The Bookseller 9 February 2012
There's an interesting
collection of comments over at the Guardian's Comment is Free website
following a piece I penned earlier this week on whether subsidies should be
employed in order to help high street booksellers survive on the high street. My view was
that government hand-outs won't hold back the twin forces of digital reading
and aggressive discounting, but there was still plenty indies could do to
sustain their businesses.
One commentator makes a particularly relevant point: "What might be
helpful is the Booksellers Association brokering an eBook platform open to all
independent shops. Most of us don't have the technical staff to do this
ourselves, and the publishers need a centralised push to get them to work with
us (and make it economically worthwhile)."
I think it is a suggestion worth pursuing and it is perhaps an area where
government funding could be employed since the present administration has been
actively promoting its "Blueprint for Technology" through various
investment funds. Of course Gardners and Google might argue that platforms
already exist that enable indies to sell e-books, and the Hive this morning revealed
impressive digital sales growth.
In the US the American Booksellers Association runs IndieCommerce, which helps
indies sell books on the web, and also sells e-books via Google. The UK
Booksellers Association has already brought over elements of the ABA's
IndieBound scheme, with some success. IndieCommerce is a whole different
ball-game, but as its recent
announcement about not stocking Amazon-published titles shows, the combined
voice of large numbers of indies remains a powerful force.
With HarperCollins UK today revealing that digital
sales now account for 20% of its trade business, how independent bookshops
gain a foothold in the digital world should be high on everyone's agenda. We
may not like subsidies over here, but we will like even less a world dominated
only by Amazon.
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