So what about a solution?

Come on, Andrew, this is weak. In a piece in last Sunday's Observer entitled 'How intolerable life would be without books and bookshops', Andrew Marr wrote: 'The internet (and this recession) is destroying fine old local papers. Higher booze prices and the smoking ban are destroying pubs. Similarly, we all know how hard the world of Amazon and Google has hit the small bookshop. Life without papers and pubs is an intolerable prospect. Would there be any point in leaving home at all if bookshops went too?'

This is weak because it does not go far enough. What we want is a piece from Marr saying how bookshops are to be protected. There's no point in 300 middle class words on the smell of books and aren't they wonderful mmmm dusty bookshops I love them blah blah blah. We all know that and we all agree. What would be far more interesting would be to read Marr's ideas on what should be done. But of course, that is much, much harder and throws up all sorts of interesting questions concerning the free market and intevention.

But why didn't he have a shot? Why no speculation on lower rents for bookshops because they are educational? Why no discussion of the NBA? Why no discussion on what the situation is like in other European countries? Why no discussion of the Robinson Patman Act?

He might argue that he isn't qualified and that he'll leave that to the experts. But is he necessarily any more qualified to present a TV series on Charles Darwin? This might sound like I am launching an attack on Marr. I'm not. I agree with what he said - I just think it's easy to state the problem without any attempt at suggesting how it might be addressed. And I'm afraid pieces like his do sneak rather closely to bufferdom territory.

Things can only get samey

This piece by Andy Beckett in the Guardian at the weekend is worth reading. It's a good potted history of the UK book trade over the last 100 years. It's devilishly difficult to work out whether things are better or worse. A part of me thinks he didn't make enough of the collapse of the NBA which led to a vicious circle. Publishers and retailers colluded to let that agreement go, which allowed the supermarkets into the book trade in a big way which in turn forced publishers to give the massive discounts that they now complain about.

But equally more and more people are reading now because of the supermarkets' invovlement in bookselling, and that has to be good.

One point everyone surely has to agree on though is that the front-of-store in chain bookshops has become dull. Same same same. Where are the surprises?

Indies' friend saved, but...

The purchase of wholesaler Bertrams by Smiths News (not part of WHSmith, incidentally - it separated from WHS in 2006), is good news for independents, since it secures the future of a supplier many of them use. But the future still remains difficult for indies. Some publishers and chain retailers are slightly mocking at trade gatherings over various comments on the Bookseller's website calling for the Net Book Agreement to be reinstated. Yet this mockery should not be so loud.


In yesterday's Guardian, the literary biographer Michael Holroyd wrote: 'The end of the net book agreement has not worked to our long-term advantage. Would that we, like the French, could repeal it.' He was referring to last week's story in the Bookseller on the French government's decision not to reform the law on fixed book prices ( http://www.thebookseller.com/news/79885-fixed-book-price-safe-in-france.htm). MP for Savoie, Herve Gaymard said the law had been "incontestably positive" and that reform would be "imprudent".

One can hear the more hard-nosed and commercial of publishers and retailers now mocking Holroyd as the last person to comment on the business side of the industry. "He's back with the Bloomsbury Group and Lytton Strachey, isn't he?" Yet consider this. According to Gaymard, France - which has a population not dissimilar to the UK's, of 65m - has 3,500 independent bookshops. The UK, with a population of 61m, has 1,350. It can't help but make you wonder.