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Transatlantic comparisons
posted by Rob on 30 Sep 2007
Now there are many things I don't understand, but here's one that's often bothered me. In America, a small town can have a gigantic Barnes & Noble or Borders bookstore and in the UK only a major town can sustain such a thing. And forgive me for saying this, but when attempting to complete the unfinished sentence 'The average American is...' very few people would suggest 'relentlessly bookish' as their answer. America doesn't have a culture that particularly glorifies the bookworm, but somehow it has an economy that encourages the mega-bookstore. Or maybe it's that the UK has an economy that discourages big shops for small towns.
Now for all I know, Barnes & Noble beat their employees and use homeless kittens as packing material - I have no data on that - but I do know how wonderful it is to arrive in a little town in the States, small enough that the centre of town is only a two minute drive from open fields, and be able to find a bookstore the size of a football field, with somewhere to get coffee and buy magazines and look at little interesting notebooks and pens - and to browse through thousands upon thousands of books. In the States a settlement of 20,000 might have a store like that; in the UK it's more like 500,000. I'm guessing wildly at the figures, but I'm not imagining the disparity.
Now, apparently labour is cheaper in the US. But then again, big bookstores are not exactly crammed with staff. If that was all that was holding us back, then why not apologise to all concerned and replace the information desk with a telephone or computer? And why not try out some of those self-service tills that supermarkets have? Personally, I wouldn't care if browsing for books never brought me into contact with a human. Some days I'd actually prefer it. Or is it the back-room staff that cost the money? We can afford people to arrange lettuces but not books?
Also, land is cheaper in the US. Doesn't that mean we could still have small communities with large bookstores in Wales or parts of Yorkshire? But we don't, do we?
And don't tell me that books are cheaper here so margins are slimmer. I own at least a hundred books where the dollar price is printed on the back and it's within 25% of the sterling price. And those two currencies have never been within 25% of each other as long as I've been reading. There's a fat mark-up when you compare dollar to sterling, at least on the books I own.
So is it really that Americans just like books more than Brits? Really? Huh.
Comments: 4
Hi Rob,
I suppose the thing is that those bookshops are within neighbourhoods where people shop which is possibly why larger, out-of-town bookshops in the wilds of Yorkshire wouldn't work unless there were other shops nearby.
Within towns in the UK, premises tend to be smaller at least partly because of the age of the buildings that shops are in - Victorian etc rather than new builds.
But I would think that the biggest hurdle is the amount levied as business rates. I don't know what they're like in small towns but in Edinburgh, in a secondary location for a not particularly big shop I'm faced with a bill of something like £4500 per year.
Posted by: Vanessa | September 30, 2007 09:34 AM
Revenoooers? I might have known it, Vanessa. It's the consarned revenooers who are to blame.
Posted by: Rob | September 30, 2007 11:31 AM
I once looked into acquiring an empty unit within a local "precinct" and open it has a bookstore, and the rent (not including utilities) just knocked me bandy.
It wasn't even that big a unit...
Posted by: Christopher Teague | October 1, 2007 10:35 AM
There are surely more complex pressures at work here than what I have to say, so take these guesses with a grain of salt.
First off, B&N and Borders aren't franchises, they're chains, so even if a giant store in the boondocks doesn't make any money, the giant store in the metropolis will sustain it. You probably knew this, but I think it's important, because it's not necessarily because these stores are successful that they remain where they are. It's more brand penetration, I think.
Second--and I think this is the key--little bookstores (and even little bookstore chains like Waldenbooks) are dying off, and the only possible place to get books is at B&N or Borders (or Amazon). This is why having a giant bookstore in every town is troubling rather than wonderful, especially since they almost never carry independent books. When I was in London I was far more delighted by the tiny Waterstone's on the way to work, a tenth of the size of my local B&N, because they had so many unusual-looking, interesting-looking books. I've reported on this phenomenon to many an American--that in English bookstores, almost any book you see looks like it would be worth picking up and reading, whereas in the US they prefer to stock lots of Dean Koontz and Jackie Collins books.
Third, people come from all the towns nearby to shop at the giant bookstore two towns over. I went to high school in a town where there was no bookstore at all, but the B&N in the nearest mall did obscene business.
Fourth, people buy magazines, CDs, DVDs, games, novelty books, and coffee from the big stores. Since they carry anything remotely associated with books, people buy those things, and the Faulkners sit on the shelf.
This shows that Americans are by no means ravenous readers on the whole, and what I wonder is whether readers like me, who buy several dozen books a year, manage to make up for the rest of them and keep B&N and Borders in business anyway.
Posted by: KatharineC | October 1, 2007 12:50 PM