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Publishing Scotland is to put together a group response in response to the major new contracts being put out for tender by Scotland Excel, a purchasing agency buying shared services for Scottish local authorities.
Scottish booksellers and publishers are alarmed by the contracts, which will cover book supply to Scottish libraries and schools and are estimated by Scotland Excel to be each worth up to £20m over two years. Critics say that only the major English wholesalers are credible competitors to secure them.
Marion Sinclair, chief executive of Publishing Scotland, said she was meeting booksellers, publishers and literary bodies to discuss a coordinated reaction. She said: "Scotland Excel has come back and said they don't think there will be changes [to direct supply] but none of this has been enshrined in the tender documents so we are looking for written assurances."
Birlinn m.d. Hugh Andrew said there were effectively two giant tenders which will eliminate local book supply in the Scottish economy. He added: "There have been huge issues for years about the supply of Scottish interest material to libraries and schools—basically we are not getting our books in front of librarians. They [English library suppliers] don't know the lists and their contexts". He added he would have a long drive south of the border to present books in Gaelic and Scots to people who did not understand the languages.
Alec Dixon of Achins Bookshop in Lochinvar said supplying his local Highlands regional library service had been an important part of his business for 27 years. He was "extremely concerned and alarmed" about the future. "We've bent over backwards to supply a good service," he said. "The nature and diversity of the stock in Scottish libraries and supplied to Scottish schools will suffer."
A spokesperson for Scotland Excel said the £40m in question represented 75% of local authority book spend and was already going out of Scotland to the major wholesalers. "This contract is looking to target this [pre-existing] business and see if it can get better terms and conditions through one contract instead of separate ones," she said." The other 25% of spend will continue to be spent on specialist material not available through centralised collaborative purchasing, and is outside the scope of our contract."