Bookshops are a sticky wicket. On the one hand, I love browsing in bookshops. I love finding new books and taking a chance. I'd like to buy everything from Queen's Park, West End Lane, Crockatt & Powell, Daunt and the others I get to from time to time, but if a book is three pounds cheaper on Amazon, then that's where I'll buy it.
I had exactly this conversation today with the guy at West End Lane. I said that when I went to his shop, I tried to find something I would never pick up anywhere else, either because of the breadth of the list, or because of a staff recommendation shelf, or for whatever other reason. Today, I picked up Halting State, by Charles Stross. I have no idea what it's about, but I like the cover, and I feel it's important to take a punt as an act of faith that people might take a punt on my book (this doesn't hold much logical water). When we spoke about this, and I said that one of my reasons for favouring West End Lane over the others in this list is that it has The Great American Novel always, which is my favourite Philip Roth book, he pointed me at another baseball novel - The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., by Robert Coover - which I couldn't resist.
There's a place for all the types of book shop, and I think it does West End a lot of credit that they didn't look at me like some kind of criminal when I told them I buy cheap books elsewhere, but they also know what their strengths are and they play to them.
(My favourite bookshop cartoon ever is this New Yorker cover by Adrian Tomine.)
1 comment:
You do have to play the long game a bit when it comes to bookshopping. Websites actively destroy bookshops in two ways. First of all, the obvious: they take sales away from them. But also, in the way that the book supply chain works. There's no fixed price that a publisher charges a bookshop, it is based on the amount of sales a bookshop makes. So the chains pay less per book than the indies do, and the websites less again. So if two books are sold at the same price, the bigger store (or site) makes a bigger profit. Even if the bigger store is passing on the discount to the buyer, the fact that they secure the additional purchase means that they can force their own buying price lower, giving them yet more advantages over the smaller stores, and more ability to offer those discounts. Discounts that will presumably dry up once they have forced all the other shops out of business. Also, as an author, you get paid less per copy the less the store pays your publisher for your book. You earn less from a book bought from Amazon than one bought from an indie. So the more book sales go online, the less you'll earn. And the more you'll have to buy at a discount so that you can afford books, I suppose.
I buy online myself when I know what I want, so I'm a total hypocrite. But then I live half an hour away from my nearest bookshop of any variety.
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