Biteback’s very own Iain Dale has had quite a morning, delivering his keynote speech at the Independent Publishers Guild conference. Iain’s speech covered a range of topics, such as ebook pricing, publisher-author relationships and more, but the main focus was on the relationship between booksellers and publishers. BookBrunch said the following of the speech (view the full article here £):
In his keynote address to the Independent Publishers Guild Conference today Iain Dale castigated WHSmith for running its business in the style of, he alleged, “a protection racket”. Dale went on to blame “the likes of Penguin, HarperCollins, Macmillan and the others who have introduced discounting policies which have led to bestsellers being sold at a loss”.
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As for WHSmith’s “marketing fees”, Dale continued: "Some might call it the book trade industry of protection money – to place our books in their stores. A few months later we get between 75 per cent and 90 per cent of our books returned in boxes that have never been opened! WHSmith has become nothing more than an exorbitantly priced warehouse for books, or as I have heard many people refer to them as a lending library.
“Its business practices are wrong and it is no friend of small independent publishers. What serious, ethical company allows big publishers to buy a place on their bestselling books chart? And that’s what they do. And by doing it they deliberately mislead their customers. The customers assume it really is chart of their bestselling books, when it is actually nothing of the sort. Many will say I am mad to break the conspiracy of silence on these business practices, which have gone on for years. We all know they are going on. Quite frankly I have reached a point where I am totally ambivalent about doing business with WHSmith ever again.”
Elsewhere The Bookseller said (view the full article here):
Iain Dale has hit out at the big booksellers, including W H Smith, Waterstones and Amazon, saying they have publishers “over a barrel”. Speaking at the Independent Publishers Guild conference this morning (7th March) Dale also repeated a call he made ten years ago to abolish “sale or return”.
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Dale also had strong words for Waterstones, which he said had moved to “correct the failings of the past”, under its new owner Alexander Mamut. However, despite this he said he was not a fan of its new buying policy, that saw it make fewer orders more frequently. “Whereas a few years ago they would place the order months before publication, which helped us decide print runs, now the order is sometimes not placed until after publication. Fewer risks are being taken, and by their own admission they have become reactive rather than proactive.”
He said it “would be a tragedy if it [Waterstones] went the same way as Borders”, but he said publishers needed to prepare for the possibility that it might not survive. “As publishers we’d be mad if we didn’t plan for a post Waterstones environment.”
He also criticised Amazon for demanding high discounts off small publishers. “They do give smaller publishers like us a choice. Never let it be said they don’t. And the choice is sell your books to us at 60% discount, or we won’t take any of them at all. They are able to do it because we, individually, aren’t strong enough to say no, and because the competition rules allow them to.” Nevertheless he said the internet giant had changed the book busines for both “good and bad”.
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And he added: “The next few years are going to continue to be tough for us small independent publishers. I don’t believe the doomsday prophets who claim it is the end of independent publishers and the physical book. We need to restate exactly what publishing is all about.”