Bookshops bearing the ‘colossal impact’ of the budget, BA’s president tells FutureBook conference

Fleur Sinclair, the owner of the Sevenoaks Bookshop in Kent and president of the Booksellers Association (BA), said that the recently announced Budget has had a “colossal impact” on bookshops across the country.

Speaking the The Bookseller’s 2024 FutureBook conference, Sinclair said that larger independent bookshops are set to be affected the most by the Budget, which introduced changes to minimum wages, a reduction in business rates relief and increased national insurance for businesses.

“The bookshops most in the firing line are the larger indies, those with bigger workforces and bigger premises, who have thrived in recent years despite all the hard work and the long hours,” Sinclair said.

In this difficult climate, the BA’s president highlighted the “cultural, social and commercial value of bookshops”, and the need for the industry to support these businesses. She highlighted the role that publishers can play in helping support bookshops, by investing in their rep forces and assessing discounts and terms offered to bookshops.

“Making small changes in terms, increasing discounts offered to the indie sector in particular, could make a significant difference,” she said. “Being supportive and imaginative with opening stock terms for new entrants will make it far more likely that those shops will survive and, in time, thrive.”

Booksellers “know their customers and understand what readers want”, and Sinclair said that the industry can benefit by harnessing this expertise. “If opportunities were created for booksellers to work with publishers at every stage of a book’s journey, it would serve us all,” the BA’s president said. “It takes a village to raise a book.”

Highlighting the value of sales reps, Sinclair said that “it’s often the publishers who have the strongest rep forces whose books fill the shelves and sell the most in high-street bookshops”. 

Sinclair also acknowledged the use of AI and the concern that publishers’ “search for fair use of content, the protection of copyright and the value of human endeavour”. She spoke about the importance of physical bookshops, adding: “Everything I’m saying today describing the business of bookselling, I hope compounds just how much we bookshops also value the human endeavour.”

Referencing one of her key goals as BA’s president, Sinclair spoke about the need to increase diversity in the book industry. “We need people representative of all ages and backgrounds, commissioning and writing books, and people representative of all ages and backgrounds behind the counter and on the shop-floor selling books, and it’s on all of us to do the work to make this a reality,” she said.

Discussing the role of events in helping bookshops sell more books and help build community, Sinclair urged publishers and authors to “consider the balance and needs of the whole books community when planning author tours”. The BA is working to help booksellers host successful events, which can have a “halo effect” on sales after the initial event.

How have you been affected by the Budget? Get in touch melina.spanoudi@thebookseller.com