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Waterstone's managing director Gerry Johnson has broken his silence about problems at the chain's distribution centre after Penguin chief executive Peter Field told the Financial Times that it "could take until the first quarter of next year" for the company to be "handling everything in a normal way" despite its "contingency actions" proving effective.
Gerry Johnson, managing director of Waterstone's, told the newspaper that there was no backlog and that the new centre was able to handle up to 1.5m shipments in a week. He said: "It is fair to say that in September there were some issues with handling academic orders, which required a lot of manual handling. But in the past two months we have moved on quite considerably."
The">http://www.thebookseller.com/news/98712-publishers-voice-fears-over-hub.... Bookseller reported publisher concern about the hub in early October, with one publisher saying that September releases had "been a real struggle". A Waterstone's spokesperson said at the time: "We continue to work directly with publishers to ensure they are kept up to date on our progress." As a result of The Bookseller's report, which has attracted more than 270 comments, the chain cut off communication with the magazine, and blocked staff from accessing its website. It has also told publishers in a letter that it would introduce "new, regular communication" so they need not "rely on trade press for information".
As">http://www.thebookseller.com/news/100566-waterstones-tells-staff-to-use-... reported last week by The Bookseller, Waterstone's has now told its store staff to redirect customer orders through wholesaler Gardners if the books cannot be sent through its distribution centre within 48 hours.
According to a separate report on Reuters, Altium Securities has cut its rating for the HMV Group to "hold" from "buy". The broker said delays in deliveries from the book hub appeared to be leading to increased use of third-party distributors which could impact profitability during Christmas. But the FT quoted analysts saying that the problems were unlikely seriously to undermine profits at Waterstone's, even though it will have to pay more to use third-party distributors rather than buying directly from publishers.