BOOKSHOPS do not reflect the diversity of modern British society and are failing to promote challenging modern literature, one of the country’s leading writers said yesterday.

Patrick Neate, who won a Whitbread prize in 2001 for his novel Twelve Bar Blues, told an audience at The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival that high street bookshops were becoming like McDonald’s, pushing the same small selection of safe choices at readers instead of encouraging them to stretch themselves.

“Just as we get the governments we deserve, so we get the booksellers we deserve,” he said.

His remarks echoed a call by Alan Bennett at the festival last year for readers to boycott mainstream book retailers such as Waterstones and Amazon to protect independent bookshops.

Neate, who is a guest director of the festival this year, is a passionate champion of writing from outside the mainstream and runs a regular literary club night in West London promoting new authors alongside established stars such as Nick Hornby and Zadie Smith.

“Literature has an important place in British society so it worries me that I don’t think our literature is as diverse as it might be. I don’t get those different voices from cinema, music, the media. I want people to be inspired, to be offered something that challenges them. I hate the idea that we all read only stuff that reinforces us as opposed to making us think.”

He said that he had been shocked by the changes in bookselling since he was first published in 1999. “I have always believed that choice in books is a fundamental part of our society. In the seven years I have been a published writer I have seen the choice become increasingly limited.

“If you look at Waterstones they have thousands of titles and the shops are designed to suggest we have all this choice and are going in there to browse, but really it’s all been filtered before that. I think it’s an illusion of choice [that confronts readers]. The marketing of the idea of choice has become more powerful.”

The growing dominance of a small number of bookshop chains has made the experience of buying books reminiscent of a visit to a fast-food outlet, with the same limited menu of the most popular choices to the fore in every store, he said. “Booksellers are becoming increasingly like McDonald’s. If we care about writing and diversity, we have to encourage people to look elsewhere.”

Scott Pack, a former chief fiction buyer for Waterstone’s who is now an editor at The Friday Project, said that extensive filtering of books before they reach bookshops was unavoidable because of the sheer volume of work now being published. About 200,000 new books are printed every year. Only a tiny proportion of these make it into supermarkets and W H Smith, which between them control more than a quarter of the market.

However, the main book retailing specialists, such as Waterstone’s and Borders, are still heavily dependent on the depth of their range, with 80 per cent of sales coming from outside the bestsellers list, Mr Pack said. “Most of the profit really does not come from the three for two tables — it comes from the browsing range.”

Ion Trewin, the former editor-in-chief of Orion publishing and the administrator of tomorrow night’s Man Booker prize, said that despite Neate’s concerns, British literature is in rude health. “The proliferation of literary festivals is one indication. Book sales are steadily going up and we are the envy of other cultures. There’s nothing like the same kind of wonderful new talent emerging in Germany, Italy or France,” he said.

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Dr Thomas Stuttaford, Suzi Godson and Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall
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John Mortimer
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Kevin McCloud
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Carol Drinkwater
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Frank McCourt
Town Hall, 8.45-10pm
In a rare appearance the Pulitzer Prize winner McCourt talks about his experiences in New York

The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival runs until Sunday, October 15. For details and booking, please telephone 01242 227979 or else see the website www.cheltenhamfestivals.com

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