Reading Between the Lines

The book market is currently undergoing a period of some upheaval.

Tim Hunt sets off down the high street in search of an ethical bookshop.

Have you been seduced by the efficiency of the Amazon website and its highly competitive prices? According to research carried out by HSBC it seems that Amazon is a greater threat to high street retailers than supermarkets.

It sold 16 per cent of all books last year. It was beaten only by Waterstone's, which sold one in five books, while W H Smith sold 13 per cent and Borders sold 8 per cent. Supermarkets accounted for 11 per cent between them, with Tesco in first place on 6 per cent.

Amazon have recently been pilloried by campaigners for bringing in a specialist union-busting consultancy firm to stop its workers from organising. This 'labour relations' company is called The Burke Group and on its website it proudly claims to offer help in such areas as "preventative labor relations and union avoidance".

So intrigued were we at ECRA about The Burke Group that we commissioned a special Corporate Watch feature on them. The low prices on the Amazon site may not therefore be wholly unconnected with low wages for the staff in its warehouses.

For those perhaps rethinking their Amazon habit in the light of this revelation and perhaps others in the Company Profiles below, the table opposite shows some other options for both online and high street book buying. Later in this report we also look at some other ways of buying ethically such as choosing second hand books and book sharing schemes.

Who they are and where to find them

The companies selected all have multiple outlets and/or have a large web presence. We recognise that there are many more retailers but these are considered the largest (in terms of sales and outlets) and most well known.

John Smiths are are based at university campus' all around the country. You can also purchase from them on line at www.johnsmith.co.uk

The Book People specialise in deep discounts on a small range of books and they also visit work places with a selection of books. You can also buy from them on line at www.thebookpeople.co.uk.

Wesley Owen are a Christian books shop with outlets nationwide. Their stock is however limited to Christian literature. Blackwell's are primarily an academic bookshop based at universities but they do have general titles. You can also shop with them on line at www.bookshop.blackwell.co.uk.

Borders are a nation wide high street chain but you can also shop with them online at www.borders.co.uk.

The Book Depository are an on line seller, they can be found at www.bookdepository.co.uk.

British Bookshops have stores throughout southern England. You can also buy from them on line at www.britishbookshops.co.uk.

Waterstone's are a large high street seller with stores in most town centres. They also sell on line at www.waterstones.com

WH Smiths are another large high street chain. They can be found on line at www.whsmith.co.uk and also in many railway stations and airports.

BCA (formerly the Book Club Association) is the UK's biggest mail order book seller. They can be found at www.bca.co.uk or you can call them on 0844 499 0000.

Amazon is part of the Amazon.com group. They only sell on line at Amazon.co.uk

Company profiles

Waterstone's
HMV bought Waterstone's and Dillons bookshops in 1998 and followed it up with the purchase of Ottakers in 2006. Waterstone's is now the name of all the group's book selling stores, with branches of Dillions and Ottakers either closing down or becoming Waterstone's. Waterstone's is now the largest specialist book retailer in the UK.

Amazon
Amazon.co.uk, part of the Amazon group, is the giant of the book selling world making a massive £7,427.9 million profit in 2008. As we discussed in the opening to this report, Amazon is responsible for some of the most aggressive anti-union tactics in the western world, hiring professional union buster Burke Group to aid them in their work.

The Graphical Print and Media Union said it was faced with the most aggressive and "serious professional resistance" it had ever encountered during their union recognition campaign (1).

Amazon was also marked down for having operations in China (2), operating in a tax haven (3), selling products tested on animals (4), selling pornographic material (5), and selling uncertified diamonds (6).

YouWriteOn.com, a website sponsored by the Arts Council England, is boycotting Amazon over its decision that all Print-On-Demand (POD) books sold on Amazon.com have to be printed through Amazon's own printing company BookSurge. It was also against Amazon's attempts to stifle competition by undercutting prices charged by publishers on their websites.

Woolworths
Woolworths has been marked down for a number things including having subsidiaries in tax havens, using suppliers that were paying below minimum wage and its poor environmental reporting.

Borders, Books etc
These companies were bought out in 2007 by Risk Capital Partners (RCP), a private equity firm. RCP also owns a number of greyhound racing tracks and was therefore marked down for animal rights (7).

BCA
BCA is owned by media giant Bertelsmann. This behemoth of a company was known to have had links with the Nazi party in 1930's Germany. It has since apologised but was marked down for currently having operations in oppressive regimes and tax havens. In recent years it has also been lobbying the German Government for the introduction of neo-liberal practices in the German education system.

WH Smiths
WH Smiths were the best of the bunch when it came to environmental reporting and supply chain policies. They received top marks for both, and are part of the Ethical Trading Initiative.

Wesley Owen Books and Music
This is a Christian not for profit charity. Although they don't yet have an environmental policy they have recently undergone an environmental audit and will be publishing the results soon.

End of the Net Book Agreement

Until 1995 in the UK, the Net Book Agreement fixed the prices of books - keeping them high and effectively outlawing cheap books. Initially the end of the NBA agreement seemed to have little effect, but by 1999 over 50% of all books bought by consumers were discounted.

This change was underpinned by the supermarkets which benefit from the largest economies of scale. There was a peak of craziness when Asda sold Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for £1.

This resulted in eight out of ten Potter fans buying their copy from the supermarket. The supermarket made a loss of around £3.50 per copy. The Bookseller, estimated that the 29,700 sales cost Asda more than £100,000 in a week.

Stunts like these clearly take money away from high street and independent sellers. However supermarkets only hold limited stock, usually the current top 20, so it therefore seems unlikely they are going to put Waterstone's out of business.

It has also been reported that in an effort to keep up with the high street sellers, independents have been buying some of their stock from supermarkets. This has allowed them to compete on price with the likes of Waterstone's and Borders on some big name books.

Reduced prices have increased sales but at the same time reduced margins. This has had an effect on what sellers will stock and what publishers will publish. A new cautious outlook from both has made it difficult for first time novelists to get published in the traditional way and has seen the rise of celebrity books that are easier to market.

There has also been a contraction of the market in the high street. Big boys Waterstone's, owned by the HMV group, have bought two major competitors Dillons and Ottakars. While in the last 8 years independents have been going out of business at astonishing rate. However, more recently they have begun to adjust to the new market conditions and have seen something of a resurgence.

The Independents Fight Back

For a time the future of the independent bookshops looked bleak. Over the past 10 years the number of independents have dwindled from 2–3,000 to about 500.

However, 2007 saw the independents begin to fight back. Figures from the Booksellers Association revealed that 81 new independent bookshops opened last year, more than the 72 that closed. Statistics from the consumer research group, BML, also showed a 6 per cent increase in the volume of independents' book sales since 2003, compared with a 3 per cent fall at chain retailers.

They are learning to fight to their strengths, instead of competing in the price wars brought about by the end of the Net Book Agreement are they are fighting back with an array of creative tactics. London based Crockatt & Powell exemplify the fighting spirit. In a comical counter attack they started a "buy one get nothing free and no money off" offer when selling the seventh Harry Potter novel at full price (£17.99 compared with £8.99 in Tesco).

They donated £9 from each sale to the local primary school to spend on books for its library.

To find your local bookshop log onto www.localbooks.co.uk and click on the map. You can also buy from independent shops on this site.

Alternatively you can check out The Independent's 50 favourite independent books shops at http://independent.net-genie.co.uk/House_garden/59882/the_50_best_bookshops.html

For those who like a radical read have a look at the Schnews directory at www.schnews.org.uk/pap/bookshops.htm

Second Hand

Buying second hand books can help reduce emissions associated with the production and distribution of books. The second hand book market also provides several charities with fund-raising opportunities.

Oxfam, Bernardo's and Amnesty all run second hand book outlets. Oxfam is the largest second-hand book retailer in Europe, selling around 11 million books every year. Most of the 750 Oxfam shops around the UK sell books, and around 100 of these are specialist bookshops or book and music shops.

Although perhaps not as appealing as browsing the shelves in you local shop, the internet has emerged as a significant player in second hand book sales.

There are a couple of big websites where booksellers upload their catalogues onto a shared space.

ABE books specialise in rare and out of print books and now carry more than 2,000 UK-based second hand booksellers and a total of 12,000 independent booksellers across 45 countries. They claim there are more than 55m books on the site at any one time. Amazon claims to have more than 20,000 individual booksellers, and an estimated 70m used books in its catalogues.

UK Bookworld is a UK-only site and it only charges a small annual fee instead and no commission. The website links you directly to 450 booksellers across Britain offering between them around 2.5 million old, rare and out-of-print titles.

GREEN Metropolis is a UK-based site competing for the environmentally conscious where individuals can buy and sell books from their own collections. They currently have around 100,000 active members and over 1,000,000 books in stock. The website also donates 5p from every book sold to the Woodland Trust. www.greenmetropolis.com

The Rise of the E-book

The next great upheaval in the book market is likely to be the arrival and growth of the e-book market. E-books are electronic books that can be downloaded from the internet, either from commercial sites such as www.ebooks.whsmith.co.uk or free sites such as Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org). You can read them on your PC, mobile phone or from one of the new e-readers available on the market.

The demand for e-books has been growing especially in the US where the e-readers have been widely available for some time. According to the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), e-book sales have risen over the past six years, from around $6 million (£3 million) in 2002 to around $33 million (£17 million) in 2007.

The environmental impact of e-books is now being hotly debated. Investment in printing presses, warehousing and distribution could soon be a thing of the past and, in theory, bookshops could become entirely virtual. This would offer some environmental gains, saving on transport emissions and the number of trees cut down.

In the US and Canada pulp and paper production is the third largest industrial polluter to air and water. It releases well over 100 million kg of toxic pollution each year. However this doesn't take into account the environmental damage arising from the manufacture of e-readers, which no doubt will need to be upgraded every three years or so, or the fact that trees are essentially a renewable resource.

Logging for books?

On October 3rd 2003 Greenpeace launched a campaign that aimed to green the UK book sector.

At the launch, Greenpeace released a report entitled 'The Paper Trail, a Greenpeace guide to sourcing ancient forest friendly paper for the book publishing industry'. This detailed how the UK publishing industry paper procurement policies inadvertently fuelled the destruction of ancient forest regions in Finland, Canada and South East Asia.

In addition some publishers were also sourcing paper from Russia (via Finland), where at least 50% of logging is estimated to be illegal.

Many of the larger publishers now print at least some of their books on FSC certified paper. Most recently HarperCollins UK has moved all its paperbacks to FSC paper, which means that the company now has 60%, or 30 million, of their books on certified stock.

Egmont Press recently moved all its fiction (more than 300 titles a year) on to accredited FSC paper. Bob the Builder, known for his 'Reduce, Re-Use, Recycle' catchphrase will also be included in this.

A spokesperson for Greenpeace said "Over the past four years, we've persuaded companies representing over 40 per cent of the UK book market to go green, namely Egmont, Penguin, Random House, Bloomsbury and HarperCollins. With Hachette now on board, that figure has risen to nearly 60 per cent, and it's these big players who lead the way on developing and improving paper supplies so there'll be even more pressure on the rest of the industry to follow suit."

With figures like this, is it now viable for a bookshop to sell only books that have been given a certificate of sustainability? Although the answer is possibly not yet, all the book retailers on the table have received a mark in the Habitats and Resources column for selling books that were neither FSC certified nor had come from other sustainable sources.

Alternatives to buying

If you are looking for an alternative to buying books there are a couple of good (legal) options. The obvious place to get hold of books is your local library. Some local libraries can be small but they will often order in books on request. Just remember to take them back!

There are also a number of great book sharing or book swapping schemes that operate over the internet. Sites range from large international sites like Bookmooch (www.bookmooch.com) to smaller UK based sites such as Read IT Swap IT (www.readitswapit.co.uk).

Both these sites are free and registration is quick and easy. Check them out before you rush to the shops.

PRICE COMPARISON

The table below shows the price of 'HEAT' By George Monbiot.

Although 'Jordan' by Katy Price was the book we found across most outlets, we felt that prices for the paperback version of George Monbiot's Heat was probably more useful for our readership. This book was not however available in all the outlets covered.

The book depository	£5.97
Amazon	£ 6.99
Woolworths	£6.99
Borders	£7.19
British book shops and stationers (Eason & sons)	£7.19
WH Smiths plc	£7.19
Waterstones	£8.99
Blackwells	£8.99
John Smith campus bookshop	£8.99
BCA	£ n/a
Wesley Owen Books & Music	£ n/a
The book people	£ n/a

LINKS

The Book Seller – This is a monthly trade magazine that can be accessed online at www.thebookseller.com It contains lots of interesting articles about new books and the book industry.

"Rebel Bookseller: How to Improvise Your Own Indie Store and Beat Back the Chains" By Andrew Laties – available from all good independent book shops!

REFERENCES

1 Times on Line. May 4th 2008. Americans Move in to Stop Unions. Steve Farrar

2 Amazon.com. Locations. www.amazon.com/b/?node=239366011

3 Annual Report 2007. http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=irol-reportsAnnual

4 Amazon.co.uk product search. 11 August 2008

5 Amazon.co.uk product search 11 August 2008

6 www.bbc.co.uk 7th November 2007 Blood diamonds on Amazon? Without certification, it's hard to tell

7 Risk Capital partners website. http://www.riskcapitalpartners.co.uk/gra.php

8 Guardian Unlimited. 21st July 2005. RTL take full control of Channel 5. 21st July 2005

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