Tag Archives: Bookselling

Christian Resources Together 2011 – Full workshop text (Eddie Olliffe)

Posted on June 22, 2011 by | 10 Comments

ALBATROSS, DODO OR JEWEL

‘Is there still a place for Christian bookshops to sparkle on the High Street’?

Introduction

Last year I was asked to give a lecture on Christian Retailing to the Librarians’ Christian Fellowship and Steve Briars of CRE invited me to deliver similar material at this year’s Christian Resources Together.  I am delighted to do so – although the two audiences are quite different!  Since that lecture in April 2010, things have moved on a pace and we are learning to live with constant challenges and change. However, there is no lack of evidence that we are involved in changing people’s lives on a daily basis.

I aim to address four incontrovertible facts facing all Christian retailers;

  •  The UK is increasingly secularised and less open to Christian forms of spirituality
  • Formats, methods and channels – but not the content – are changing almost on a daily basis
  • Consumers, and particularly younger people, are not buying as many physical books as before
  • The Christian industry – Booksellers and Publishers – is undergoing a serious and prolonged period of retrenchment and rationalisation

I have invited three practising retailers -

  • Andrew Lacey, Manager of GLO Bookshop, Motherwell, Scotland
  • Melanie Carroll, Owner of Unicorn Tree Books and Crafts, Lincoln
  • Steve Mitchell, Retail Director of Wesley Owen

each representing different facets of our trade – to address this question;

  • ‘How can our trade best communicate the Good News in an increasingly post ‘bricks and mortar’ era and to a progressively digital generation?

Which of these three images describe and/or sum up today’s Christian book trade;

  • Albatross; large seabird, majestic in flight or as in Coleridge, a ‘burden or encumbrance’
  • Dodo; flightless bird known only in history; extinct, long gone, utterly dead and finished
  • Jewel; beautiful to look at, highly valued. precious to its owner, ‘the jewel in the crown’

A brief trade overview

  • The very first UK Christian Bookshop opened in Derby in 1810 – Just over 200 years ago!
  • The Derby and Derbyshire Auxiliary of the Religious Tract Society opened this shop in the Cock Pit area of Derby. It then moved to The Strand around 1900 (where it was renamed The Bible and Book Shop) and on to Irongate before finishing up in its present location in Queens Street. Subsequent owners have included; Scripture Union, STL/Wesley Owen and now it is owned and operated by Koorong of Australia.
  • Just to add ecumenical balance, the next Christian bookshop was opened in Bristol in 1813 by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. SPCK as a society had been established much earlier in 1698 by Dr Thomas Bray, a clergyman. SPCK went on to open their second shop in London in 1836.
  • Many commentators would argue that to be a truly national retail chain, you need around 300 to 600 outlets to be represented in the main towns and cities. No Christian operator has ever come close although at one point in the 1990’s there were probably over 600 Christian Bookshops of some shape or size across the UK, but most operated independently.
  • Those numbers have dwindled and are dwindling still. There is some evidence of new players entering the market year-on-year but, in my view, numbers of Christian bookshops are consistently down.  I would estimate there are around 220 bookshops in the Christian niche capable of carrying out a viable trade.
  • Due to its unique history, Northern Ireland remains the strongest market for Christian product when compared to its population size; this region continues to sell more Christian books per head than anywhere else in the UK. Scottish shops are mostly sited in the major central belt conurbations and there are virtually no Christian bookshops in Wales outside of the Cardiff area.

The ‘Missional’ nature of Christian bookselling

  • For the past 30 years I’ve had the privilege of being engaged in the vocation of Christian literature distribution in its various forms. I have been involved as a bookseller, an author, a distributor and a publisher. I retain a fundamental belief in the importance of maintaining a Christian witness on the High Streets of our country. I therefore cannot but help feel that the loss of any Christian shops on the High Street is detrimental and I, for one, mourn the demise of those that have closed.
  • Controversially, I have long pondered whether the historical separation of Christian bookshops into a specific subset of the wider book trade will turn out in the longer term to have been a mistake? Would it have been better for our specialist outlets simply to have remained part of the wider general bookselling community as it is elsewhere in the world? To outsiders, our bookshop names must inevitably seem a little twee and out-of-touch. Does such a separation help or hinder our aspirations for engaging in Christian witness?

A quick look at the wider social environment

  • The UK is a largely secularised, post-Christian society with a significant multi-cultural population. There is clear anti-Christian bias throughout the media and in politics and militant atheism is on the increase. Christian TV & Radio has very low penetration, making product mass marketing difficult.
  • Regular church attendance is in decline in most of the traditional denominations. However, there are bright spots; the Black majority and Hillsong churches are growing. Cathedral attendance is increasing and the Emerging Church movement gaining ground.
  • There is a general decline in book readership in society; not just amongst Christians.  Competing media and digital attractions vie for our time and the lack of time affects all of us however much we enjoy buying and reading books

Some thoughts about channels and digitalisation

  • The way books are being bought is changing rapidly. An experienced international bookseller said to me only last week that, in over 30 years, he had not known a time of such momentous change as there has been in the past two years. Someone else has described the current upheaval as ‘a perfect storm’.
  • There are enormous structural and societal changes taking place. These have been described as being as immense as the transition from parchment to the printing press. Most are outside of our control and are being imposed on us from outside of the trade. It therefore should go without saying that it is foolish to fall out amongst ourselves over changes which are so outside of our control and which are affecting the whole of retail.
  • Woolworths, the 45 Borders UK stores and the Irish Bookseller, Hughes & Hughes have all left the UK High Street in the past couple of years. Since Christmas this year, WH Smith bought 22 British Bookshops and Stationers stores, Borders USA entered Chapter 11 – and is effectively bankrupt – and the REDgroup in Australia went bust leaving big UK publisher debts. HMV put their Waterstones chain up for sale selling it for a knock-down £53m in the last few weeks to a Russian tycoon.
  • Supermarkets now sell one in every five books purchased and UK Libraries are under massive pressure due to imminent Government spending cuts.
  • The issue here is primarily about the explosion of differing routes to market. Print no longer dominates in terms of the delivery of ideas. Content will continue to remain key.
  • There are parallels with the development of digital television. More channels = fewer viewers.   In our field, more ‘books’ (however those are defined; print or digital) equals a dispersed customer base which is no longer dependent on the traditional bookseller.
  • Due to digital delivery channels, it is easier to self-publish now than at any other time. Blogs and social networks proliferate but some would argue that this only leads to the problem of quantity at the expense of quality.
  • Territorial Rights are clearly a problem in the context of a global marketplace. Old-style publishing rights are not always recognised in the internet environment as single copy orders are taken and shipped – often across national boundaries – on a daily basis.
  • Paradoxically, more printed books are being published year-on-year in the UK. Book production figures in the USA rose 5% last year despite a huge increase in eBook sales.

Impact of the Internet esp. Amazon, downloads and ePublishing

  • Online sales make up 17% of all UK retail spending – and growing.
  • Digital downloading is beginning to affect the sale of print items, especially newspapers.
  • Book purchasing via the internet is no longer an exception, it is the norm. Amazon recorded their first £10bn sales quarter in early 2011.
  • Several eBook Readers are competing for attention and rapidly gaining traction in the market; Sony’s eReader (Waterstones), the iPad (Apple Stores) and Kindle (Amazon).
  • There has been an inexorable rise in the sale of eBooks with PA figures showing that eBooks grew to 6% (£180m) of £3.1bn UK book market. This may grow to 10% in 2011.
  • Amazon are selling more eBooks than paperbacks; 105 on Kindle to every 100 in print. Four authors have already sold over 1 million eBooks each. Amazon lists 945,000 Kindle generated eBooks. Analysts expect 2011 sales to be $5.4bn in Kindle generated eBooks.
  • However, despite these figures, over 90% of sales continue to take place via print. Black and white text books are struggling but print Bibles and Children’s books remain strong sales lines.

Where might all this change be heading? What is the future for our trade?

  • Retailing is hard graft for many categories. Shopping habits are changing fast and there is much less time available for those trips to the High Street. When time is found, then competition for time and money is increasingly fierce.  Supermarkets dominate.
  • BBPA figures earlier this year show that the quintessential English Public House is closing down at the rate of 30 per week.
  • One in seven retail outlets in the UK were surveyed as being empty in September 2010. UK shop leases are the Achilles heel for all retailers. Most are expensive, with ‘upward only’ increases and, if not carefully drawn up, extremely inflexible. Many businesses struggle with high establishment costs and Business Rates for non-charity shops are high.
  • Christian bookshops are obviously not immune – and many are having a torrid time. There have been some major shake-ups in the past couple of years, with a lot of shops going and, thankfully, a few coming.  The SPCK meltdown in 2008 and the IBS-STL debacle at the end of 2009 has badly destabilised Christian retail in this country.
  • Demographics also conspire against these specialist shops. Church attendance in the traditional denominations is largely declining and newer Churches with their younger audiences, such as Hillsong, are self-contained in terms of their resource requirements.

Final thoughts

  • The challenge we face today is to ask, what should the Christian bookshop of the 21st century look like?  Will it, as an entity, soon cease to exist, lost as an irrelevance in our increasingly secular world or can it be reinvented in an increasingly ‘post-bricks and mortar’ era and for a progressively digital society?
  • Although I sincerely wish CLC, Faith Mission and Koorong well in their endeavours, I am no longer convinced of the chain model when it comes to running Christian bookshops. For a variety of reasons, so many major book chains have simply failed over the years. It would appear that, in many cases, their high central costs have acted as the drag on the business and this, in a crisis, hinders rather than helps. Once I would have argued strongly for the efficiencies of scale and the need for central buying that the chain model provides. Now I am no longer so sure.
  • In my view, there is still a lot to be said for a very good independent shop operating solely at the local level. Perhaps we’ve just gone full circle?
  • In my view, internet retailers can win every time on the basis of price, range and convenience.  If ‘Bricks and Mortar’ booksellers are to succeed in the future, they have to provide that illusive and intangible ‘sense of experience’ to their customers.
  • Nick Page has written elsewhere that ‘average’ is no longer good enough.  For a future, these bookshops have to be ‘really good’ and run by people who love books and love selling books. They have to be ‘exciting, memorable, fascinating’, places where events are held and reading encouraged. In short, such a bookshop must have ‘personality’!

A final meditation from 2 Corinthians (NIV);

2:17‘Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, like men sent from God’.

4:1 ‘Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God’.

Eddie Olliffe is Charity Manager at CWR in Farnham, Surrey, UK

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Let’s Talk: Call for Christian Booksellers and Suppliers to drop private agendas at High Leigh

Posted on June 6, 2011 by | 27 Comments
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PAUL SLENNETT, of Southend Christian Bookshop (which celebrated its 40th anniversary last month), has issued a call for the BA Christian Booksellers Group (CBG) and the PA Christian Suppliers Group (CSG) to drop their private agendas at next week’s Christian Resources Together Retailers and Suppliers Retreat at High Leigh and instead hold a joint meeting to discuss the current state of the trade together.

Under the programmed schedule, on the Tuesday morning the CBG and the CSG will be holding meetings simultaneously but separately during the retreat, a situation that Paul sees as a wasted opportunity given the challenges facing the trade. In an email to Steve Briars, Event Organiser, dated 21 May 2011, Paul wrote:

In June, the industry is coming together at High Leigh. Booksellers will sit at the same table as publishers and eat together. That is the way it should be, for we are family. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. Therefore, on the Tuesday, wouldn’t it be good for booksellers and publishers to come together in the same room to share what is on their heart and for that time to be ended with us all praying to Almighty God. At the moment the way the day is scheduled that’s not going to happen. Booksellers will meet in one room, whilst at the same time publishers/suppliers will meet in another room. Why don’t we abandon our own agenda and come together? Next year may be too late! I know for the Christian Booksellers’ Group that may mean delaying our AGM to another day, but wouldn’t that be a price worth paying? Perhaps we could even have our AGM after the conference ends at High Leigh?

Paul’s request, however, has been dismissed by both groups and Steve Briars has replied (email dated 23 May 2011) to say that making use of the High Leigh event as a forum for discussing “deep trade issues” would be neither helpful nor edifying:

I have spoken to Ian Metcalfe of the Christian Suppliers Group and Mark Clifford of the BA-CBG today regarding your email and High Leigh. Like you we all share a deep concern for the challenges that are facing retail shops, publishers and suppliers but feel we would be wrong to change any of the High Leigh programme at this late stage. The event at High Leigh has come about as a need for encouragement for the trade which is reflected in the theme for this year, Renewing Your Passion. Our aim is to equip and empower all those who serve the mission God has called them for and it is therefore important that the High Leigh event fulfils this purpose. I don’t feel on this occasion a discussion on deep trade issues would be edifying and helpful.

But if not now, when? Surely an event such as this is precisely when and where “deep trade” discussions should be held? Last year’s theme for Christian Resources Together was “Stronger Together, Weaker Apart” and over the past year we’ve witnessed the truth of that as the CBG and CSG seem to have simply carried on talking past one another as dozens of bookshops have ceased trading whilst publishers, suppliers and booksellers alike have continued struggling to make ends meet.

Let's Work Together: Ian Metcalfe introduces June's CSG column with reference to the "Christian Publishers and Suppliers Retreat"

Let's Work Together: Ian Metcalfe introduces June's CSG column with reference to the "Christian Publishers and Suppliers Retreat"

The danger of a deep disconnect between publishers/suppliers and booksellers is well illustrated in the current debacle over the new Roman Missal. But perhaps even more telling is Ian Metcalfe’s opening paragraph in his latest CSG column in  Christian Marketplace: entitled “Let’s Work Together”, Ian introduces the column with reference to the High Leigh event as “the Christian Resources Together Publishers and Suppliers Retreat” — can he really have forgotten that this is a trade-wide event, for publishers, suppliers and retailers? Or that Christian Marketplace is also read by booksellers?

No doubt this was a faux pas rather than a deliberate disregard of booksellers; or was it a Freudian slip, symptomatic of the way some publishers and suppliers now tend to view the outlets they once depended on to take their product to market? Only Ian can say, but if you’re a retailer attending the event, why not take this opportunity to give Ian a big friendly wave and remind him that you’re still there, despite the casualties elsewhere?

There will, of course, be plenty of time for retailers and suppliers to meet during the event; and Eddie Olliffe’s workshop on the Monday — “Albatross, Dodo or Jewel: Is there still a place for Christian bookshops to sparkle on the High Street?” — will offer an important opportunity for in-depth discussion of the viability of bricks and mortar retailers; but unless the trade is prepared to seize the day and make this year’s event count rather than allow it to be nothing more than yet another whoop-de-do mountaintop experience after which everyone descends back into their own separate valleys, then a few years down the line Ian’s slip may well be precisely what future retreats will become: CBC RIP?

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Glenn Myers: Why I started telling stories to tell the truth

Posted on June 4, 2011 by | 3 Comments
Glenn Myers

Glenn Myers

SOME FOOD FOR THOUGHT over the weekend from Glenn Myers, indie publisher and author at Fizz Books as well as Mission Journalist and Website Editor at WEC International. Glenn has published extensively with Authentic Media, Christian Focus, Scripture Union and WEC Publications, titles ranging from his fresh-out-of-college World Christian Starter Kit through to the more recent Life Lessons (Christian Focus, 2010).

Like so many others, Glenn has been watching the chaos within the Christian book trade over the last few years with some concern; here he reflects on the power and importance of storytelling and wonders whether that’s part of what’s missing from many of our bookshops…

Why I started telling stories to tell the truth

I have worked for around twenty years in mission journalism (and you may even have stocked some of my books), but I rediscovered something while walking the dog one summer evening about six years ago: my first love was comic fiction. So I went part-time at work and wrote a novel, didn’t sell it, formed my own publisher, and am now discovering the joys of indie publishing — a familiar enough story.

It has opened my eyes, though, to the power and virtues of storytelling. Here are a few:

  • Humans have an insatiable desire for stories.
  • We learn truth through stories, by putting ourselves somewhere in the intersection between the story we are living and the story we are being told. Who, for example, hasn’t heard the story of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector and not wanted to pray like the Tax Collector?
  • Stories bring a heart-learning, not a head-learning: exactly, in other words, where we want the gospel to go.
  • Three-quarters of the Bible is story.
  • Jesus told stories all the time (except when he was teaching his disciples). In fact, when he talks about the farmer sowing the seed, he’s not talking about ‘preaching the gospel’, he’s talking about telling stories.
  • Jesus’ stories were (a) highly entertaining and (b) designed to make the hearers yearn for reconciliation with God, for a better world.
  • Stories give people space to think things through for themselves, and thus learn deeper and better. Stories fit people’s hearts.

My experience of Christian bookshops is that they are not nearly so story-filled as our culture or our Bible. And I agree with Philip Yancey that it is curious what books Christian bookshops typically don’t stock.

To take a couple of random examples: I’ve just finished The Language of God by the former head of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins. Published in the UK by Simon and Schuster, it’s a moving story of Francis Collins’ conversion to Christ, and it’s also as accomplished an account of the differing roles of science and faith as I have ever read. Or take the novels of Marilynne Robinson, which have won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Orange Prize for fiction and are just magnificent in their accounts of grace and prodigality within a context of Christian ministry and life. That’s before you start trawling the ocean of classic novels with their redemptive themes. It would be an interesting exercise to get Christian people to list the novels and biographies that cause their hearts to burn and yearn after God. And then stock them.

I expect there are many difficulties with this idea. But Christian bookshops have plenty of difficulties anyway! And isn’t this where Christian bookshops belong? Imagine a curated collection of novels and biographies, from whatever publisher, that are (a) very good and (b) cause people to yearn to meet God. This would be a bookshop that truly was for the High Street; that had a wonderful offering for anyone who was looking for a book for themselves or a present for a friend; and that truly did sow seeds of life.

Nice to dream anyway…

  • Which novels and biographies, as Glenn puts it, make your heart “burn and yearn after God”?
  • Do you stock fiction in your shop?
  • If not, why not?
  • If so, which titles/publishers would you recommend to other booksellers wanting to get started in this area or expand their range?

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Christian booksellers “up in arms” over restrictive trade terms on new Missal from Catholic Truth Society

Posted on June 1, 2011 by | 17 Comments

UPDATE 04/06/2011:
Response from CTS

A report in today’s issue of The Tablet, p.37, quotes a response from CTS, citing reduced margins as their rationale for the short discount:

“Short discounting is not unusual for specialist books on which the margins are nowhere near what can be achieved on on a trade hardback or paperback. While aiming at high production and design quality, we have felt a strong obligation to reduce the margins as far as possible in order to keep the volumes affordable for customers and final users … mostly all of whom have to operate within limited resources.”

This begs the question, of course, as to how it is that the USA publishers (see comments below) appear to be able to manage their margins so much more effectively…?

INTRODUCING AN OPEN LETTER to the Rt Revd Paul Hendricks, Chairman of the Catholic Truth Society’s Board of Management, and to Mr Fergal Martin, the Society’s General Secretary, St Paul’s Bookshop describes Christian booksellers as being “up in arms” over restrictive trade terms on the new Roman Missal, due for publication later this year.

According to the letter, CTS have advised retailers that the new Missal will only be made available at a “non-negotiable” 10% trade discount, terms that completely undermine any viability for bookshops hoping to carry the books and, for those that do decide to stock them anyway, deny them the possibility of supplying church and school customers — many of whom might well be expected to place bulk orders — at a discount.

The letter points out that in placing such restrictive terms on the book, CTS have cornered the marketplace, giving themselves an effective monopoly on sales. CTS themselves stand to benefit enormously from the windfall of being chosen as the Missal’s publisher, but rather than respond in the generous spirit that one might expect — by sharing that windfall with their trade partners to maximise distribution opportunities through other outlets — CTS appear to have opted to capitalise on their good fortune for their own ends.

The letter appeals to Messrs Hendricks and Martin to “initiate immediate discussion and negotiation with the C.T.S. in order that normal supply terms can be established to the book trade.”

The letter has been signed by representatives of over a dozen Christian bookshops around the UK.

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UKCBD Spring Cleaning 2011 – and a free entry upgrade!

Posted on March 18, 2011 by | 7 Comments
UK Christian Bookshops Directory: Discover your local Christian bookshop!

Discover your local Christian bookshop!

IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN — out come the dusters and the cobweb brushes as I make my annual (and always ongoing) attempt to bring all the UK Christian Bookshops Directory records up to date!

Over the last year we’ve seen a lot of shops come and go, as well as change hands, and at this point I need your help, please: if you own or work in a Christian bookshop, please check your entry — either via the Shop Name Index or the Town and City Index (the two are mirrored so it doesn’t matter which way you go in) — and let me know, either via a comment on this post or directly, if it needs updating.

If you’re a Christian bookshop customer, please do likewise: check the entries for your local Christian bookshop(s) and do two things if they’re not listed or the entry is out of date:

  1. Call in at the shop and encourage them to check their entry
  2. Leave a comment here or give me a shout

Every entry that has been updated within the last three years has a date against it. Entries with no date have not been updated within that period and my plan is to flag these up with a query if no information is forthcoming from either the shop owners, customers or other sources.

Last but not least: a FREE entry upgrade for every retailer who responds to this call! In the past, inclusion of a shop photograph has only been available to paying subscribers. This time around, if you send me — or supply the URL (web address) for — a photograph of your shop, it will be added to your entry free of charge. All basic entries and access to the Directory remain, as ever, free of charge.

Please note that UKCBD is a 100% voluntary project: there are no paid staff beavering away behind the scenes. It may therefore take some time to amend or add entries: please be patient!

Thank you.

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Wider Book Trade – Phew, 8 weeks that started the year

Posted on February 28, 2011 by | 1 Comment

This list documents extraordinary activity in the wider Book Trade in a few short weeks;

  • UK book sales fell 3% in 2010, selling £56m less than in 2009
  • NIV Bible eBook tops the USA bestseller list over the New Year
  • 2011 marks the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible
  • Barnes & Noble USA do well over Christmas – thanks to their Nook eReader
  • Physical book sales continue to decline around the world
  • British Bookshops and Stationers go into administration
  • eBook debate intensifies – but with little clarity emerging
  • Digital Book World Conference is held in New York
  • Kindle; the most popular eBook reader – with sales overtaking paperbacks
  • Amazon record their first £10bn sales quarter
  • Waterstones owner HMV; shuts 11 UK stores, cuts HO jobs
  • WH Smith buy 22 British Bookshops and Stationers stores
  • UK Libraries under massive pressure due to imminent spending cuts
  • Borders USA enters Chapter 11 – and is effectively bankrupt
  • REDgroup Australia goes bust – leaving big UK debts
  • Borders Singapore shuts its doors
  • Zondervan loses its President and CEO, Moe Girkins 
  • Gardners launches the HIVE website in the UK
  • STL Distribution UK rebrands as Trust Media Distribution
  • Living Oasis has its ups and downs, causing some uncertainty

Only another 10 months left for this year – don’t hold your breath!

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eBook sales and digital reader update

Posted on January 24, 2011 by | 28 Comments

From January 24 – 26, the Publishing Industry will gather in New York for the Digital Book World Conference to debate the new technologies. I really wish I was going but, like me, you can follow it on Twitter during the coming week. As Christians in this industry, we simply cannot ignore such immense changes to our market. If you are part of Linked In, you could also join the group, Digital Book World.

Like it or not, the eBook revolution is here. There’s also a lot of puff around with some drawing parallels such as the shift from the horse to the automobile! Somehow I doubt it. Print is still pretty massive! However, a number of commentators, admittedly mostly American, are stating that this Christmas was absolutely a ‘change point’ in terms of the sale of eBooks. Barnes & Noble, the largest USA bookshop chain, announced it sold one million e-books on Christmas Day. The fact that they developed their own ‘Nook’ eReader has been credited with keeping them ahead of faltering rivals, Borders USA.  

USA Today’s ‘Best-Selling Books’ list demonstrated digital’s new popularity; their top six books outsold the print versions in the week following the Christmas holiday. Of the top 50, 19 had higher e-book than print sales. Perhaps not a great surprise when around 3 to 5 million eReaders were activated in that same week resulting in this surge of sales. The big question is; will it continue? It’s obviously still early days but insiders are predicting that by 2012 three in every 10 books could be delivered digitally. Publishers are aiding this trend by very quickly adding more and more back-list titles.

According to AAP sales figures in the USA, eBook sales were significantly up in November. At the same time, adult paperback sales were down 19% compared to the same period the previous year. Their release states, ‘eBook sales continue to grow, with a 130% increase over November 2009 ($46.6 million); year-to-date eBook sales are up 166%’. It will be interesting to see the December eBook figures when they are released as what starts in the USA tends to end up here.

Gartner predicted that more than 15.8 million e-readers will be in use by 2013.  Some in the industry have expressed surprise at the speed of this transition, which has quickly gained ground particularly in the area of mass market fiction. eBooks sales account for about 9% of the USA market. Bowker, the research company says sales may flatten this year but could still be twice as high as they were in 2010.

Within Publishing, there’s a lot of uncertainty about what to do about piracy and DRM (digital rights management). Should DRM be employed at all as it can so easily by cracked? Is piracy really such a threat to book publishers in the same way as it was for the music industry? The answers may be different depending on whether you are a small niche publisher or one producing high volume, high worth, popular titles. These days it’s just so easy to scan and digitise a printed book and put them up on a web site. For a really informative thread discussion here.

Google’s announcement earlier this week of its acquisition of eBook Technologies, a company that sells the technology used to operate digital reading devices is fascinating. Google by dint of its size, power, wealth and global reach has the ability to utterly transform the eBook landscape. Already consumers can browse and search through more than 3 million free books on its site.

Publishers are on the defensive. As eBook sales rise, the unspoken question is; will authors still need a publisher? It’s just possible than in the fast-approaching digital future that it will be the (online) retailers who will come to dominate the customer relationship. Why? Because it is the retailer who has the knowledge of their consumer base. They have the ability to market a book far more effectively. Why has Tesco been such a successful retailer? In one word; Clubcard! Consumer data and customer knowledge are all.

The future of eBook selling may therefore lie with the likes of Amazon, Apple and Eden. However, as of today, there are no Christian eBooks for sale on Eden.co.uk. As I write, one site launching to sell Christian eBooks is www.10ofthese.com - so I guess we shall see!

A way does need to be found quickly for small retailers to gain access to this market. Andrew Lacey from GLO has suggested something along the lines of the now defunct Crown customisable website?

What all this tells us is that retail as we know it will need to be reinvented if it is to survive. My view is that we have a few short months to act and make changes before the impact fully begins to bite.

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eBook Sales – Weighing up the Digital Impact

Posted on January 19, 2011 by | 27 Comments

Phil Groom was kind enough to invite me to cross-post from my personal blog where I have taken a periodic interest in the rise of the eBook. I’m fascinated by the explosive potential of their impact in our small niche within the wider book trade. Digital is clearly not going away but somehow it doesn’t quite feel real to us yet! It soon will. I contend that we all – publishers and retailers alike – need urgently to better understand what’s happening around us.

Retail as we’ve known it is under threat like never before. Major market forces are changing the High Street before our very eyes. Even since Christmas we’ve had news of Waterstones closing branches in order to meet their banking covenants and British Bookshops continues to trade but now under the watchful gaze of the administrator. Today HMV – the last major entertainment retailer apart from WH Smith – has brought in KPMG for advice on external banking and debt concerns. Content remains but format and delivery are all over the place. If you want to look at another industry under even greater pressure, just look at what’s happening to newspapers!

So here’s the post I ran several days ago;

Having castigated The Bookseller recently for poor journalism, I draw your attention to a superb and in-depth reporting piece looking at what life for the trade could look like in 2011. Bringing together the opinions of a wide range of UK book industry leaders it looks at, amongst other things, the likely impact of digital sales on the industry.

You can read the full article here but I want to highlight the main points of interest to High Street book retailers as they face the imminent digital challenge.

Amongst the key points of the article;

  • Industry chiefs unanimously earmark digital as a key area of opportunity in 2011
  • Digital sales have reached a tipping point and will grow further next year
  • Those booksellers not getting a good share of e-book sales are going to find business tougher than ever
  • The main challenge lies in supporting retailers in an uncertain economic environment
  • However, nearly 95% of all books sold in the UK in 2011 will still be in print format

To my mind, here is the killer statement; ‘Growing e-book sales could lead to the Total UK Consumer Market being negative in 2011 as they hit 7% of the adult trade market’.

Print may no longer be capable of ongoing growth. Fiction – in particular – and mass market publishing in general, is highly susceptible to this drift. How are High Street shops to deal with this change in their market? If print is dropping away, what steps do they need to take to get a bigger slice of the digital cake? If the High Street trade is not careful, it will be the publishers and not retailers that will benefit from an inevitable sales shift to digital.

Gardners’ respected commercial director, Bob Jackson, is quoted in the article as saying:

‘I think that the retailers who continue to focus on customer service and manage overheads will be doing the best they can. They need to stay very consumer focused. It won’t get any easier in 2011. We launched our digital service three years ago, so it’s available to every single retailer. I think the challenge might come more as retailers using e-books as part of their retail offering, I’m sure they [retailers] can be as creative as they have been to date. That’s the challenge’.

Faber Publisher, Stephen Page, said:

‘The big question is how retailers fared at the end of last year and how they will fare in 2011. Looking around the world I can see the retail environment changing and that change is not complete. Retailers have to adapt to a world with very powerful mass market retailing and online retailing and now there is a digital component too. Look at the REDGroup in Australia, Borders in the US. Here we have had a narrowing of the specialist chains to Waterstone’s and W H Smith, and it’s a question of how they adapt. Waterstone’s over the last nine months have been pursuing quite a different tack and it’s a question of where that gets them to. We all want a healthy retail environment. In 2011 we will see a hardening of the e-book market and a lot of people becoming habitual about reading electronically. We will catch up quickly with America – I’m estimating e-books will be 3-5% of the [UK] market in a year’s time’.

The long-serving chief executive of the Booksellers Association, Tim Godfray, stated:

‘This Millennium has seen a huge amount of change in the way books are sold and in the formats available. As ever, booksellers have shown great resilience and those who have adapted have survived. As we enter a new decade, only further change is on the cards. We face in particular three challenges. First, the Government cutbacks and the state of the economy; secondly, the digital economy; thirdly, the consumer having fewer leisure pounds to spend. But with challenges, there are opportunities. The tipping point concerning e-books has been reached and digital content is coming of age. The popularity of e-book readers demonstrates this. The selling of digital content is a threat to traditional booksellers, but it is also an opportunity. A lot has been written about the death of the printed book and the bookshop. Not far short of 95% of all books sold in the UK in 2011 will be in print format and booksellers will develop their offers, customer service and specialisations’.

Victoria Barnsley, chief executive of HarperCollins is quoted as saying:

‘Digital developments continue to present both the challenges and the opportunities for our industry. E-book sales more than trebled over the Christmas period as people rushed to buy e-books for their new gift devices. And, unlike some, I really do think the growth of the digital market is a huge opportunity for bookshops—not only to provide a unique and personal service to book lovers, which is hard to replicate online, but to capitalise on the new readers these devices are creating. …  finally, I believe that we should all fight vigorously to support and encourage a broad range of retail options on the high street and online which hugely benefits consumers, retailers and our own industry’.

Well done, The Bookseller – some fascinating opinions and really insightful reporting. I cannot help but think that we continue to be in very uncertain territory with even the most able minds in the trade pretty unclear as to how that future may turn out.

However, I am beginning to think that the tipping point for eBooks is beginning to tilt – albeit slowly but surely.

POSTSCRIPT – If all this gloom and uncertainty is getting you down then read these recent comments by the Editor of The Irish Times;

‘Yet there are opportunities for the retail sector. Barnes and Noble in the US have really got on top of things with their own device and have encouraged their customers to become digital readers. They’re looking at sales of about $400 million (€308 million) for digital content in a 12-month period – and that’s impressive’.  He believes, though, that there will always be a market for print books. ‘It might not be huge. It might be down to 30 per cent of the market in 10 years’ time, but there will still be a demand for physical books and the browsing experience that you can’t get from Amazon or the Book Depository’.

Update, 23/01/2011

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Christianity on the High Street: is there a better way?

Posted on January 6, 2011 by | 21 Comments

OVER THE PAST YEAR OR SO we’ve had numerous conversations and discussions about the future shape of Christian bookselling and retailing. We’ve seen the sad demise of the former SPCK bookshops (a story that’s far from over), the break-up of Wesley Owen following the collapse of STL UK when Biblica overreached itself (for what that cost, see Clem Jackson’s recent report for Christian Marketplace: IBS STL (UK) Administration closes), and a number of independents struggling or closing down; but we’ve also seen the rise of Living Oasis with its mixed message about developing a Christian presence on the high street whilst simultaneously “de-Christianising” its storefronts, various independents springing to life or changing hands, and more and more shops discovering the world of social media (find Christian bookshops on facebook | twitter). One thing is clear: Christian bookselling/retailing in the UK is not yet dead.

But is it truly alive? Is there a better way? Should we be seeking a new model for a Christian presence in our towns and cities? Has the time come, if not to discard the bookshop/retailer/café concept entirely, to develop something else? But if so, what?

Ian Matthews takes up the conversation:

Bookshops, Cafés and the Witness on the High Street

I am writing as someone who has, over the years, managed retail shops, edited a retail trade publication, worked for publishers and been (vaguely) involved in the rescue of our local Christian bookshop by a newly formed trust. I have also earned money in the last few years advising people on how to adapt to a changing retail culture.

These are, without doubt, dark days for Christian booksellers in the United Kingdom. It is generally difficult for many independent retailers and small chains (and even larger ones), but Christian bookshops seem especially hard hit. There is yet another closure of an independent bookshop every couple of months, accompanied by the regular chorus of concern about the ‘loss of a witness on the high street’. There is no doubt that the High Street is changing. A recent BBC survey shows that whereas vacant shops are on the increase, the only sectors showing a reduction in the number of shops are travel agents and off-licences (although bookshops are rolled in with art suppliers and stationers which may be masking a decline). There is no written or unwritten rule that says that the high street needs to stay the same, and the excellent TV series Turn Back Time: The High Street has shown how even whilst mourning the loss of dedicated retailers, the public will still shop with their wallet or purse at the forefront of their buying decisions.

This leads to the question I have been really pondering:

Is a Bookshop the Best Witness on the High Street?

What I mean by this is: whether it is, in the end, worth all the expense, heartache, effort, cajoling and tears to keep a Christian bookshop open; or is there a more effective way of bringing the light of Christ to our towns and cities?

Shrewsbury Covered Market, photograph by Ian Matthews

Shrewsbury Covered Market

I have recently taken some office space in the town centre of the town in which I live as I have outgrown the office in the back garden, and needed somewhere else to work. As I looked around I did something I hadn’t done for a while, and took a walk through our local covered market. When I first moved here this was a thriving market selling meat, veg, household supplies etc, but went into a shocking decline about ten years ago. I had stopped going by and didn’t go near for a few years. However, I did look in when exploring space and was amazed at the change in the last few years. The main market floor was now populated by bakers, butchers, delicatessens, organic greengrocers, secondhand bookstores etc. The upper gallery of fixed units had a printer, an art collective, a secondhand vinyl shop, more books, hats etc.

What struck me is that here was a place where the community was coming together, but there was no observable Christian presence. But I also asked a second question: would a Christian bookshop be the right thing to put in here? (We already have a Christian bookshop in the town anyway). I wanted to start thinking creatively about how Christian witness might work here. Obviously the mixed mainstream/Christian product can work (as Unicorn Tree Books in Lincoln has shown), but I wanted to think about what else might be effective.

Bookshops, coffee shops, quiet spaces, gift & craft shops, a Christian equivalent to the ‘new age’ centres you find in many tourist towns?

Two baptist churches recently merged. Their town centre building was demolished and in its place a local property developer is building a new commercial/residential building with a ground floor space for use by the church. However, their worship centre is in the other building, located in a residential area. But, like the market, they get thousands of people passing by every day (including, again like the market, 1500 sixth-formers from the nearby college), and want to use it in a way that will draw people in, and provide a service and space for people.

These are still questions without answers, but I found the prospect exciting and would love to hear from others as to what possibilities might exist…

Ian Matthews has worked in Christian publishing and communications for 13 years, before which he worked in retail management for a number of years. He is currently Director of International Partnerships for EthnoGraphic Media, a non-profit documentary production organisation. Their current film is Little Town of Bethlehem (www.littletownofbethlehem.org) which follows the growing nonviolence movement in Israel and Palestine, and is currently being screened in churches and university campuses around the world. It is available on retail release through Kingsway in the UK.

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News Roundup: News and Notes from Christian bookshops here, there and everywhere

Posted on September 15, 2010 by | 5 Comments

As the title says, a roundup of recent news and notes. Despite what some may think, this trade of ours is alive and kicking. Here’s the proof:

A NEW CHRISTIAN BOOKSHOP and café has opened in Comber, Co. Down: Revive Bookshop and Coffee House. From a review at yelp:

I was never expecting to find this little gem when I was wandering down one of Comber’s more drab streets, but I did. As soon as I spotted the sign for a bookshop, I simply had to drop in and see what I could find. Interestingly, the second unexpected matter of the day came to the fore, and I got a pleasant surprise when I learnt that this place is actually a Christian bookshop. I know that this may put some people off, but it really shouldn’t, and here’s why:

THE HUB, WALSALL, now has a facebook page as well as a group: head on over and give ‘em some facebook lurrrve… (translation: hit the page ‘like’ button; go on, you know you want to).

OASIS, KETTERING, have joined the online revolution and launched a website: www.oasisbookshop.com — get over there and grab a bargain whilst the launch celebration party is still running…

TWO BRANCHES OF CLC are on the move: the Coventry branch has relocated to 1 City Arcade, Coventry  CV1 3HX; and Dundee is moving (or has moved: it’s happening this week) into the former Wesley Owen premises, 112 Nethergate, Dundee DD1 4EH. Email addresses and phone numbers for both branches remain unchanged.

FOOTPRINTS, MIDDLESBROUGH has been acquired by Open Door Trading, who took over No Frontiers from Kingsway earlier in the year. The shop is being renamed Open Door Bookshop and opens its doors at 9am on October 9th 2010. I’ve invited Open Door Trading director Paul Mogford to tell us all about it: look out for that story tomorrow.

LST BOOKS & RESOURCES bids farewell to yours truly tomorrow, Thursday 16th February [oops!! Thanks Katharine!] September 2010. Some personal reflections over on my personal blog: The Final Week and The Hardest Part. My soon-to-be-erstwhile assistant, Nick Aston, assumes the mantle: please pray for him as he attempts to do both my job and his own in less than half our combined hours. It’s a turbulent time at LST at present as the entire institution seeks to reorientate itself in the current economic climate: the bookshop’s troubles are but one small part of a much bigger picture.

UKCBD entries for all of these should be added or updated this week, time permitting. You’d think leaving LST would leave me with lots of time on my hands but it just ain’t so…

GOT NEWS? If you’ve got news you’d like to share about your shop or staff, please leave a comment or contact me direct to be included in the next roundup.

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