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Digital duties

29.11.07 Graeme Neill

At its core, the message from Francis Bennett and Michael Holdsworth, the two men charged with examining the digital future for the book trade, is very simple. "This is something we all, publishers and booksellers, need to participate in," says Bennett. "We cannot wait and see what will happen with this," adds Holdsworth.

Bennett and Holdsworth were presenting a second report for the Booksellers Association on digitisation, a follow-up to last year's Brave New World report by Martyn Daniels. The 31-page, 11,000- word Embracing the Digital Age was six months in the writing, and its 12-strong working group featured figures from across the industry including David Kohn, commercial director at Borders and Helen Baker, head of e-commerce development at Waterstone's.

Their call to arms for publishers as well as booksellers follows a clash between the two parties earlier this year, when publishers declined to help fund consumer research into digitisation of content. The new report looks at how booksellers can become the primary channel for consumers to buy digital content.

"There is an obvious and worrying imbalance in the responses from the two sides of the book trade," the report says, which has led to "a lack of any coherent debate" within the trade about digitisation. This is "alarming", because neither booksellers nor publishers will escape the influence of digitisation.

"We believe that, however hard it may be, the book trade needs to put its collective energy into managing its own future to take advantage of the opportunities," the report says. "The consequences of not doing so could be destructive to both publishers and booksellers alike."

Future planning

To this end, the BA has put together a number of proposals to prepare the book trade for the full impact of digitisation. What Holdsworth and Bennett are striving for is for the two sides to form a joint working party "to promote the process of digitisation to all sides of the book trade". They have proposed a conference in early 2008, separate from the BA conference, where the issues can be discussed.

Another key proposal is to get every bookseller online. Bennett believes that every bookshop should have a web presence, selling digital content, providing tailored marketing material and acting as a hub for the local community. An ambitious plan, but BA c.e.o. Tim Godfray says the BA will provide bookshops with the help they need to go online. "Digital marketing will be an area in which many bookshops would admit they don't have strong skill levels—in other words, how we can promote our shops as being the centre of the community through a website. We are well equipped to provide that knowledge."

Because digitisation of content is at a relatively early stage with the consumer book industry, the report suggests that steps should be taken now in order to develop a safe future for both publishers and retailers. It calls for a standardisation of "the naming, identification, formatting and structure of files, and of the descriptive product metadata which will be necessary to support their discovery and tradability".

Bennett describes this as the equivalent of formulating an ISBN for digital content, so publishers can give compatible marketing material to retailers, and retailers have access to content that can be sold to as many customers as possible. "If we can't identify content, then we won't be able to sell it," he says.

The report is also adamant about the need for consumer research: faced with rapidly changing consumer habits as the world adapts to new internet services, it says the book trade needs to keep track of the needs and behaviour of consumers, and argues "strongly" for a continuing programme of research into the "ever-changing" habits and demands of the public.

If consumers perceive the book trade to have fallen short in its response to digitisation, then they will judge the book trade as having failed to meet their needs: "Failure to keep track with changes in consumer behaviour may lead to the loss of opportunities which, in turn, may expose the trade to the possibility of aggressive competition in the digital arena from more powerful players, possibly from outside the book trade."

Building an arsenal

But will the industry as a whole listen? Bennett says that there has been a reluctance to face up to the inevitable march of digital content. "All sides are reluctant," he says. "Bookshops don't know what to do. Publishers are saying ‘We are investing money so why aren't bookshops coming to us?' Booksellers are saying ‘We have no means to access what the publishers are doing.'

"If booksellers are to use what is being made by publishers, they need the tools to do so. They are being asked to go into battle without any weapons. We are asking publishers to build the right weapons."

Bennett says that there is "no reason why [publishers] shouldn't sell direct", but adds: "Is the best way to maximise the marketplace by working on your own? I'm not convinced that doing it alone is the answer." Holdsworth says there is a danger that publishers may forget that the majority of books continue to be sold through bookshops and will be for the foreseeable future. "Big publishers are digitising their texts and making information available to the web. But that's a drop in the ocean at the minute. There are many more things that can be done."

Bennett concludes: "The biggest threat is people not wanting to co-operate with one another. If we don't use the capabilities that bookshops have, then it will be a huge mistake. Music publishers thought they could succeed in the digital world without collaborating. That didn't work."


Embracing the Digital Age: key points

  • For the foreseeable future, publishers and booksellers in the general trade will continue to derive the majority of their sales from printed books.
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  • If the book trade is to achieve the benefits that may accrue from digitisation, there must be a proper level of engagement between publishers and booksellers.
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  • If the two sides of the trade don't work together, there is a real risk that other organisations may well step in.
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  • Booksellers must make use of digital techniques to concentrate more of their energies on finding new ways to engage actively with their customers to promote and sell digital content.
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  • New systems must be developed so that booksellers can make full use of digital marketing content from publishers.

Embracing the Digital Age (PDF)

digital Graeme Neill BA digitisation

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