Friday, March 16, 2007

What's a 'book', mummy?

HMV, owners of Waterstones and Ottakers, have announced their intention to close 30 branches of Waterstone's.

That's a loss of 10% retail space.

And ...

... they say they're going to devote more space to cards, gifts and stationery.

Which means that ...

... there will be even less space for that increasingly elusive commodity ...

... a book.

What's the answer?
Support your local indie of course.

You probably already know my south London favourite.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh God, I didn't know that about Waterstone's - that's rubbish.

Of course, you can also tell your readers about www.localbookshops.co.uk...

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the plug for www.localbookshops.co.uk, Clare.
We're hoping to expand the number of registered shops in the next few weeks, though as a small company it's quite a task. We are also now getting support from authors such as Ian McEwan, Joanne Harris etc. who have placed links to LBS on their own sites as an alternative to the big A.
Later on we hope to promote some independent publishers as well, as they struggle to get a showing through the chains.
If you know of a shop not already listed on LBS, please let me know via:

dave.gilbert@bookpartnership.com

Debi said...

Welcome, Dave. I've linked to your site on a more recent post too.