Picture the scene: after traversing your way into the hustle and bustle, the dreaded hell that is Saturday in a busy city centre, avoiding armies of pushchair-wielding parents, troublesome teens and slow-moving senior citizens, you arrive at that never-changing paradise – the bookshop. The bookshop welcomes you in with a sombre quietness and a gentle whoosh of warm air as the harsh outdoors melts away into a soon-forgotten nightmare. Books, books, books -as far as the eye can see and further still. But where to start? On the wall, to your left, is a black board and written upon it in a regal, large font is a list of every genre imaginable and where to find it. Science? First floor. Art and Photography? Third floor. You reach for the wooden bannister to begin your true journey (or go to the lift, whatever, I’m not here to judge your laziness). You hone in on that perfect book, passing other literature-loving nomads and responding to their courteous nods in kind. Upon finding The One, you relax back into one of many plump sofas and you breathe in that new book smell. Pure bliss? You’ve got it.
But not for long as the days of idly browsing in such a scenario may be numbered. CEO of HarperCollins, Victoria Barnsley, speaking to broadcaster Evan Davis on BBC Radio 4’s “The Bottom Line” on Saturday 9th February, alongside literary agent Jonny Geller and Kobo’s Chief Content Officer Michael Tamblyn about the future of publishing, spoke of how charging for browsing being “not that insane”.
Barnsley predicted that the ever-rising popularity of digital e-book sales would “level off and end up being more like 50/50 [physical books and e-books] for quite some time, if the physical bookshops survive”. But she postulated about the survival of the physical bookshop, posing it as “the big question”. She went on to tell Davis that “…readers still do quite like physical books, the question is: will they be able to buy them?”
Relating to current research which showed that a reported figure of only 35% of fiction in the UK is bought through a physical bookshop, Barnsley observed: “They are under enormous pressure,” suggesting that asking customers to “pay for the privilege of browsing” was not an insane concept in the current environment. Shoeshops in the US have already begun charging customers to try on shoes, she noted.
The pricing structure of e-books was also discussed, with Geller describing the 20p e-book sensation as “a real danger for all of us”. He went on to remark that, “if you’re going to pay 20p for Life of Pi, which is a film, why would you ever pay £1?”
Barnsley also said that there was a major debate within the industry over digital rights management, commenting: “If you don’t have it, the risk is that there’s a lot of sharing…[but] keeping it on allows retailers like Amazon to continue running their walled garden, which is not a good thing.”
So they’ve deciding that bookstores aren’t dying quick enough? Amazon’s execs must be laughing they’re heads off.