Waterstones to grow children's range and space

12.03.12 | Lisa Campbell - The Bookseller

Waterstones is set to grow its children’s range and space in stores over the summer independent publishers have heard at one of the most well-attended annual Independent Publishers Guild conferences to date.
Speaking at a session on ‘How to Work with Waterstones’, at the IPG annual conference in Oxfordshire on Friday (9th March), range buying manager Sarah Clarke said children’s books had seen growth in the industry lately and as a result the chain stores would be investing in the area over the next few months and into summer.
Clarke said: “I think children’s is a definitely an area of the business where we have seen growth over the last two-three years and where the market is most stable. We will continue to grow children’s space significantly through quite a lot of stores throughout the summer. We want to give it more space and give booksellers more training in that department.”
Her revelations came on the back of m.d. James Daunt’s comments the previous day in his keynote speech, where the Waterstones m.d said there were still areas where physical titles could compete with digital books. He said: “Children’s books is the most obvious example of this, and non fiction. Even within fiction I would be extremely surprised if digital gets more than half the market.”
The chain store also plans to grow its book-related products range, delegates heard, at the conference attended by around 300 trade representatives. During the session, independent publishers were told the best way to get their titles into stores was to form relationships with head office range buyers, not by going through stores themselves.
Publisher liaison manager for Waterstones Cathy Rentzenbrink said: “What I would ask is I do not want somebody to send me a box of 200 books.”
Clarke added: “We have been replenishing backlist since James started. We grew the range team last November from eight to 20 buyers.” Independent publishers were also advised to try and seek appointments with Waterstones buyers at London Book Fair. Clarke added: “We do see as many booksellers as we can but we are quite a small team."

• RELATED STORIES

• Efficiency call for VaizeyLibrary campaigners have ca...
• Phonics demand to surge this summerDemand for phonics-based re...
• Berlucchi’s anti-DRM plea backed by CoatesDigital Rights Management (...
• Bookshops bypassed by academic publishersTensions between academic b...
• Patricia Scanlan moves from Transworld to S&SIrish author Patricia Scanl...