UK Book Industry Under Pressure

July 14, 2009

The Independent on July 13, 2009, ran “Two Weeks to Save Britain’s Book Tread.” You can locate a version of the story by poking around on the newspaper’s Web site. The article explains that book stores are closing and publishers are in a world of hurt. Not too surprising in the wake of similar woes in the American publishing sector.

Two aspects of this write up surprised me. First, there were some telling quotes. Let me highlight two:

The first is attributed to Jonny Geller, an executive at the Curtis Brown literary agency. The remark pertains to the advances that publishers pay to authors who can sell books that are likely to be blockbusters:

Publishing has become quite reactive., It is sales led. We need publishers to starting taking risks again.

I found this interesting because the Independent ran a special section of the July 13 newspaper made up of old news. Yep, recycled information. I found that revealing.

The second was this statement in a side bar written by Arifa Akbar. She wrote:

The agreement’s collapse did not just pave the way for supermarkets and chain stores to dominate the trade with deeply discounted prices, but it was at this point that books lost their immunity from the changing winds of market forces.

The “agreement” refers to the Net Book Agreement which provided guidelines for how the book industry would be run in order to prevent market forces from operating.

There is a keen insight in her “Comment”; specifically, book publishing works when the market forces are blocked. Remove the force field and the book industry faces a tough financial storm.

Will the British book trade survive? In my opinion, books the “old fashioned way” face a bleak autumn. I noticed a promotion for Dan Brown’s latest blockbuster. Place a prepublication order and save some money. Will one novel power the book trade’s trireme? Possibly, but I think the book industry’s vessel will be safer in a protected harbor tied to a dock. The old ship may have difficulty in the open sea.

Stephen Arnold, July 14, 2009

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