment. Having a lot of opinions and ignoring other peoples doesn't make you smarter. It just makes you an arrogant twit.
Who better to know what the customers need/want than a) the customers and b) the booksellers who talk to them and serve them everyday. I don't think stickering, destickering, restickering, etc. in itself is a waste of time, but the volume of such is.
3 for 2s do not keep customers loyal, but booksellers who listen to them, take the time to understand their needs and the needs of the people who they're buying presents for, and recommend accordingly do. That's what keeps many of our customers coming back time after time and with less time dealing with 3 for 2s (unpacking the ridiculous amount of stock for said promotion, stickering issues, trying to find places for all the stock you can't fit on the displays, returning the stock when the majority of it hasn't sold, etc.) we'll have more time to make interesting displays, write recommends for the books we've read and loved, and, most importantly, talking to our customers and helping them find the gems that get lost on the shelves otherwise.
I don't know if scrapping the 3 for 2 altogether will prove to be a good idea, but I do know that myself and all my bookselling colleagues are Waterstone's greatest asset, and it's about time our expertise was used appropriately. I agree with whoever said that it's probably better for someone to leave with 1 book instead of 3 but come in more regularly.
Also, I can't count the amount of times a customer has come to the till with 1 or 2 3 for 2s and wasted their time trying to find enough to get the offer and failing. Now maybe customers can look at the books, instead of the stickers. And, as an experienced bookseller, I can tell you that the 3 for 2 only helps a small majority of books sell in volume while a vast majority of books (including others in the same offer) get ignored. I think this will give us booksellers a real chance to sell some much under-appreciated books to a wider variety of people.
O.K I get the point . No need for anybody to be offensive here. Because of my great age I have probably sold more books as a publisher , retailer and wholesaler than anybody else posting today, so I do have some experience on which my comments are made .The difference now is that the retail market is FAR more difficult than at anytime I was running retail stock/sales at Dillons and back then it was really hard . .
Talk of things being tedious really piss me off , unemployment is tedious.
Julian, I think you just underestimate exactly how much time the 342s took up. Even 10 years ago when I was at Ws it meant I couldn't spend as time in my section as I wanted. It's not the tediousness that is the problem - I enjoy monotonous, mundane tasks - it's that I couldn't do the job I thought I was hired to do. And I think the shop suffered for the lack of attention from a team of quality booksellers.
I wonder at the comments about the 'relief' of getting rid of 3for2 and how it will suddenly free up book buyers to browse the whole range of titles. Do you not think that exactly the same titles currently in 3for2 will just appear in the W'stones £5 or £3 or half-price deals (presumably copied exactly from the current HMV offer with leading paperback titles - all, incidentally, individually stickered))? How come suddenly that mid-list title 'languishing' (to quote a contributor) on the shelf will be freed up and leap out at a customer? Customers will quite simply browse what will now be 'reduced paperbacks' tables and be even less inclined to buy a full price paperback.... Ah well, plus ca change.....
I seem to recall Scott Pack, when he was first parachuted into Waterstone's by HMV, confidently informing us that 3 for 2 "didn't work". Good to see he's changed his mind.
As I commented yesterday, my only concern about this is where poor old Oxfam will get their stock from now that there won't be so many unread third books washing about.
partly because it means that the bookseller can choose a face-out based on whether they like that book, rather than by whether it's on 3for2.
That's not fool-proof of course - the amount of times we used to get really annoyed that an A-tier title was face-out with 5 copies when it hadn't sold for 2 or 3 months in our branch, when this one that we had read and loved had to be spine-on because we had no extra space to give it, is going to happen whether or not the 3for2s are there.
Jonathan Lloyd, best quote ever!
But surely some customers spent MORE money buying a second book in order to get a third for free? I have done on numerous occasions. Also, the above quotes from publishing big wigs and story itself is somewhat meaningless as no publishing CEO is gonna tell the md of the uk's biggest bookseller his idea is crap for risk of losing business! Better to talk to customers on the ground surely?!?! That's a much more interesting story as it might show how synonymous Waterstones is with the 3 for 2 offer. Potentially Daunt could have played straight into WHS 's hands. Scott Pack's comment is where the story is!
Completely agree with you Neil and with Scott. This is going to be bad news for midlist titles which could see sales grow significantly when added o a 3 for 2. Interesting that none of the quoted publishers support the current 3 for 2 and yet they all scramble to get their titles in it.
Leko, your comment re publishers scrambling to get books into the 3 for 2 is a bit silly. They pushed for inclusion in the 3 for 2 because the promotion was a front-of-house placement on the tables, and due to Waterstone's having previously been so attached to it, it was one of the few ways to get their books at the front. They are likely at the moment to be welcoming new offers because it allows them more scope for individual selling - and the ability to negotiate with Waterstone's on discount.
I agree with Neil and the others though. As a reader, I did spend a lot of time searching for a 3rd book, which kept me in the shop looking at books, and I'd often end up with 3 discounted titles and one that wasn't in the promotion because I'd picked it out of the shelves to see if it had a sticker and then fallen in love with it. And I might have contented myself with only one book if it weren't for the 3 for 2 - so they sold a lot more books that way.
Publishers & the Bookseller.... This is not important.
Publishers should know better than to comment on retailer activity in the press.
...Isn't that the point of The Bookseller?
I shop at Waterstone's, I used to work at Waterstone's, and the books I write are stocked and sold by Waterstones. From all three angles getting rid of the 3 for 2 offer looks like an excellent idea.
I cannot agree that the 3 for 2 was 'good for mid-list'. Far, far more mid-list titles exist than ever get into the 3 for 2 offer. What 3 for 2 did was give a boost to a very few mid-list titles at the expense of all the others, which languished spine-out while around them shoppers with sore feet and dimishing enthusiasm searched for a third yellow stickered book to add to the one that they came in for and the one that they thought looked quite interesting. This to the extent that the author of a well-reviewed first novel (not me) was told by their publisher that they would not be commissioning the next two books in the trilogy specifically because the first book had not got into the 3 for 2 offer, and as a result had sold less than they had budgeted for. (Leko, as long as the offer exists you would be *mad* not to scramble to get your titles on it, the difference between the sales of a 3 for 2 book and a non 3 for 2 book are so massive).
As far as I can see this is good news for readers, writers, and the shops themselves. Good news for range, good news for shoppers, who get a real choice not a limited one. Good news for returns; no more unsold piles of 3 for 2 titles to be sent back at the end of the month to the detriment of the environment and of publishers' budgets. Good news for writers, you have a chance of your book selling even if it's not on 3 for 2. Good news for employees of Waterstones who will hopefully be able to choose what to promote in their store instead of having to automatically put the 3 for 2s in pride of place.
I don't think Waterstone's *can* compete with Amazon on price. So they might as well stop acting like a discount warehouse and start acting like a chain of shops for people who like reading.
The amount of time spent stickering books and then destickering them is such a waste of booksellers time, this could be spent with customers. Other retailers such as supermarkets have promotions, whereby they have posters and point of sale signs and the reduced price indicated on the shelf, without the folly of individually pricing and then depricing each item; this is so labour intensive. Only Waterstones is that backward!
Books would still have to be individually priced or else a cunning customer could pick up £10 book and claim it was found on the £3 table and the bookseller wouldn't be able to argue with them. Stickering and destickering is going to continue to be the bane of many of our lives, it's death won't be soon :(
If 3 for 2 sold more books , even if the 3rd book was a random selection ,is surely a force for good. It got more books into people's hands .Critics who say they are fed up with stickering , or dont want to spend time on making a 3rd selection are really missing the point. To light book buyers [the vast majority] this is an attractive "come -on".Surely it is better to "tune" the 3 for 2 offers better to a more targeted selection perhaps, than to abandon them ?
As a former Waterstone's employee, I think this is a good thing at least for the simple reason as it means that staff won't be having to constantly put 3for2 stickers on everything: Bane of my life and an incredibly tedious process. Now I guess they'll just put "25% off" stickers on instead.
Get rid of 3-for-2 and those stupdid till offers, and while you're at it get rid of the sofas... it doesn't create a 'browsing' atmosphere, it just allows people to waste their time and the time of the bookseller by sitting in a shop reading a book and then not purchasing (how many times does someone use their smart phone to check online prices?).
Rant over.
Julian- It's not a reason, but it was tedious!
It's not because staff are lazy that the stickering-destickering was mad. It was simply that staff's hours, paid for by W'stones, was wasted. We were doing the sticky bit instead of unpacking stock - there simply isn't enough staff to do both. The same goes for the ridiculous mountains of returns - why did we ever need more than 50 copies of anything at the same time. Ordering is fast enough to restock when the pile gets to 5 copies. LAst year I stood beside a pile of Andrew Marr's tome as high as my shoulders. The same went for Madeleine McCann's story more recently.
If people actually read all three books they got under the 342,(which I doubt) they would have stayed out of the bookshop for a number of weeks. I'd rather the customer came in every weekend for a refill. They still impulse buy, but not by force.
I would rather be in the store helping customers find the books they want rather than sticking stock any day. All that stickering and destickering was a time-consuming and decidedly futile process. Much better to have staff doing something productive.
Julian, don't be an arse.
The process of stickering-destickering-restickering was very tedious at a time when many shops are understaffed and are finding it difficult to allocate time to this whilst still giving the best customer service they can... nothing more off putting than seeing a bookseller at a till with their head down, trying to peel old stickers off of a book.
Nobody said this was the reason why they are stopping the offer (if they did, I expect they thought people reading it would be able to see their point).
SIGH
Is it safe to assume that if the 3 for 2 is going to be replaced by £'s off then there will be just as many books to sticker, that is unless we sell less......
Julian, I sometimes feel like you deliberately misunderstand people just so you can make a snide comment. Having a lot of opinions and ignoring other peoples doesn't make you smarter. It just makes you an arrogant twit.
Who better to know what the customers need/want than a) the customers and b) the booksellers who talk to them and serve them everyday. I don't think stickering, destickering, restickering, etc. in itself is a waste of time, but the volume of such is.
3 for 2s do not keep customers loyal, but booksellers who listen to them, take the time to understand their needs and the needs of the people who they're buying presents for, and recommend accordingly do. That's what keeps many of our customers coming back time after time and with less time dealing with 3 for 2s (unpacking the ridiculous amount of stock for said promotion, stickering issues, trying to find places for all the stock you can't fit on the displays, returning the stock when the majority of it hasn't sold, etc.) we'll have more time to make interesting displays, write recommends for the books we've read and loved, and, most importantly, talking to our customers and helping them find the gems that get lost on the shelves otherwise.
I don't know if scrapping the 3 for 2 altogether will prove to be a good idea, but I do know that myself and all my bookselling colleagues are Waterstone's greatest asset, and it's about time our expertise was used appropriately. I agree with whoever said that it's probably better for someone to leave with 1 book instead of 3 but come in more regularly.
Also, I can't count the amount of times a customer has come to the till with 1 or 2 3 for 2s and wasted their time trying to find enough to get the offer and failing. Now maybe customers can look at the books, instead of the stickers. And, as an experienced bookseller, I can tell you that the 3 for 2 only helps a small majority of books sell in volume while a vast majority of books (including others in the same offer) get ignored. I think this will give us booksellers a real chance to sell some much under-appreciated books to a wider variety of people.
O.K I get the point . No need for anybody to be offensive here. Because of my great age I have probably sold more books as a publisher , retailer and wholesaler than anybody else posting today, so I do have some experience on which my comments are made .The difference now is that the retail market is FAR more difficult than at anytime I was running retail stock/sales at Dillons and back then it was really hard . .
Talk of things being tedious really piss me off , unemployment is tedious.
Hear, hear
Hear, hear
Julian, I think you just underestimate exactly how much time the 342s took up. Even 10 years ago when I was at Ws it meant I couldn't spend as time in my section as I wanted. It's not the tediousness that is the problem - I enjoy monotonous, mundane tasks - it's that I couldn't do the job I thought I was hired to do. And I think the shop suffered for the lack of attention from a team of quality booksellers.
I wonder at the comments about the 'relief' of getting rid of 3for2 and how it will suddenly free up book buyers to browse the whole range of titles. Do you not think that exactly the same titles currently in 3for2 will just appear in the W'stones £5 or £3 or half-price deals (presumably copied exactly from the current HMV offer with leading paperback titles - all, incidentally, individually stickered))? How come suddenly that mid-list title 'languishing' (to quote a contributor) on the shelf will be freed up and leap out at a customer? Customers will quite simply browse what will now be 'reduced paperbacks' tables and be even less inclined to buy a full price paperback.... Ah well, plus ca change.....
partly because it means that the bookseller can choose a face-out based on whether they like that book, rather than by whether it's on 3for2.
That's not fool-proof of course - the amount of times we used to get really annoyed that an A-tier title was face-out with 5 copies when it hadn't sold for 2 or 3 months in our branch, when this one that we had read and loved had to be spine-on because we had no extra space to give it, is going to happen whether or not the 3for2s are there.
I seem to recall Scott Pack, when he was first parachuted into Waterstone's by HMV, confidently informing us that 3 for 2 "didn't work". Good to see he's changed his mind.
As I commented yesterday, my only concern about this is where poor old Oxfam will get their stock from now that there won't be so many unread third books washing about.
I think you remember incorrectly Matthew, I said that a 3 for 2 on a small number of titles didn't work. 30 or 40 titles was the typical size of the offer when I was 'parachuted' in. My point at the time was that any well-read person would probably already have read 5-10 of them leaving them a relatively small number to choose from. I stand by that point. It may well have got too big but that's another issue entirely.
Doesn't really matter now, it is going and that's the end of it.
Won't the hours spent stickering 3 for 2 books now be spent stickering £3, £5 and £7 books instead, and then re-stickering when a £7 book is inevitably marked down to £5, and then to £3, not accounting for the January sales etc?
Daunt doesn't like stickers on the cover of books. This should mean no stickering.
It is a bold move and we have 2 types of shopper, the one who comes in hoping all their books are on 3 4 2 and the one who finds 2 books and then gets frustrated looking for a third - this is where my team make suggestions based on what they are already buying and by actually talking to them!
We shouldn't have as many books on the offer as we do now. There will be a selection of Cheap books for the bargin hunters, everyone else can pay full price for quality books. This may see a drop in our footfall, but as Smiths will no longer be trying to beat us on price, they will probably revert to a 3 for 2 offer rather than the buy one get one for £1.
I hope it works - It may go horribly wrong, but if it does as long as Daunt has the intellegence to change and adapt quickly enough.
why anyone would want to but a book with a nasty sticker on it is beyond comprehension anyway - especially when it leaves a mark on the cover when it is scraped away with a false talon.
We have a constant 3 for 2 on all kids books at Selfridges - no stickering,and because its kids books,people enjoy picking 3 books - result around 60% year on year increase( still comparing to last year when the offer was on)
Stickering at high st WHS wasted so much time when it should have been used on customer service.Ever wondered where to find staff in Waterstones and WHS - listen for the sticker guns.The cost of the sticker rolls probably wipe out the profit left on the offer.
Bookish, why would WHS revert to an offer Wstones are finishing? They will be more than happy that their Buy One Get One Half Price - or promotional Buy One Get One for £1 - will continue to outdo Wstones as it did their 3for2. And i like your optimism 'everyone else will pay full price for quality books'. Erm, hello, what world are you living in? I will be very interested to see where the money goes now. I think Mr Daunt has an eye-opening time coming up when he realises that running a couple of high-brow stores in the bubble of London is so impossibly different from the real world. Mr Daunt, I hope you are prepared for a bumpy ride, but I salute you for trying something different.
This is certainly a bold move but one with enormous risks. Putting aside all the noise about stickering, the 342 generates over 25% of total sales at most significantly the best margin W achieves at over 50%- better than all other promotional strands and also full price backlist sales ( W still gets full promotional margin even when customers buy single or even just 2 books from the 342 ). The publishers also pay for entry to the offer which obviously funds national marketing for W. The strand also increases ATV up from the average of about £9.00 as most 342 sales come in at £15.98. Finally, as others have posted, W has trialled many other price mechanics in various stores and regions and the volume sales and gross margin have always, always dropped as a result. I agree there should be a fresh approach and that there are far too many titles with ridiculously large quantities causing pointless workload with stickering and returns but stopping the strand will I think prove a mistake very quickly. Real choice will not improve for customers ( the space for face-outs and table piles will get no bigger) and I doubt there will be a wider representation of publishers- contrary to other posts- W gets far bigger base and promotional margins from the big publishers. Time will tell but the replacement offer for the 342 will need to be a thing of genius to perform better.