Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Invasion of the killer bookshop

Decent coffee is only half the story as the American giants prepare to take on British businesses in the dash for the reading public's cash

Ann Treneman
Sunday 22 March 1998 01:02 GMT
Comments

IT WAS the day after Princess Diana's death, so James Paton was already feeling a bit shell-shocked as he took his lunch break from his job as a graphic designer in Norwich. He ate his sandwiches and decided it was a good day to have one of his regular browses in a local bookstore. He got as far as the theology section - he collects religious books - when an assistant rounded on him and asked him to leave. His crime? Mr Paton had been found guilty of browsing without intent to buy. "He was banned because he never bought anything," said the bookstore owner. Mr Paton was flabbergasted. He hasn't been back.

I cannot help but think of Mr Paton while standing outside what used to be Littlewoods on the south side of Oxford Street in central London. This is the site of the new Borders. It is the first American book megastore to come to Britain and, as such, is being heralded as being at the vanguard of a revolution in the way we buy books. For once, such talk may not be too overblown.

At 39,000 square feet, it will be huge for a bookstore and will offer at least 100,000 book titles plus music cassettes, CDs, videotapes and endless magazines. The cafe will serve the very latest in lattes, the sofas will be inviting, the magazine racks bursting. It will open this summer and perhaps the Americans just might want to invite Mr Paton to cut the ribbon. This is a store that is built for the likes of him. In this brave new book world, the browser is king.

"These superstores will represent the biggest challenge yet to the traditional way of selling books in Britain," said John Mutter, executive editor at Publisher's Weekly in New York who will chair a discussion on the American invasion at the London Book Fair this afternoon. Borders, which bought Books etc last year, will open shops in London and Leeds this year. Meanwhile Barnes & Noble, the best-known American bookstore chain, is also believed to be ready to make its first move into Britain. "The way of selling books in Britain is regarded by the Americans as being a little staid in terms of marketing and promotion," said Mr Mutter. "The feeling is that American- style superstores are the answer: they'll offer a big selection, plus coffee shops and music - a three-ring circus."

IT MAY sound rowdy but the reality of the American-style store is more welcoming than frantic. "The term that we would use would be lifestyle bookshops," says Clive Vaughan, research manager at Verdict retail consultants. "It means they are trying to appeal to a certain type of person, rather than just selling books. They are out to attract the serious book buyer, not the one who buys one Mills and Boon a year, and to create an environment that makes you say, 'Wow, I like this. I can get what I want, I can have a coffee and I can browse for as long as I like'."

In America good bookshops have become inextricably linked with the smell of good coffee and under American ownership, cappuccino has become a bestseller at Books etc. But this battle is not all about coffee and cushions. "We are worried that people seem to think that our future depends on putting sofas into them. Soft furnishings alone do not a great bookstore make," says Honor Wilson-Fletcher of Waterstone's.

In fact the key to the new books superstore is not style but substance as in range. Or, as they say in the trade, range of authority. "Consumers want choice," says Mr Vaughan. "The range of authority means that you haven't just got three or four westerns in the store but 20,000. There aren't just a few romances but 30,000."

These are called destination stores - which means that you go to them because you know they will have what you want - and the books battle that is about to commence is being dubbed the battle for the Ultimate Destination Bookstore. "If you go to the Ultimate Destination Bookshop in search of the proverbial Flyfishing by J.R. Hartley, then it will have it," says Mr Vaughan.

By tradition, London's destination bookshop has been Foyle's in Charing Cross Road - except that these days often the only place you'll find is Frustration City. "I'm sure it must be here somewhere," said the assistant the last time I went there as we looked through the higgledy-piggledy piles in search of an not-too-old biography. We tried different departments (all on different floors, of course) but I left empty-handed. Often the bigger branches of the larger chains can do better than this, but there is still plenty of scope for the Ultimate Destination Bookstore.

The new Borders in Oxford Street will be the first all-American candidate for the title. So far the only British bookshop that comes near it is Waterstone's in Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow, which opened last September. By 2000 Waterstone's wants to have eight to 10 superstores (including a 40,000 to 50,000 square foot London flagship). Others are sure to follow and, by the millennium, there could be anything from an estimated 30 to 100 book megastores in Britain. It's not only the Dome that thinks big is beautiful.

The Glasgow Waterstone's is a case in point. It has 30,000 square feet on five floors. It stocks 150,000 individual titles (60,000 is the norm) and has 100 staff (enough to warrant its own personnel manager). There are eight Internet facilities and something called an Intranet which helps customers locate books in the store. The information desk is separate from the till desks. There is a full cafe, a dedicated events space and coffee stations on every floor. Unlike Borders, it does not sell music or videos.

In many ways, the new bookstores almost seem to be trying to serve the same purpose as a library. "Bookshops are part of the community and we really want people to stay in the store," Ms Wilson-Fletcher says. "A lot of people spend two or three hours in a bookshop. What's happened in Glasgow is that the store is attracting a broader cross-section of people. It just feels comfortable." That seemed particularly true of those in search of dates as well as a good novel. "The lonely hearts columns show that the cafe is the favoured meeting point in the city."

DON'T be fooled that all is comfy on the bookstore sofa, though. Much has happened since Tim Waterstone started it all by opening a shop in London's Old Brompton Road in 1982, and this is a time of huge change in what has become a pounds 1.8bn industry. The market continues to grow - the government family expenditure survey in 1997 shows book sales up by 8 per cent - and so do the players. Now the sale of Waterstone's to the HMV Group (which also owns Dillons) has created something of a superpower.

But, just as significantly, real price cuts may be on the way. The collapse of the price-fixing Net Book Agreement in 1995 brought only limited discounts but the American invasion should change all that. A report published last week by Verdict retail consultants says that the forthcoming price war could knock 10 to 20 per cent off the price of a typical book. "It could mean a much more aggressive approach," says Mr Vaughan. Peter Courtney of the retail agents Lunson Mitchenall says: "Borders are looking to becoming category killers. They want to be totally dominant. Instead of people thinking that they must go to a bookstore, they will think they must go to Borders."

Nostalgia demands that we think of the local independent bookshop as something out of 84 Charing Cross Road. Few are, of course, but so far the death of the small bookstore has been greatly exaggerated. The Booksellers' Association, which represents 90 per cent of bookshops, says that its independent membership has remained stable recently but no one knows how long that will last in the face of the American invasion and the increased use of on-line booksellers such as amazon.com. "Some small businesses will fall by the wayside and so will some discounters," says Mr Courtney. "But no longer will the choice be highbrow or cheap and cheerful. Bookstores will be mid-range."

This may not sound revolutionary - but its consequences are. And, amid the fag ends and pipes and boards and cables that litter the floor of the new Borders store on Oxford Street, something will be built that is going to change the way we think about buying books for ever. And all of this is very good news for those of us who, like Mr Paton, believe that browsing is an art and not a crime. Browsers are serious about books and, in this market, that matters. Let the battle for the Ultimate Destination Bookshop begin.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in