Removal of r.r.p. shifts power to booksellers, Irish retailers report

Booksellers should have the power to price books themselves, as removing the r.r.p. gives retailers more flexibility, Irish booksellers have testified.

In the 3rd March issue of The Bookseller, a group of prominent UK indie booksellers—including Patrick Neale of Jaffé & Neale Bookshop, Ros de la Hey of The Mainstreet Trading Company and Nic Bottomley of Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights—said it was time for the industry to revisit the debate around removing r.r.p. on print books in the UK in order to give retailers a better chance to counteract growing overheads, such as the increase in the national minimum wage, due to come into effect in April.

Chain retailers such as Waterstones, W H Smith and the JS Group were against the suggestion, with Waterstones m.d. James Daunt saying the move would be “catastrophic” and would impose the “huge, expensive operational burden” of pricing titles on already busy shops.

However, Irish booksellers have rubbished claims that removing the r.r.p. creates an unmanageable burden for staff, arguing instead that the move has been beneficial to the trade.

Bob Johnston, owner of Dublin’s The Gutter Bookshop and chairman of the Booksellers Association’s Irish Group, said that Ireland scrapped r.r.p.s after it adopted the euro in 2002, because it was at the mercy of “wild” fluctuations in currency conversion on books imported from the UK. “A £7.99 paperback was selling for €13.20 or for €12.00, for example,” he said. “Irish booksellers were petitioning for years for the r.r.p. to be removed from books. Sure, we have to price books when they come in, but it is not that much hard work—it doesn’t add too much to the burden.”

Johnston added: “As a retailer, it gives us the power to price a book for what we think it is worth, which isn’t just about discounting. Sometimes a book is worth more than the cover price, sometimes less. As booksellers we know what our customers value and how to price accordingly; it gives us that valuable flexibility.”

Maria Dickenson, m.d. of Irish chain Dubray Books, agreed. She said: “The majority of booksellers will price close to the list price anyway, but it does give you that flexibility to price more dynamically, and I think that ability particularly helps smaller players. The stickering of prices has just been built into the job—Eason also has to do it—it is not something that has ever kept us up at night.”

Johnston added that “the only place we struggle” is when a retailer has not sold a title before the currency conversion rate has fluctuated. “We have to explain to customers why the book isn’t cheaper: because when we bought it, it was at a higher price,” Johnston said. “That can cause a bit of a headache.”

From the publisher’s side, Ronan Colgan, publishing director at independent Carrowmore Publishing, said that while the decision to remove r.r.p.s from books felt “drastic”, in fact it “ultimately had no effect”.

“It didn’t affect pricing, which was set by the data,” he said. “It didn’t affect booksellers, who were already price-stickering books. The feedback we have had, oddly, was extremely positive from smaller booksellers, who use branded price stickering. This helps them see if a book was bought from them in the event of returns. They also sometimes colour-code the stickers to enable them to see how long they have had a title [for sale], without the need for a more complicated data system.”

Colgan added: “Seemingly, the favoured place for booksellers to put the [price] sticker is exactly over the part of the book that says ‘e-book also available’, which is hard to argue with.”