Yippee, at long last the net book agreement, which artificially keeps high the price of books will end in german-speaking Switzerland. Before anyone starts bemoaning the effect on small bookshops, I am pretty sure that the effect of liberalisation (having sold books myself) will allow the smaller shops to compete more fairly and leaving the big dumpers like Borders (if they ever venture here) to concentrate on mass markets.

dave

am sure this will not stop Staufacher from charging outrageous prices for English language books ....

Even though they charge MWSt on books , they still are overpriced in this country. 21.90chf for a 6.99GBP book ? In germany, I have seen books actually cheaper than the UK RRP !

the agreement never included English language books - only those in German.

They've been talking about this for quite some time. My mother-in-law works in a bookstore, so I've heard a lot of complaining about it since last summer. It really reached a peak a couple of months ago when it became obvious that this would happen. She really seems to believe she's going to lose her job. We'll see what happens.

Small bookshops will certainly face new challenges because larger retailers will be able to offer books at lower prices. But nobody keeps smaller shops from working together and thus achieving larger purchase volumes.

..then its even more outrageous !
dave

I'm not against the liberalization, I'm in favor of it.

There are many ways that smaller bookshops can compete. Books are not just commodities. Consider:

book readings
topical promotions
local appeal
book clubs
knowledgable staff
annotated book recommendation (see books etc. for a good demonstration of this)
coffee shop atmosphere
Personal service
niche sales (sports, women, christian, computer)

...as ways in which the small guy can compete. I lurve small bookshops

On another note the huge bookshop in the Sihlcity has little stock for a large sqm premises. It probably got free rent for a couple of years and i suspect it will find it difficult beyond that to maintain a profit...

dave

Mmmmmmm. All nice ideas that add to overheads and work load of small bookshops. Then the punters actually buy their books where it's cheapest.

Same thing has happened to small specialist retailers in every trade throughout the world. Lower prices = less choice. It's inevitable but sad...

I don't agree. These nice ideas are promotion designed to either get them through the door, or to get them to feel part of something.

If I find the book I am looking for and receive help from the staff, I will give them my custom unless the premium does not represent sufficient value-added.

This is particulary true if its a book for which I have an immediate desire or need, and can't be bothered to wait even the few days for an amazon delivery.

Remember too , that big stores only discount a limited range of product. I spent many hours researching the current prices being offered by bookshops and even Amazon.

You don't even try and compete on price except on a very narrow selection when you don't have the economy of scale.


dave

I worked for a small chain of book retailers in Scotland when the price fixing ended there. This was a small family run business & in the run up to the change it was all doom & gloom & how are we going to survive. In the end the shops got busier & sold a lot more books. People who grudged paying £5.99 for a novel because they were not really into reading would happily pay £4.99 or £3.99 so overall turnover went up as did profits.

Also, 1-2 book shops near my university have good contacts to it. A linguistics student can walk into the store and say "I take course X at prof Y" and the sales people will sell them the bundle of relevant literature on the spot.

I'm curious how small shops will deal with the new situation.

Yeah, we had that here in Basel, too. A book shop called "Labyrinth" on Nadelberg always had all the course-work related reads. Unfortunately the prices were always far above what Amazon.com charged - so I usually ordered what I needed from there - which sometimes meant that I didn't get my books until a couple weeks into the semester. But being on a very tight budget I had no choice. In the end it didn't hurt my grades and I received my M.A. insigni cum laude - so for me paying less paid off :-)

Compete, create a business model, or die. It's the same story in many other areas of commerce following deregulation. Considering the number of MBAs that purport to be on this forum, I'm surprise none has pitched in with some pearls of wisdom...

dave

play.com - books at UK prices, free delivery takes 4/5 days. So books that cost £6.99 in UK can be on your doorstep for same £6.99 in a few days and no customs problems for books.

Nick.

Lou, did you ever have a 'High Fidelity' moment where someone requested a book and you refused to sell it to them and threw them outta the shop for their poor taste? "Dan Brown? Get OUT! NOW!"

No I didn't serve customers but I did once refuse to serve someone a Glenmorangie & coke when I worked in a bar. Told him that would be sacreligious.

The demise of the "Preisbindung" in Switzerland seems unlikely to have a knock-on effect in Germany. Knowing the margins that most booksellers work off, let alone Swiss fixed-costs (staff, premises etc.) and taking into account that it will NOT be allowed to MARKET into Germany at below the official German retail prices it does seem IMHO not probable that this will have a significant and far-reaching influence on the overall market for books. What it probably will mean is that chains/departments stores etc. will have the flexibility to offer German and French language best sellers as "enticers" (competition laws permitting) to get customers onto their premises. Discounting across the board would seem pretty fruitless given the size (small) and purchasing-power of the Swiss market. This could possibly change if, say Amazon were to open a "Swiss-only" website to which the German market would have no access. (Possible but unlikely).

The German book industry will doubtless work very hard to prevent any arbitrage operations and to defend the German "Preisbindung" which is of paramount importance.

Indeed foreign-language (i.e. english) books were in any case specifically excluded from the Net Price Agreement, yet prices for English books from Swiss offline retailers both have had to and in the future will have to reflect unchanged local fixed costs.

As an online bookseller it is not so difficult to offer english language books in a wide range at or close to or slightly lower than recommended UK prices - for as long as Swiss City costings do not apply.

All the best to all

Richard

www.english-book-service.com
International Supplier of English Language Books

Don't bet the farm on it.

dave