Indie bookshops face 'danger' from third-party sites, Daunt warns

Independent booksellers face “danger” by allowing third party sites to “sever the connection” between them and their customers, Waterstones m.d. James Daunt has warned.

Speaking at the IPG’s Spring Conference, Daunt said small independent chains such as Daunt Books “have to keep hold” of their customers, rather than use websites such as bookshop.org.

“I worry that outsourcing that to somebody who isn’t you, who is definitely making the vast majority of the profit that’s available to you there, is dangerous,” he said.

Nicole Vanderbilt, UK managing director of bookshop.org, argued the website wants to “enhance” bookshops and does not want to be seen as a place to “outsource”.

She added: “Obviously it is incredibly important as part of that to have great connections with your customers, and we take that very seriously. Any customers that you get through bookshop.org as a bookshop, if the customer opts in for GDPR, that customer information goes straight to the bookshop for them to utilise as they would themselves.

“The profit on the bookshop sales, we give 30% to the bookshops, 7% to the customer, and 61% to the publishers, wholesalers and payment processors, so we make almost nothing on those sales.”

Speaking about the reopening of bookstores after each lockdown, Daunt said customers had been coming to shops less often, but were buying “considerably more each time".

He said Waterstones sales were running the same “or a little bit above” 2019 levels. However, he said sales were “geographically skewed” with sales “significantly down” in metropolitan city centres, particularly in London, but up “pretty much everywhere else in the country”.

Looking to the future of the bookselling industry and the issue of returns Daunt said he thought there should be a move to firm sale, where unsold books are not returned.

“Margins need to be adjusted to allow bookshops to absorb the costs that are associated with that and it would save immensely on transport and all the rest,” he said.

Daunt was speaking the day after it was announced he will oversee US stationery chain Paper Source following its acquisition by Watersones and Barnes & Noble owners Elliott Investment Management.