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Waterstones boss James Daunt has warned the Scottish book industry against the growing dominance of Amazon, saying that if the retail giant ever implemented print book subscriptions it would make working in the books business “frankly intolerable”.
Giving the opening keynote speech at the Scottish Book Trade Conference run jointly by Publishing Scotland and the Booksellers Association on Tuesday (26th February), Daunt said that while the threat posed by retail giant Amazon may have “slowly receded in our minds”, their “extraordinarily attractive propositions [of Prime and Same Day Delivery, among others] are providing a continued and brutal competitive pressure for us.” He added: “Should subscription appear in the world of physical books life would become frankly intolerable.”
However, he countered that publishers are in a strong position to protect the trade from this threat, and that the way publishers and booksellers work together has never been better than it is now.
“Amazon is a commercially driven organisation of extreme vigour, and everything indicates that that internal dynamic within its nature… Amazon is definitely a fox, but publishers control this industry, they have the talent, and content, as long as they do their job, by protecting and nurturing that talent and if they live alongside high street bookshops in relative harmony [the book trade can weather the storm]… but do not believe that [Amazon is] anything other than a fox, and don’t let them in the coop.”
As for the health of the industry, with growing numbers of independent bookshops as well as increasing print sales, Daunt said the trade is in “pretty good shape.”
“Publishing is vibrant, producing bestsellers, and running huge events which support and nourish the trade. Publishers clearly at the fore of [the improvement], publishing better and a little less, investing in good writing, editing, covers, getting marketing and publicity right; and booksellers are investing in their shops, making them more attractive and investing in thought processes behind shops, getting the presentation better, the curation better, and working on personality and bookselling skill taking our shops worth coming to."
Although business is relatively good, Daunt highlighted the “difficult environment” faced by booksellers, driven by economic uncertainty and the deterioration of the high street.
“At the moment, our political leadership is obsessed with [its] own internal survival, and has very little sense of responsibility for wider economy or prosperity of the country, and is charging down a suicide route, while the opposition is increasingly rudderless," said Daunt. “We clearly face a really difficult environment, exacerbated by a fundamental and structural shift to online. We find key shops closing down, with every BHS, M&S, and HMV that closes, it deprives the high street of footfall… the truth is we will find ourselves with fewer people in our shops this year and then the year after and there's nothing we can do about that."
Considering whether the book trade could survive another decline like it experienced between 2012 and 2014, Daunt said that while times are good, the industry needs to work on adapting to survive.
"We are all of us still wedded to old ways of working, we need to become more productive, efficient, and clearly committed to paying people who work for us more. Now whilst the sun is shining, we need to mend the roof. A key thing is the manner in which we move books around: printing, supplying, unpacking — within that process there are extraordinary inefficiencies. Return rates are high. They are lower than they were but they are still significant. To become more profitable, we need to drop cost base.”
Daunt also emphasised the problem of class and ethnic diversity, and highlighted that libraries are vital tools for getting new generations reading.