The Fall of The Paper Tigers

As a writer you sometimes labour under the misapprehension that booksellers exist to sell literature. Everything you've read about “great writers” invariably contains support not merely from editors and publishers, but from those at the pointy end of the slush pile known as the book industry. And yet you fail to grasp that “back then”, booksellers supported and promoted “writers”. All of that changed however sometime in the mid nineteen eighties when retail bookselling caught the money bug. And why shouldn't they have? After all, if franchising, streamlining and mainlining could work for everything from fried chicken to coffee, why not with books too? Book stores have rent and employees to pay just like any other business, only, in that brave new world of retail literature, someone overlooked the fact that maybe people wanted to read “books”, or maybe they didn't? Because within in a decade you could travel anywhere in the world of English language, walk into a high street bookstore and find pretty much the same books everywhere give or take. What happened to new writing, where did it go?
Essentially, new writing sought shelter in independent bookstores (on a cap in hand basis), the big boys being focused (or so it appeared) on books that “sold”. And they obviously knew what sold because chain bookstores were suddenly full of celebrity memoirs, how-to manuals penned by gurus that could change one's life in myriad ways, and cookbooks, cookbooks, cookbooks galore. Up until the late nineteen nineties the bookselling mafia's cunning innovation worked – it must have, because they expanded – swallowing up other smaller brands until they ruled the literary world. And once they ruled they could do what they'd always envisaged doing – telling publishers what books to publish. Literature had had its britches yanked down and had been spanked soundly as punishment for its years of believing writing was an art rather than a commodity.

So the Cyclopic beast of bookselling carried on its merry way, opening up yet more stores and those stores started pushing plush toys and stationary and embraced coffee cup franchising too, until finally – they no longer resembled bookstores. Things went from bad to worse when containers of remaindered books began to be shipped to whatever arm of the retail book octopus could take them – and Australia seemed to take a hell of a lot. Welcome to reading cheap American rubbish even Americans didn't want to read while drinking American (Christian) coffee. Out on the streets however (as opposed to in the malls), a few good people were beginning to undercut the tigers, not with discounts – but with real 'books”. The independents were back in the main game thanks to customer service and the promotion of writers rather than ghost writers and washed-up footballers with rehabilation bills to pay.
Despite changing their name and consolidating, the big boys simply couldn't hold on to the edge. Two decades of bad buying strategies, bullying and monopolysing came to an inglorious end with a declaration of bankruptcy. With that free fall came a collective sigh of relief from writers who had been all but shunned from their own (major) retail markets for years – along with concerns as to just who would fill that void and how? Not all of the branches of that dinsosaur will follow their leaders into oblivion – for many fought against the multinational interest from within, and these, along with the new breed of independent bookseller may yet create a new retail marketplace – one which hopefully, will promote writers. The E-beast looms large however, it is a many headed-dragon of technological change and any bookseller, let alone writer, would be a fool to ignore it. The big bad orange and black wolf of retail bookselling is dead. It fell on its own sword with the type of cowardice it had demonstrated for years while it all but ruined literature in pursuit of fool's gold. What the book industry has now is the opportunity to regroup, the opportunity to re-structure publishing lists to ensure that writers survive and literature (not typing disguised as writing) doesn't become extinct. Those who battled the giant have survived to fight another day and that day is now. If they decide to merely step into the breech carrying the same product under their arms, not only will literature die, but bookselling as we know it will go too. There is a new monster out there Mr Publisher and Mr Bookseller, and it intends to kill you. Wise up. You have a second chance.