Speculation, Fact and Fiction

I have picked up this, from The Telegraph website, byline James Hall, date 10th Sept.

Waterstone's, the book retailer that bought smaller rival Ottakar's in July for £63m, has suffered an exodus of key staff, raising concerns among publishers that the integration is running into problems.

Last week it emerged that John Webb, an award-winning buyer of children's books at Waterstone's, is leaving to join EUK, the entertainment wholesale company owned by Woolworths.

Webb's departure follows five other recent high-profile defections including those of Caroline Mileham, the fiction and non-fiction manager, who moved to rival Borders, and Scott Pack, Waterstone's head of buying who joined publishing start-up The Friday Project. According to an executive close to Waterstone's, a further four members of the retailer's buying team are actively searching for new jobs.

Publishers are also concerned that Waterstone's is falling behind in its processes for ordering new books. According to one publishing executive, Waterstone's used to order new book titles two or three months before the publishing date but has in recent weeks placed orders only days before publication, meaning that stock is arriving late at stores.

"We are all trying to be patient but they are falling so far behind that it is very worrying. Their books are being delivered later than other retailers', which can't be good for sales," said the publisher.

Waterstone's said the departure of key staff was an unfortunate "part of the process" of the integration. "We have around 300 head office staff so while we are always sad to see valued members of staff leave, it is a natural flow. It also helps the business get new ideas as new people come through," a spokeswoman said.

She said publishers' concerns over the late ordering of books were due to an internal review of Ottakar's promotional arrangements for Christmas, which led to the process taking "a little longer". However, she did not envisage further problems.

Gerry Johnson, Waterstone's managing director, has given himself until November to implement IT systems and convert Ottakar's 141 stores to the Waterstone's format.

It does not inspire confidence, on sooo many levels, not least as an author who has a new book coming out next month. I refer to my earlier comments on the need to actually have books on shelves for people to buy.

A few more general observations; non-fiction books outside the comparatively small mass-market sector need the data from advance orders - what's called in the trade, the subscription - as a crucial guide to planning print runs. Without that data, they run the risk of making expensive mistakes - too many or too few copies can be equally disastrous. So what happens when they don't have that data? They become far more reluctant to publish anything that isn't a certainty. Would we ever have seen Longitude if the current market conditions had applied?

The fallout from the catastophic failure of Penguin's distribution systems last year is still ongoing - with some authors having suffered appalling losses of income. And authors for the most part, cannot comfort themselves like retailers and publishers, with the notion that what they lose on the swings, they'll win on the roundabouts.

And our local Ottakar's was confidently scheduled to get its facelift over the August Bank Holiday weekend. No sign of that, beyond the recent influx of discounted books with Waterstones stickers all over them. You know, the entirely predictable ones, which would have sold well anyway. Leaving the new titles by newcomers an unknown quantity and more expensive.