TESCO - BOOKSELLERS


This story from The Bookseller last Friday, although the above headline is mine!



The much-maligned supermarket giant now stocks books in 731 stores, and aims to double sales to £200m within three years. Planned new approaches span literary fiction, children’s books, paperbacks of the year, book clubs and Tesco.com. Graeme Neill hears why publishers are drooling and rivals are quaking.

At the Ponsbourne Park hotel in the midst of the Hertfordshire country­side, Tesco last week gathered around 40 publishing sales directors to outline its plans for books.
The projections were nothing if not ambitious. Within three years, Tesco estimates it will be selling £200m worth of books, up from £107.2m in 2007. Tesco’s books buying and marketing team numbers just four people, so is this a pie in the sky figure? Not given its retailing pedigree. “Tesco are the most successful re­tailer of anything they choose to sell and that includes books,” says one publishing sales director.

Tesco has a 6% share of the UK book market by value and 10% by volume. That puts it close to over­taking Borders and becoming the UK’s fourth largest bookseller behind Waterstone’s, W H Smith and Amazon. It sells books in 731 of its 1,779 stores—more than twice as many locations as Waterstone’s—and each Christmas an additional 800 Tesco stores offer annuals.



For the dull story go to The Bookseller online...........