What's a bookshop to do?

What is a book worth?

Depends on the type of book; depends on who the market is; depends on where you buy it; depends on what format it’s in; depends who wrote it; depends how much I want it.

Might as well ask: how long is a piece of string?

In the end the fiscal value of the book is determined by how much you spend on it, and the amount the consumer is willing to part with to get the book appears to be coming down.

I’m a little addicted to boards.ie these days and this particular thread on the price of Sci Fi & Fantasy Books caught my eye. Price of Sci Fi & Fantasy Books 

There’s a lot of giving out about the prices of the books in retail outlets like Eason’s and Dubray – the funny thing is these prices are the retail price set by the publisher. Amazon and Book Depository are heralded as the reasonable pricers yet the prices they set are heavily discounted from the actual set retail price.

Should the physical retail outlets should match these prices? The discounts for a large Irish wholesaler and Amazon can’t be that different? No, they’re not that different* but running costs are. Unfortunately the relative margin a physical bookshop needs to keep its head above water is larger than that of an online retailer (especially ones in Ireland with ridiculous lease agreements). So the only edge a bookshop has over an online retailer is immediacy – go in, get the book, start reading. (Yes, 3G enabled eReaders make this point obsolete, but I’m going to assume that –in Ireland anyway – most of the population is still without an eReader.+)

So what are booksellers to do – they need to price books at their retail value in order to cover overheads, yet consumers view retail value as too high. A €10.00 trade paperback is vastly over priced when it can be found on Book Depository for €6.50 including postage.

Yes there will be some people who will still buy the €10.00 book because of the immediacy aspect, or because they are of that rare breed that booksellers and publishers love who wander into bookshops and buy books just because they value the experience but the numbers of these people are dwindling.

Are there steps that bookshops should be taking? They can’t drop prices and sustain any kind of profit margin so another option is to stock books that will definitely sell. This is what supermarkets do and it is what book shops are doing more and more. Shelf space is filled with best sellers and ‘sure things’ only. This makes things tricky for a book buyer searching for something not mainstream but by no means hidden in a forgotten backlist.

The one edge bookshops had over online retailers begins to falter – Immediacy ceases to be a major incentive when stock diversity is woeful at best.

Can anything be done? Should we just clam up and resign the idea of that traditional bookshop to its inevitable fate?

What do you think bookshops can do?

*There may be a small difference but it will depend on the type of book and from whom they are sourced.

+probably won’t be the case for much longer though