Once again HPDF (Harry Potter Discounting Fever) is rife months before the release date, again highlighting a bizarre trend in independent bookselling. If interview quotes and blog comments are to be believed, many independents will be driving their little white vans down to Tesco on July 21st and filling them up with HP and the Healthy Sparrows. Well Mr B's van will be staying firmly in its garage.
Of course we could give ourselves more margin than we'll be offered by suppliers on this book (and all the other books that the supermarkets discount heavily) by buying our stock from Tesco. But while we all find it difficult to compete against the chains, the web and supermarkets, it seems to me that there is something seriously wrong in feeding the mouth that bites you.
Booksellers advocating buying stock from the supermarkets will say they're just "looking after number one" or "doing what you have to do to survive" or that "it's just a drop in the ocean". But it seems pretty short-sighted if what you do to survive helps the monster who's trying to swallow you. And it's pretty hypocritical to grumble that price-slashing is luring your customers into buying books in supermarkets only to be lured into it yourself.
In which connection, we had Tom Hodgkinson in last night telling us "How to be Free" - advice which included freeing ourselves from the shackles of the supermarkets and using "proper shops". It's a shame that a lot of proud owners of proper shops are helping tighten the shackles.
We're also finding it entertaining watching publishers rolling out new books this spring in the style of previous bestsellers. I'm sure this has been going on for decades, but being on the sales side suddenly makes you so much more of aware of it.
Just as you can't now move for dragons and wizards in the teenage book market thanks to HP and the Pullman trilogy, last year's bestselling Dangerous Book for Boys spawned The Boys' Book: How to be the Best at Everything and now a publishing frenzy of anything that can be shoe-horned into the same formula - The Girls' Book, Mums' Book, Dads' Book, Dogs' Book. Well, the last one isn't out yet but it will be as soon as someone figures out that there's a Dog Appreciation Day for which small hardback books might need to be bought and that dogs might want to learn how to make a squirrel trap out of an old blanket and a stick (and without the use of opposable thumbs).
The same thing happened with the "miscellany" genre, the "writing about bad grammar in an amusing fashion" genre and the "I've bought a clapped-out old shed with an olive grove somewhere in the Mediterranean and the locals hate me" genre.
Still, while there's demand and they sell I'm not complaining with my commercial hat on - it's just a shame from the artistic viewpoint that more people don't try and think of the next big thing, rather than cashing in on the last big thing.
