British Book- Selling – a Revolution Accomplished

LOGOS 14.1_crc 31/3/03 1:54 pm Page 37

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Cause for Debate – 9 Chained and independent: British bookselling – a revolution accomplished

Tim Coates Twenty-five years ago, when I was working as a business graduate in the national office and distri- bution centre of W H Smith in Swindon sixty miles west of London, I left my copy of Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls on the bus on the way to work. I simply had to know what happened next in the story. I would have committed mild street crime to get a copy. After A graduate of Oxford and Stirling fruitlessly searching the bookshops of Swindon in universities, Tim Coates joined my lunch break, including the one owned by my W H Smith as a business analyst employer, and the public library, I skipped afternoon work and took a train to London. I in 1975. Subsequent posts found a copy in a bookshop near Trafalgar Square included Marketing Planning and sat among the tramps in the church of St Manager for Smiths; Marketing Martin’s in the Fields, reading the book to the end, Director of Webster’s bookshops; weeping along the way. This moment changed my life. I got promoted and successively Managing at Smiths by pointing out that we, the largest book Director of Sherratt & Hughes; chain in the country (five times larger than our Smith’s bookshops in Europe; nearest rival), didn’t carry Hemingway in our and Waterstones. In 1992, he left stores. The chief executive listened to me. I had found the focus for which he had been searching: corporate bookselling to start “It’s all about stock,” he said. The Book Shed, in Central If you don’t understand that, or what it means, London, the first bookshop in the you won’t be good at selling books. UK to be open twenty-four Swindon, a town famous only for its incom- prehensible road system, now has a shopping hours. Since then he has involved centre with three good bookshops, and Borders is himself in initiatives to improve to open there soon. Those who had thought that book supply and the public Swindon is not a place for people who want to buy library service, and has become books have been proved to be wrong. It may not an author; editor of two series of be the best place in the world to live, but if you are ever obliged to work there, at least you will be able history books and of the website to read Hemingway. Victorian Times. His book Patsy: What has happened in these twenty-five years The Story of Mary Cornwallis has been a revolution in bookselling in the UK. West will be published by Some call it the battle of the chains and the independents, but I don’t think that’s really what happened. Bloomsbury in August 2003. It was a transformation of the idea of a bookshop, Email:[email protected] the great hero of which was Tim Waterstone.

Tim Coates

Without him it wouldn’t have happened. There developed a taste for what bookselling really could were many, many others who played a part, but Tim be, and they liked it, and they were fun to work was the one who was so good and so successful that with. he held up the torch for the rest of us. * * * * * * * * * * In Britain, the other element which was and Of course a bookshop is about stock. still is crucial for success is good real estate. Britain Customers will go to the bookshops where they doesn’t have the long rows of stores on the highway believe they will find the books they need, or the going out of town, nor does it have many up- best work on the subject they need to know about, market shopping malls. Even now most shopping, whether it is roses or religion, fashion or cooking and nearly all bookstores, are in town centre fish, Rostropovich or romance. But also the shop buildings, and the older and more classical these needs to be open. Waterstones led the campaign to are, the better atmosphere they lend for browsing. open shops late in the evening, and particularly So each growing chain searched frantically to find and famously on Sundays. When we started, most the larger, finer, more central buildings in each bookshops closed for lunch. Public libraries still town. The search for these buildings and the brave do. The shop needs to be smart: in the UK in the openings in towns hitherto considered too dull for early ’80s, many independent bookshops looked a bookshop were the battlegrounds for the growth like dump sites. of the bookstores. Booksellers also need knowledge. They must A story about a large site which became know the difference between the Dalai Lama and available in the university city of Oxford illustrates Dolly Parton. John Profumo and Christine Keeler the intensity of the battle. Oxford has always been were not ice skaters (as a bookseller explained to the private bookselling empire of Blackwells. It has me recently). You only know all these things by about fifteen bookshops of all shapes, sizes and being alive and interested. The best booksellers, specialities, including art shops and antiquarian indeed, need to know everything in the world that shops, travel shops, and once a wonderful has ever been printed, or happened. Waterstones’ paperback shop on so many floors it was an book staff were amazing. Goodness knows where adventure to explore. Blackwells in Broad Street is they came from. Tim said they had degrees, but one of the best known bookshops in the world. many of the best had only studied at the university This is a cavernous Georgian house with a tiny of London’s West End. They were wonderful, they front door and a fireplace in the porch, which knew so much and they were the nicest people you stretches into one of the most glorious book could meet. emporia in the history of printing. A shop doesn’t have to be part of a chain in When a grand well-positioned building in order to have those qualities. On the contrary, Oxford became available, the estate agent set up ownership by an insensitive company can make a an auction between Waterstone and his great rival, shop boring and even unhelpful. However, when Terry Maher of Dillons. At this point in their the chain bookstore revolution was young and history both companies were weary. They had exciting, it was the competition between us all exhausted their cash and their goodwill on the that generated qualities and characteristics that money markets. Neither of them could afford to made each company uniquely attractive. By the pay a six-figure premium for this site, but neither time a group had ten shops, it had a completely could face having the other win it. Every defined character and fan club. It didn’t really entrepreneur knows the days when you cannot pay matter whether they were chain or independent, the month’s wages. Both Dillons and Waterstones except that the chain store keepers were enthused were in that position; they were living on bluff and and driven to be better than anyone else, and at bluster and increasing debts to pay debts. Only that time the independents just moaned about civil servants never experience this kind of how unfair it all was. The new players had pressure.