But the changes of this decade were far from just internal.
Every publishing house is umbilically connected to the bookselling landscape, and since Virago was founded in 1973 the selling of books has undergone a revolution. People often point to publishers and the way the conglomerates have grown and swallowed independent companies, as evidence that publishers have utterly changed the industry. While that is not untrue, the real and seismic change has been in the way books are sold. In the 1990s the rumblings of change erupted into a full-scale disruption that forever altered bookselling with the demise of the Net Book Agreement. Since 1900, publishers and booksellers had lived happily with this agreement, which guaranteed every bookseller in the UK sold a title at the same price; that is, the one fixed by the publisher as the recommended retail price. Though that price was decided by the publisher, market constraints kept the prices reasonable and similar across the board. This meant that if a book became a bestseller, every shop in the land benefited, thus helping keep hundreds of bookshops viable. Those of us who opposed the ending of the agreement were wildly against taking this benefit away from the booksellers who were paying rent on the high street, who depended on bestsellers to support the shop, the new voices, and the slower-moving titles. Discount wars, we said, are only for the big guys. The deep-stocking bookshops would be hurt, take fewer titles, or close, and the knock-on effect would be that publishers, without a varied and wide range of outlets, would struggle to launch new voices and to keep slower-selling authors in print. The result would be an impoverishment of talent and variety, and a drift towards a monolithic, polarized bookselling culture where the big books are huge and the smaller ones are almost invisible. And the price of books was already low, compared to what they cost to produce and to other forms of entertainment.
The other side argued that, above all, the customer must have price benefits and this way they would get cheaper books and buy more, and that price-fixing by the producer was wrong. The courts ruled in favour of the end of the agreement. Range, quality, and a diverse offering came a decided second to price. Booksellers now decide the price. In itself that would not have had such a profound effect if the UK had put something like America’s Robinson–Patman Act in place. Their federal law which stated that publishers offer the same price terms to customers at a given level of trade was designed to protect small retail shops against unfair competition from chain stores. But the UK did not.
Today we are living in the wake of that judgment. Amazon dominates because they can sell cheaper than any bookseller, thanks to their size and because, as an online business, they don’t have the high street rents and rates. The supermarkets take an extremely narrow range of books and sell them cheaply. The resulting struggle of bookshops on the high street has lead to the closure of hundreds of independent bookshops (500 in the twelve years after the end of the agreement). Fewer shops has meant a smaller range of books because the concentration of a few big outlets narrows what is offered to the public. I think that quality books have suffered: I believe a vibrant book industry needs a healthy and varied multiplicity of bookselling outlets, both online and on the high street.
The Net Book Agreement began to rock on its foundations in 1991, was effectively finished by 1994, and completely wiped out in March 1997: the period during which Virago struggled with independence.
Sisterwrite closed in 1993 and, as Lynn Alderson remembers, ‘things had changed a great deal over that time. My last experiences of the shop had been of a rundown place with little energy or enthusiasm. But, to be fair, there wasn’t the same women’s movement to support it any more. And, everyone was selling feminist books, and many other things had changed, the big chains had been able to dominate the trade once compulsory RRP [recommended retail price] ended and they could discount books. This meant the end for many small bookshops. The whole political climate had changed beyond recognition.’
Virago has been tied to the ups and downs in health of all of the independent bookselling sector including Daunts and Foyles and of the smaller chains (now gone) of Ottakars, Books Etc, Dillons, and Borders. But most particularly we’ve been affected by Waterstone’s: the fortunes of Waterstone’s has been a bellwether for us and other upmarket, literary publishers.
Tim Waterstone’s launch in 1982 of his first shop on the Old Brompton Road in London, followed by hundreds of others across the country, was transformative for quality imprints such as Virago. For the UK, it was more than a chain of bookshops—it was a cultural institution and an exciting change on a large scale. Tim believed in literature: he filled his windows with literary novels, piled them high on tables and floors, and prized literary authors. The shops were open late, seven days a week, and staffed by people who loved and knew their books. For almost ten years we gloried in being stocked in quantity and on the high street in Waterstone’s.
Then, in the early 1990s, it changed. First it was policy: their commitment to huge backlist stocking underwent an overhaul and the streamlined result had a devastating effect on us, as we depended heavily on backlist sales—in some years, they accounted for as much as 50 per cent of Virago’s turnover. Other publishers also found their backlist income sorely dented, but unlike them we did not have a large and bestselling frontlist to buoy us up.
Then it was change of ownership: Waterstone’s was sold to WH Smith and pursued an entirely new direction, until it was bought by a consortium including Tim Waterstone, then sold to HMV Group in 1988. It was the same year that Amazon.co.uk came to town and Waterstone’s, according to another bookseller, Tim Coates, lost its way: ‘They decided to take on the supermarkets and Smith’s by discounting prices and celebrity biographies. It was a strategic error. What they should have done was take on Amazon by offering something Amazon can’t—the lovely, serendipitous experience of being in a really good, big bookshop.’
The owners of Waterstone’s have, since 1993, bought Dillons, Ottakar’s, and Hatchards. They had some decidedly shaky years, even worrying many of us that they might go under, but they did at last prove the pleasures of book-buying in person instead of online after they were sold to Alexander Mamut in 2011 and the Russian billionaire hired James Daunt as MD. As the owner of a small, highly successful chain, Daunt knew the particular nature of selling books. He applied many of the same principles—owner mentality, attention to community, the importance of ‘hand-selling’ books, and careful curation of stock—to the huge chain he now ran, and turned it around. In 2018 Elliott Advisors, a private equity company, bought a major share of Waterstones. That same year Waterstones completed its buy-up of the high street by purchasing Foyles.
James Daunt understands that the book trade, especially the upmarket publishers, need a high-street shop window as well as online sellers: ‘You cut Waterstones out, and [literary publishers] go bust . . . So I didn’t want my supply—the talent, the nurturing, the world I’m in—to just get severely buggered around.’
Under the management of Daunt, we are once again back to the philosophy that originally propelled Tim Waterstone. Excellent, inviting bookshops, attentive to the market but also to the neighbourhood and community in which the shops sit, as if they were a local indie, passionate about literature—and protecting themselves and guaranteeing their survival by once again turning a profit. Though of course controlling overheads meant cuts too.
Amazon’s revolution of bookselling—which includes making a huge success of ebooks—has also been of major benefit to Virago book sales today.
But it wasn’t like that in the early 1990s, and we were severely affected by the bookselling struggles. The high-street problems knocked us hard at the same time as we, a politically inspired publishing house somewhat at the mercy of the state of feminism, watched as feminism was morphing into post-feminism.
In October 1993 Bob Gavron and Carmen and Harriet put more money into Virago and bought out Rothschilds. Then, less than a year later, poor trading conditions hit and it was suddenly a perfect storm.
Did the bookselling world change too quickly for us? Were we not publishing enough of the right books? Had we neglected the Virago Modern Classics? Was our staff too big for our turnover? Did we have premises that stretched our budget? Were we let down by not having our own dedicated sales team, instead depending on Random House to sell our books for us? Did the money required to buy out Rothschilds cut too deep? Were we publishing too many books? Had we been too slow to realize we needed to reinvent our business for new times?
Yes, yes to all of these things.
The upshot was, though our turnover was not at all bad, we weren’t making enough profit and once again—for the third time in our history—survival looked precarious. Our resources were limited; we had little or no cushion. We weren’t alone: Penguin made many people redundant around this time.
The problem with trouble, obviously, is finding a solution all agree on. When things are going well any cracks can be papered over, but when they are going badly those cracks become deep fissures, and that is what happened with us. As Margaret Atwood says wryly, ‘In my experience, the smaller the cheese the fiercer the mice.’ Everyone tried hard to find solutions: Ruthie wrote reports; Harriet and I did new projections. We planned to cut back our frontlist from 90 to 70 titles and to prune the backlist. But then in 1994 we took a very tough and terrible decision: we made many people, including Ruthie Petrie and Lynn Knight, redundant. That sentence still makes me feel ill, even all these years later, even though because of their magnanimity, after some bad years, we are on friendly terms again. I still feel the chill of making the decision as to who can stay and who we could no longer afford. We just couldn’t sustain the number of editors we had.
Publishing houses and businesses rise and fall all the time but when it’s a feminist press everything is called into play—particularly feminism, but also independence.
As the Independent on Sunday noted: ‘The setback raises questions about the future health of both feminist and independent publishing in a trade increasingly dominated by conglomerate publishers, where many bookshops are tending to follow the American trend to specialise in discounted bestsellers . . . This hits all publishers, but particularly Virago with its large numbers of existing rather than new titles.’
Authors Ruthie and Lynn had worked with were, of course, furious, and wrote angry letters. Commentators said that we’d outrun our innovative image and couldn’t maintain our identity.
I was quoted, saying exactly what I feel now when I look back on this time:
We are a literary and political publishing house, mainly in paperback; that’s not a big money-maker. If you are a literary and a political publisher you have to shift, you have to keep taking the political temperature . . . at the same time as some things have gone wrong with feminism – it hasn’t been the answer to all things as we thought it was; it needs redefining – at the same time, what’s going on with the position of women in the world is in some ways worse . . .
I think we did get too big for our turnover. That was obvious to Bob Gavron, by this point our major shareholder at 40 per cent, and he became part of the team to pull us back into profit and success. I do remember us explaining to him the 80:20 ratio—that most publishing houses were dependent on 20 per cent of their titles carrying the rest—and him saying why couldn’t we just publish that 20 per cent? He admired Carmen, who was holding nearly 15 per cent of shares, and as the creator of the Virago Modern Classics, which were an obvious lower-budget target for renewed success, and our flagship. He insisted she come back into the fold for fortnightly meetings. Then we had to get out of our lease at the beautiful old piano factory in Camden Town, where we’d moved after Mandela Street, to hunker down at the top of Random House building near the river on Vauxhall Bridge Road. Random House still owned 10 per cent of us and Gail Rebuck, who had since 1991 been the CEO of Random House, thankfully was happy to help us out.
Happy was not a word any of us would use, even remotely, to describe this time. Carmen, who had left Chatto & Windus just before this, was not at all happy to be pulled back to publishing and to Virago, and to be frank Harriet and I were not wildly happy to have her back either. We had deeply uncomfortable meetings, to which Carmen would come with her new puppy. We had endless strategy talks, putting the Classics to the fore of the list and getting a brand-new design for them. Said Harriet at the time, ‘In challenging times you have to focus . . . Carmen is great at making you look hard at what you are doing and prodding you into activity.’ The word ‘prod’ makes me wince at the memory of it. Though I do know that Carmen was trying her best, it was painful for us all and in February 1995 she decided it was too much. Carmen sent us a note saying she was resigning and wanted to sell her shares. Bob asked his wife, Kate Gavron, to be chair of the board. She was also chair of Carcanet, another small press that Bob had invested in, and Tim Waterstone was asked to become a non-executive member, joining Ursula, who was still on the board. There was talk of inviting Alexandra—who had left Hamish Hamilton and was now a literary agent at Toby Eady’s—back onto the board, as she was part of our history, even though she had sold her shares by then, and not long after that is what happened.
None of us had the solution, all of us had plenty of opinions, and none of us agreed. It was an awful time. Harriet said she would resign. There was a search for a new CEO and Publisher, which included serious talks with Kate Griffin and with others. I resigned—Ursula and Kate Gavron wanted that. I believe that Carmen did too—until, that is, we decided to sell, at which point, as she says in the Virago documentary, ‘I wanted Lennie to have Virago.’
Before any resignations were effected and before Carmen’s shares were sold she came to the AGM on 28 September 1995, dressed, maybe deliberately, in pinstriped waistcoat and trousers, and delivered a paper and a devastating but actually sensible ultimatum: we must sell the company.
We agreed.
The media had another lovely time of it: cat-fighting, the death of feminism, Virago had outlived its use, ad nauseam.
Some people saw it for what it was.
Jan Dalley at the Independent, whom we knew and who had worked with Carmen at Chatto, wrote: ‘Reports of the death of feminism are always warmly received, and at the news that Virago Press is to be sold, the press trumpeted that “sisterhood is too fragile for strong individuals” and “Virago has finally sold out on the feminist dream”. Virago’s first generation of readers may well feel that something of their youth has also died. It is true that the bidders in the Virago sale—initially thought to be Bloomsbury, Little, Brown and Random House—smack of corporate takeover and faceless suits. But in this case, the suits are more likely to be from Nicole Farhi or Agnès B, for the main players include Liz Calder (of Bloomsbury), Philippa Harrison (of Little, Brown) and Gail Rebuck (of Random House). No sign, though, of the headline that runs: Female moguls battle for women’s dream.’
Bob began helping us build a portfolio for our sale. Eventually our buyers were narrowed down to Philippa at Little, Brown and Liz at Bloomsbury: both known to us all and both very close friends of Carmen’s. We told one another that what mattered was Virago; we must find a home that would guarantee at least another ten years. We spoke about Virago as if she was her own woman—which, I suppose, she is. We talked about the Virago in the room. We wanted her to stay alive; on that we were as one.
But only on that.
I favoured Little, Brown; I liked Philippa’s ideas and energy. I had had talks with her and knew she saw the point of continuity, and I thought Little, Brown could take us further. Bloomsbury, a much-admired British independent, felt to me just a bigger version of us and they were also beholden to City money. Though Little, Brown was owned by Time Warner and an American company was not ideal, they seemed to be operating independently in the UK. I felt we would be an asset to them, adding to their literary list, which at that time was Abacus. I worried what sort of weight we would have and what kind of imprint we would be at Bl
oomsbury.
The same price was agreed with both bidders. Bob and Kate Gavron would not use their majority vote: ‘We’ll leave it to the girls to decide,’ said Bob, who absented himself. Carmen said she would not choose between her friends and flew to France.
We had a board meeting, which Alexandra attended as by then she had rejoined the board, but as she didn’t have a vote she then went back to her offices.
That left Harriet, Ursula, Random House, and me. Harriet and Ursula voted for Bloomsbury; Gail, voting on behalf of Random House, and I voted for Little, Brown, but our joint 18.4 per cent share vote did not beat Harriet and Ursula’s combined 25.7 per cent. Virago was going to be sold to Bloomsbury.
For a moment we sat and digested this news.
Then suddenly Harriet stood and said that it was completely ridiculous that the woman who started this company was not going to vote. She left the room to ring Carmen in France.
A few minutes later she came back into the room, white-faced.
‘Carmen votes for Little, Brown.’
We gasped.
We went back into the office, where the staff was waiting, with the unexpected news. All shell-shocked, we went home and got ready for new lives. Five of us—two editorial assistants, a marketing assistant, the Rights Director Gill McNeil, and I—eventually went to Little, Brown. The other four took redundancy; two of them, Melanie Silgardo and Fiona McMorrough, then set up their own companies.
There was much and immediate approval from the book trade, but between us Viragos there was real discord and it was broadcast to the press. Alexandra and I did not speak for over a year, though we are friends again now. I think Carmen and Ursula have exchanged very few words since. Harriet, though disappointed in her vote, was impeccable, before she left, in answering the due diligence queries of Little, Brown, such that to this day the then Finance Director speaks of her with great admiration. There was nothing wrong with our books.
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