NIGEL BEALE NOTA BENE BOOKS

Andrew Cohen reports here that there are more bookstores in Buenos Aires than there are in the entire country of Brazil, a nation of  some 190 million, roughly five times the population of Argentina. One store for every 6000 residents of BA, a place where booksellling is seen as a ‘true,’ if not terribly lucrative, profession. The reason: government has in place a version of England’s old ‘Net Book Agreement’  which came into effect on the first day of the 20th century (Jan 1, 1900). It held that any bookseller who sold a book at less than the price agreed upon by publishers and retailers would cease getting books to sell. Collapse of the Agreement in 1997 benefited big box, ‘high street’ bookstore chains and reduced book prices. Supermarkets also got into the game, selling popular titles at deep discounts. The result: books are definitely cheaper…obviously a good thing for consumers, particularly those formerly unable to afford them, but, devastating to the independent bookstore: as of 2009, some 500 had closed since the demise of the agreement.

Cohen cites civic priority as the reason for Argentina’s commitment to culture. Bridges, subway stations and roads can wait. It’s bookstores, museums and theatres that are important. As culture minister Hernan Lombardi puts it "In a crisis, we worry about losing identity. That’s when we need to support culture". No wonder Buenos Aires is such an amazing city…and Canada has had such struggles defining it’s ‘identity’. Far better to scrape those menacing centimeters of snow from the roads every day than invest in more libraries, or support independent and used bookstore owners, what?

Boy did I ever want to get into this closed bookstore.

Almost as much as this little guy wanted to get out.

Publisher Michael Joseph (1897-1958) loved cats. In fact he wrote a poem in memory of one of his favourites,Charles:

Bookride

Juxtapose my Concord Bay Bookstore post, with this from the Washington Post:

POLIGNY, FRANCE – Just off the town square, a few hundred feet down La Grande Rue, a bookstore has been dispensing culture and entertainment to the people of Poligny for 150 years. Over the generations, residents said, it has become part of the landscape, a place where children tarry on the way home from school and their parents duck in to pick up the latest novel.

That’s why, when the shop looked as if it would have to close this spring, a group of townspeople put up cash to form a little corporation, capitalized at $70,000, and bought the lease to keep it running. As a result, the New Bookstore reopened two weeks ago with a coat of fresh paint but a familiar mission: to be a haven where people feel welcome dropping by to buy a ballpoint pen or browse for books.

Poligny residents’ effort to preserve an old-fashioned Main Street bookstore may seem eccentric in an age of electronics, instantaneous communication and discount giants. But not in France, a country that is unusually fixated on (huh? better: ‘properly proud and respectful of‘) its centuries-old traditions and is determined to safeguard its cultural heritage…"

This from their website:

"After a 22-year run, most of the last half of which have been under our (the Van Tassell family) ownership, Bay Books in Concord will close on or about August 15th. It is Contra Costa County’s largest independent bookstore, but it is located in a center that is no longer adequate to sustaining a bookstore. We are looking for a suitable alternate location, so far without success. We have not given up entirely, at this writing, on an alternate location. But, candidly, sometimes we think this is foolhardy in view of the threat to our livelihood imposed by electronic books.

If we close the store without moving it, this is what will happen: the stock of used books in Concord will be offered at ever-increasing discounts from July 1 until about August 15. You might consider visiting Bay Books Concord during this period to take advantage of some amazing bargains. Of whatever books do not sell, some will be moved to the San Ramon store and some donated. We will discontinue buying used books over the counter in Concord on July 1. Gift certificates and trade credits issued in Concord will be honored in both stores until Concord closes, and thereafter will be honored in San Ramon.

There have been signs up in all of our stores for years that say "support your independent bookstore". Now we all get to witness (again) what happens when the public succumbs to the lure of cheap book prices at Amazon and Costco. If Bay Books at any given time had half as many customers as are browsing the book dumps at Costco, we would be a roaring success. Does anyone think Costco’s employees want to talk to customers about books? Or do they just slash open the cartons and load up the dumps?  Do they care whether you read, as opposed to buying TV’s and pizza?

Writing in the Winter 2009 Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies newsletter Kenneth J. Plako tells us:

"The Internet and the Google library project mark the end of the out-of-print/used bookseller. We say this with a heavy heart; the noble profession has existed ever since words were first put on paper.

In the past the bookseller acted as a guardian of knowledge by purchasing, storing, and selling books…

Google’s powerful search capacity becomes the new intermediary, matching the information seeker to the information. Thus the end of the out-of-print and used bookseller. A decentralized market consisting of thousands of idiosyncratic, individualistic, professional booksellers selling books containing information now becomes a centralized market controlled by corporations running on the business model, selling access to information…

Individuals who believe that words deserve letterpress printing, marbled and handmade papers, original artwork, and a fine binding define the book as a physical object with aesthetic appeal, not ephemeral electronic bytes…In these uncertain times, I suggest we all visit a "bricks and mortar" bookshop operated by an independant bookseller. If you can, bring a child or young adult with you and buy them and yourself a book. Bring the book home, hold it, admire it, and read it…"

Capitalism unfortunately presents some rather grim dichotomies…for instance: for most of the 20th century Britain had in place what was known as the ‘Net Book Agreement (NBA).’ "It," says John Sutherland in Bestsellers: A Very Short Introduction, "effectively forbade on pain of collective trade boycott, the selling of books at less, or more, than the sale price posted on the wares by the publisher…", a single copy purchased at a corner shop in the Isle of Man would cost the same at Hatchard’s in London, regardless of the fact that the latter had ordered a thousand times more copies from the publisher than the former; so there was no unfair incentive to buy at the big corporate store. Lovely, small independent adventurous book shops were protected from bullying cut throat behavior,  as were creative, entrepreneurial, adventurous small publishers, since Britain resisted a  ’sale of return’ policy for the retailer…the kind that Amanda Jernigan has recently objected to in an open letter to wigs at Mount Allison University…

The U.K. abandoned the NBA in 1995.

In bestowing on us cheaper books, big box capitalism – appealing to the majority of consumers – does-in diversity and gouges charm and choice  from the local landscape.

In Canada, with Stephen Harper in power, it’s highly unlikely we’ll see anything like what the French have instituted. Lauren Elkin explains:

According to a report published in 2007, independent bookstores, which, according to an IPSOS study, make up about 41% of the book retail market, face certain challenges of being in the retail business – high rents, low return on investment, high social fees to be paid for their employees – but, as is oft repeated in France, le livre n’est pas un produit comme des autres. A book is not a commodity like any other. Therefore, the Minister of Culture, Christine Albanel, introduced a ‘plan livre’ – book plan – at the end of 2007 which aims to help out independent bookstores who fit a certain profile. The label ‘LIR ’ – librairie indépendente de référence – was launched in 2008. In order to qualify, there are a list of requirements, notably: the bookstore must not have access to a centralized warehouse from which their stock is replenished, the stock must contain a majority of books in print for more than one year, and the bookstore’s owner must have total autonomy over the bookstore’s holdings. Once the label has been bestowed, the bookstore becomes eligible for a variety of subsidies from the Centre National du Livre (CNL ) – interest-free loans for development projects, funds with which to acquire stock (up to 500,000 euros per year of the CNL ’s budget have been earmarked for this purpose), reductions on social fees for employees, tax relief, and funding to sponsor readings, festivals, and other activities. (The funding of the CNL increased in 2008 from 1.3 to 2.5 million euros.)

…no. Here we let the free market work its magic.

This from Chris Eng of Sophia Books, in Vancouver (via Cory Doctorow’s Craphound)

I’m not sure what the future holds for Vancouver. I have a great love of ebooks as well as dead tree media (I am a bookseller, after all), and I’m sure there’s room for both of them to coexist in the years to come, but Vancouver as a city (with grossly disproportionate commercial rents) seems to have consciously or unconsciously made up its mind about the role of booksellers in its boundaries. And it’s a decision that rather depresses me. Sophia Books will continue its role as a wholesaler to schools and libraries, but from an office space, and there will no longer be a storefront where someone can browse through and randomly find a book of Pablo Neruda’s poetry with English and Spanish on facing pages, no longer discover vocabulary books of Nepali or Inuktitut. Yes, there are still several used bookstores and a few resilient sellers of new books in the Metro Vancouver area, but their presence isn’t something we can take for granted anymore. And even if it wasn’t horribly bad sales that did the latest raft of bookstores in, maybe that’s the lesson that can be taken away from all this: that bookstores are a privilege, not a right, and we should treasure what we have while we have it, because things can be snatched away so very, very quickly.

Yours Sincerely,
Chris Eng

ALEXANDRA MANZANO/THE OREGONIAN