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Publishers need to be flexible on returns and direct readers away from Amazon to help indies get back to business when they start reopening next month, booksellers say.
Bookshops will start raising the shutters from 15th June after Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a further easing of lockdown measures this month.
However, although the publishing industry has shown support to retailers during the crisis, the Booksellers Association has made a number of requests to the trade about what it can do to help. They range from extending returns windows and offering a grace period on invoice payments to prioritising high street stores in book promotions.
Hazel Broadfoot, owner of Village Books in Dulwich and vice-president of the BA, plans to open seven days a week from 15th June with limited hours for browsing and a continued collect from the door and local delivery service.
She said: “Returns is an obvious issue where time limits will have been exceeded, and may continue to be for shops who decide not to reopen immediately. There’s also likely to be an issue around returns to Bertrams with their future looking uncertain.”
“Author power to support high street bookshops is essential,” she added. “It makes me want to weep when I see authors, whose debut novels we have promoted and sold in huge numbers, blithely recommending Amazon on their social platforms. Many publicists are equally guilty of doing this. If authors and publishers want to retain physical bookshops with their special talents for recommending and hand-selling, then they need much more joined-up thinking, through their whole organisation, about where they choose to direct potential book buyers.”
Sue Lake, of White Rose Books in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, said: “The BA’s requests to publishers are spot on. They have listened to booksellers and have an in depth understanding of our various concerns, especially around the thorny issue of returns. I am keen to order new titles, but I’m currently looking at well over £50,000 books in stock which seems like very expensive wallpaper right now. All of this means strict budgeting for buying, outside of customer orders and I’ll be hunting for the best possible deals.”
Lake will also reopen her shop from 15th June, but for the time being only on its four traditionally busiest days of the week from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
She said: “I am eager, but cautious as regards reopening. There are two distinct parts to the process, first of all to carry out a Covid risk assessment involves sifting through a minefield of information and trying to adapt it for your own particular business. Secondly, we will be hugely reliant on the general public adhering to guidelines and following social distancing, both in general and within our bookshop, where they’re used to browsing and spending time chatting with us.”
Limestone Books only launched in Settle last year and its owner Tanya Carter will be opening for five days a week for now, only allowing two customers in the shop at any one time and also starting with limited opening hours.
Carter agreed extensions to return windows were very important. “There is stock in my shop that I would have returned by now, had I been open, such as some hardback books that are now out in paperback,” she said. “If I can return these, it will really help with my cashflow.”
She added: “Increased discounts would be a huge bonus as my takings have been so low during lockdown I could do with a way to make more on each book sold to compensate for a while.”
As a new bookseller, Carter said guidance on best practice would be “vital” but admitted what to do about browsing was still the thing that concerned her most.
She said: “Having spoken to booksellers in Austria, Germany and New Zealand through online events organised by the BA and the European and international version of the BA , they say that this is inevitable, and that all you can do is ask people to sanitise their hands.
“I know that Waterstones have proposed putting touched books into quarantine, but this is impossible for small shops like mine who don't have the space to quarantine books, nor the stock levels to allow for this. Essentially I feel wrong allowing people to touch the books, but I don't see how I can operate if I do not.”
BA president Andy Rossiter (pictured) said: “Bookshops are in a really challenging position and we are looking to publishers to offer every practical assistance they can now and for some time to come to help stores weather this Covid storm.”
Rossiter, who runs Rossiter Books, has two stores in England and one in Wales, where stores are still awaiting clarity from the Welsh Assembly on when they can reopen.
He said: “We are busy preparing our stores for reopening and have removed and moved around some fixtures and a till point. It's a challenge to absorb the mass of government guidance but the BA are doing a good job of interpreting it and making the guidance bookshop specific in their bulletins.”