[Hereford Eye]

From the New York Times:
Drugs for the body. Books for the mind and soul. If you want proof that a cultural divide separates Europe and America, the book business is a place to start. In the United States chain stores have largely run neighborhood bookshops out of business. Here in Germany, there are big and small bookstores seemingly on every block. The German Book Association counts 4,208 bookstores among its members. It estimates that there are 14,000 German publishers. Last year 94,716 new titles were published in German. In the United States, with a population nearly four times bigger, there were 172,000 titles published in 2005.
Germany’s book culture is sustained by an age-old practice requiring all bookstores, including German online booksellers, to sell books at fixed prices. Save for old, used or damaged books, discounting in Germany is illegal. All books must cost the same whether they’re sold over the Internet or at Steinmetz, a shop in Offenbach that opened its doors in Goethe’s day, or at a Hugendubel or a Thalia, the two big chains.
What results has helped small, quality publishers like Berenberg. But it has also — American consumers should take note — caused book prices to drop. Last year, on average, book prices fell 0.5 percent.

The article goes on to document how a Swiss initiative in discounting German books threatens the stability of the German system. Is it just me or does this German system make a lot of sense?

[KatG]

It depends on what sort of returns system they have in that country and what other regulations they place on booksellers. And distribution procedures -- who pays for freight, which is going to be a lot cheaper in Germany than the U.S. since Germany is much smaller and has the whole European Union as resources, regulated trucking and so on. Also paper supplies, printing -- whether there are also restrictions of trade in Germany that keep prices of those low. You have to look at the whole system, not just compare the number of bookstores and titles. The U.S. is a less protectivist market system, which has its downsides and its pluses. Also, the U.S. has a lot more competition world-wide for the English-language market than Germany has for the German-language market.

Another question is how are those 94,000 plus titles selling? Are they shipping them throughout the Union, or is it sales mostly in Germany? If book prices are dropping, is that because of collusion between publishers, supply factors, or poor sales? My understanding is that the sales of fiction and books are also down in a number of European countries, and that fiction is generally not cared for in many countries. So what sectors of the German book market are doing well? What type of fiction is doing well in Germany, if any? How many of the titles are German language reprints of titles from other countries?

The U.S. market actually seems to be doing something of a flip because non-bookstore vendors have increasingly declined. This is actually opening up opportunities for independent bookstores. For instance, specialty bookstores are starting to come back a bit. And there are a lot of small presses. But I don't know what the per capita breakdown is. But it's unlikely that the U.S. would ever adopt the sort of regulation Germany employs because it goes against our restraint of trade legislation, and because it may not allow book publishing to then be economically feasible, given our returns system.

[Nimea]

Ah, my beloved German Preisbindung . . . no kidding, I am a big supporter. And the way in which it is currently discussed in the business isn't making me confident.

Actually, the problem with the dropping of the fixed retail price system in Switzerland isn't really the biggest we have - since our book chains have started to take over and open new bookstores in an almost absurd race against each other, these big chains have really started to undermine the whole system. They claim otherwise but this is really a danger.
A few years ago the EU attacked the German net price agreement and forced Germany to drop the voluntary agreement we used to have for decades and to establish a law. The law seems to be more restrictive than the voluntary agreement. And now we all watch Switzerland and wonder what will come.
The market has become a buyer's market and publishers have to fight for staying on good terms with the big chains. It's almost ridiculous what you have to offer - even as a small publisher - to stay on their good side.


The number of over 90.000 new books - if you ask me, total overproduction. If you wonder what and how it sells in Germany here are some random thoughts: the numbers you have to sell to enter the topseller lists used to be much higher 20 years ago. Recently there was an article that the prices just started to increase, indeed a first for quite a while. We have a reduced VAT rate for books since they are considered a cultural good (7% instead of 19%).
Selling good? YA and children's fiction, crime novels, audio books. Among other stuff. I don't know how it is in other countries but in Germany almost every bookstore can order about 300.000 to 400.000 titles - from an overall of more than 700.000 titles available on the market. I sadly don't know how the ratio is with foreign rights and original German stuff. There was an increase of English language literature books (and I really mean the books, the German market has been buying English language rights and publishing translations for a long time) over the last two years - partly my doing. ;) Just kidding, but even though you get a lot of the good stuff in German translation I have become a fan of the English language years ago and I am not too fond of what some German publishers do to their acquired fantasy books. Hence I am among those buying lots of imported books.
Anyway, a few years ago their seemed to be the notion that we do not have enough new German authors. I am not sure but I really have the feeling that over the last 5 years at least a lot of new talent was published - even in the Fantasy market.

So, I am still for the fixed retail price but I wonder how long it will hold and what a fall of the system might do to our market. And that is not only because I like the fact of having lots of bookstores near me but also because I am working for a small publisher and I am quite sure we are not prepared for free prizing . . .

Sorry for the rambling.

Have to go to work now.

[MrBF1V3]

H.E.- where do you get this stuff?

A system where books could not be discounted (unless they have a reason, of course--there must always be loopholes.) seems like it would help the smaller book sellers, who can't afford to buy in bulk like the chain stores. Although it seems the locally owned book sellers tend to have books the chains have ignored--for whatever reason. As long as there are enough buyers for what they are selling, they should manage to stay afloat.

The big stores also sell their books online, which is much the same experience sans coffee. Sometimes the on-line book costs less, but then there is shipping and handling which can bring with it a curious equilibrium.

Their system may make some sense, but when you have a few million people who are in the habit of looking for the discount, I would think putting into place something like that would deprive many people of their favorite passtime. As chaotic as the american system is, it will probably be the only game in town, at least for the time being.

(This also means that if one understands chaos theory, he might have an advantage.) -- Yeah, right.

B5

[Hereford Eye]

H.E.- where do you get this stuff?Consider this an endorsement for StumbleUpon.

There was a time when I loved libraries but that time passed when I started building my own. Now, I love bookstores. I cannot enter one without expending at least an hour roaming its shelves. The bigger the bookstore, the longer the browze. Last month, it took me a half hour to browze the bookstore in SEATAC airport .
So, anything that fosters bookstores seems like a good thing to me.
I regularly receive a brochure from a fancy bookseller in England purveying properly bound volumes of the classics. If TLWSHLWM would allow more bookshelves in our living room, I'd purchase everything that vendor produces. I am also a fan of bargains. I regularly shop Daedalus looking for the odd gem that will appear.
OTOH, I am not and have never been a comparative shopper. I go out looking for what I want and I buy it when I find it. I do not spend weeks looking for the best deal. My strategies tend to the simpler type. I just bought a software package that retails for sevel hundred dollars U.S. for about $50U.S. I accomplished that by purchasing an unsold edition of last year's version. You can only buy used books under that system.
That said, as much as I spend on books, were there a standard price for books, the savings would be considerable. If that same system fostered more bookstores, seems like a good trade to me.

Like many of my ideas, this one has no probability of realization in the goood ole U.S. of A.

[KatG]

Well, this international stuff gets complicated. Dozens of small bookstores does not necessarily end up being better than fewer large bookstores with large amounts of stock. And in the U.S., the sales tax is regulated to only the states and some states don't have sales tax, so that's maybe less of an issue in costs. A fixed retail price sounds good -- like Saturn cars -- but it could price the books out of range for lower-income people, even with the used bookstores being exempt.

For example, in Canada, the Canadian dollar has now outstripped the U.S. dollar, but the prices for books in Canada remains grossly inflated, especially for U.S. imports. And there is the overstock problem -- even if the playing field is levelled so that small bookstores can play better with the big boys -- if they are over-ordering and not selling stock, they can go under.

Nimea's description of the German market: "the number of over 90.000 new books - if you ask me, total overproduction. If you wonder what and how it sells in Germany here are some random thoughts: the numbers you have to sell to enter the topseller lists used to be much higher 20 years ago." -- that's the same thing that was, and still is, occurring in the U.S. -- overproduction of titles above actual demand; bookstores ordering too large amounts, then flooding the publisher with returns or dumping discounted stock; and the number of sales it takes to get on the bestseller list dropping as sales drop per title. Publishers have been trying to improve things with stuff like just-in-time and by-demand distribution, borrowing systems from the music industry, and trying to get booksellers to make more reasonable orders and less returns, doing smaller printruns and such. But there are market pressures that keep publishers and booksellers from making really successful corrections.

A big one is that even a lot of the medium sized publishers are owned by big multi-media, and possibly multi-national corporations -- and the book chains too -- who worry about their stock price, and don't think cutting back looks real good. So then we get sales declines that don't look so good either. And Germany, which has Bertlesman, which in the States owns Bantam Doubleday Dell Random House Ballantine Knopf, etc. -- the biggest publisher here -- is under those same sorts of pressures.

[Kreschyboy]

While the German example may have some good points (and i do agree that a rise in small bookstores would be a good thing) one of the very things that defines America is the rights of people to pursue economic success over other people. Trying to argue between the two systems goes way back to the whole Hamilton vs. Jefferson argument of the 1780s-1820s. (big business vs. providing for the common man).

Obviously, Hamilton won.

-Kreschyboy

[Rocket Sheep]

Does that explain why we have to put up with Borders domineering ways in Australia? We have a more socialist outlook on life after all and yet still we get the big discounter armed to the teeth with his US $ and upsized coffees undercutting our local bookshops and smallsizing the royalties due to the local writers.

[lin]

The ARE no Borders.

[KatG]

That's the multi-national aspect of it. In English-language territories, it's in many ways easier to build a base, just as it is easier to do so in Europe than it is in Asia at the moment. In Australia's case, you have the remains of the British Commonwealth -- the countries that Britain hid behind its back as Eddie Izzard puts it -- and so the British arm of the big chains is able to move right in.

It's a weird circumstance that the Brit and the German companies control most of the book publishing, the U.S. companies control most of the bookselling, but where a corporation is originally based doesn't really matter much any more. Publishing has gone global.