Are The Supermarkets Bad For Authors?

by Matt Lynn

I heard recently that Tesco will be stocking ‘Fire Force’ when it comes out in paperback late this month. For a popular thriller author, that’s probably up there with winning the Booker prize. The supermarkets have become crucial to promoting and selling books.

That was confirmed today, with a story in The Bookseller about where people are buying books. They now account for 20% of adult book sales, compared with 9% two decades ago. The internet accounts for 19% compared with – fairly obviously – nothing back in 1989.

I expect to read lots of wailing from authors and the publishing industry about that. But I’m not so sure it is really such a bad thing.

Of course, it puts a huge amount of power in the hands of a relatively small number of big supermarket chains, and Tesco most of all. Publishers and authors have to work very hard to get the approval of the BMFC (the Big Man from Cheshunt).

But there are a couple of interesting points to make.

First, I’m sure the supermarkets are expanding the market. On the whole the supermarkets present books in an attractive way. The prices are great – less than £4 for a paperback, and you don’t have to buy two or three to get the lower price. They present books to tons of people who probably wouldn’t go anywhere near a bookshop. Overall, that must mean more books get sold.

Second, it’s not really the bookshops that are suffering. Their share is doing fine. The losers have been the old mail order book clubs and the stationary stores. They probably catered for the fairly general, casual reader anyway – the people who now buy their books in supermarkets. And they didn’t do such a great job anyway.

The book market is evolving into two audiences. The supermarkets for the mass market. And the bookshops and the internet for more committed readers.

There needn’t be anything for authors to worry about in that. They just have to make sure they find their own place in the market.

The Supermarkets...Good or Bad?

According to this report in The Bookseller, the supermarket chains now account for 20% of the UK book market. It has trebbled in the last five years, and the shares, not very surprisingly reflect the position of the chains - Tesco lead the way, with Asda and Sainsbury's huddling in second place.

It's traditional among authors to moan about the rising power of the supermarkets. But I'm not so sure. They may well be doing a lot of good.

I might be biased because my own book has been doing well at Asda - it has spent about six weeks now in their books chart.

But the supermarkets are doing two things that are really good.

One, they are making books really cheap. You'll pay less than £4 for a paperback in a supermarket, and that isn't just achieved by cutting the money going to publishers and authors (well, the author at least - they drive a hard bargain with the publisher). The supermarkets just don't need the same kind of margin that bookshops do - a 10p profit looks pretty good to Tesco, and is more than they make on a litre of milk, which weighs more, takes up more space and goes off after a couple of days as well. You don't need to know much economics to know that a cheaper a product gets, the more people buy it - and the more books get sold, the better for everyone.

Next, they introduce books to people in new settings. Most people go to the supermarket at least once a week. They can browse among the books, and occassionally find new things. We might like to imagine they'd spend an hour every week doing that at Waterstone's, but they truth is, they probably wouldn't.

For both reasons, the supermarkets are almost certainly increasing book sales in the UK.

Of course, there are some downsides.

They have a limited range, and they only stock a few books from the big publishers. The concentration of power is going to make it harder for new writers to break through.

And the publishers have become obsessed with them. When I was ghost-writing for Random House, all they cared about was 'what Tesco would think'. They even changed one writer's name becasue they didn't think Tesco would like what he was called. I thought they were being silly. Tesco would be happy with anything that sold, but they had become neutrotically obsessed with finding the perfect Tesco book.

But, that said, authors have to get out to where the books are. Personally, I'd love to be signing books and talking to customers and readers in Asda or Tesco. In fact, once we've got our aiport tour out of the way, I might make a 'supermarket tour' the Curzon Group project.

- Matt Lynn