241 Pizza

The Piccadilly store illustrates the challenges that Johnson and his team face. It is 10.15 on a Friday morning and not many people are about. Some 160,000 different titles, probably the largest range in any bookshop in Europe, wait for buyers. From lunchtime onwards, the number of customers will increase significantly; but will it provide a healthy return on the huge costs of maintaining this lavish emporium? “It’s a big shop,” is Johnson ’s laconic comment.

There are more than a million and a half books here on 66,000 sq ft of shelving on six floors. There are cafés and a restaurant. Yet such is the scale of this Art Deco retail palace, formerly Simpsons, that there remains an atmosphere of light and airiness. A budget-conscious retailer would look in horror at all the space that is not devoted to selling books.

At the front of the store are the bestsellers, the paperbacks in the three-for-two promotions and the Richard and Judy picks. Waterstone’s is selling all these at reduced prices, and, despite securing higher discounts from publishers, making only small profits from them. The books that are in highest demand are the least lucrative. But Waterstone’s has to give away these margins or customers will go to supermarkets, W. H. Smith’s and Amazon.

Waterstone’s reported mediocre Christmas trading figures: sales were down by 2.4 per cent. Ottakar’s, struggled too. W. H. Smith’s sales of all goods fell. Borders is to close several branches of its subsidiary, Books Etc. Some consolidation seems inevitable.

I admit to preferring how it was in the old days when the shops were idiosyncratic and reflected my tastes. But the golden age of Waterstone’s was when it was half its present size. There was no price-cutting, no supermarket competition, no internet. Waterstone’s could afford to take only a marginal interest in Marian Keyes.

Now it is the largest dedicated bookseller in Britain, and has to attract Marian Keyes fans, and Jordan fans, and Samuel Beckett fans, and people who want a DIY manual — anyone who might want to buy a book. Ideally, I should prefer Waterstone’s and Ottakar’s continue as separate businesses. Ottakar’s is smaller, friendlier and less formal, although some small publishers say that Waterstone’s is more approachable).

Johnson says: “We believe that we can improve Ottakar’s business both from a commercial perspective and in terms of choice for customers.” I am more convinced about the commerce than about the choice.

From the printer’s shop to the grocer’s shop

The roles of printer, publisher and bookseller were often combined at one time. One of the few companies to maintain that tradition is Jarrold of Norwich, set up in 1770 and still in private hands. Specialist booksellers began to appear in the 18th century: the first was John Smith & Son, opened in Glasgow in 1751. It still has academic and professional shops. The first W. H. Smith opened in 1792 and Hatchards, now part of Waterstone’s, opened on Piccadilly in 1797. Bookseller by royal appointment, it used to be visited each January by Princess Margaret, to return the unwanted books she had received at Christmas presents. One year, her reject pile included The ITN Book of the Royal Wedding.

John Menzies opened in Princes Street, Edinburgh, in 1848. It was appointed agent to sell Charles Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers in one-shilling instalments. In England, W. H. Smith opened its first station bookstall at Euston, in 1848. Other 19th-century companies included James Thin in Edinburgh (1842), Heffers in Cambridge (1876), Blackwell’s in Oxford (1879), and Eason in Dublin (1886). But the most influential “bookseller” was Charles Edward Mudie, whose library lent books on subscription.

Until the last few years of the 20th century Smith’s was the only nationwide bookseller although small, family-owned chains, such as Austick, Sweeten and Thornes, dominated certain regions. Then Tim Waterstone opened his first shop in 1982 and Dillons – later to merge with Waterstone’s – began to expand. Ottakar’s opened in 1987. Borders arrived in Britain in 1997 and amazon.co.uk opened digitally in 1998. The regional chains died out. In 1995 the Net Book Agreement, which prevented discounting, disappeared. Supermarkets and Amazon are winning the consequent price war.

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