Bookshops
Page 17
Both the Hachette and Moreau and Banerjee networks of bookshops followed British models; in 1848, five years before the first French outlet, a similar one already existed in London’s Euston Station, the property of WHSmith, probably the first large book chain ever. The company benefited from the railway boom to such an extent that the founder’s son was able to use its success as a springboard for an illustrious political career. In parallel, his bookshop was being cloned across the country as big train stations also spread with their concourses large enough to accommodate bootblacks and florists; and there was a progressive refinement of railway travel, which was soon to offer the same luxuries and advantages as ocean liners and hotels. At the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth—as Frédéric Barbier explains in his Histoire du livre—London bookshops had already opened up to the street through their shop windows, posters, signs and even announcers or billboard men, who invited passers-by to go in. In fact, the book was now assuming its natural role as a commodity: the list of the remaining titles in the same series or from the same publishers was advertised in the last pages of the book; front pages took on a uniform design to reinforce the identity of a list and innovative illustrations were incorporated; the price began to be printed on the book as a ploy to hook readers or as a publicity device. La Bibliothèque des Chemins de Fer sold books at prices ranging between 0.75 and 2.50 francs. The average price of a book in France fell from 6.65 in 1840 to 3.45 francs in 1870. Series at one franc were created, because the consumption of printed media was multiplying, as was the number of sales points, and those where you could borrow, as were mobile libraries and bookshops that connected up with the nervous heart of the Industrial Revolution like trains. And professional readers: in the nineteenth century there were people who made a living from reading the news out loud or reciting passages from Shakespeare with a flourish. The anachronistic, histrionic Bruce Chatwin did this as a child in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Mobility is the great invention of the nineteenth century. The train changes perceptions of space and time; it not only speeds up human life, but transforms the idea of a network, a network structure, into something that can be explored in its entirety in a few days, even though it is so vast. A whole system reduced to body size. Travellers, who only knew how to read silently, after a period of adaptation, now learn to do so in movement. Not only that: they can also look up from the page, thread together the fragments they have read and imagined with the fragments of life they see through the window (thus preparing for the arrival of the cinema). Lifts appear and allow cities to grow vertically after centuries of horizontal expansion. The heavy furniture of the aristocracy and haute bourgeoisie slims down into light items that allow for house moves. “The street lords it over the room,” as Renato Ortiz translates this into spatial terms. The swiftest, most massive migrations in the history of humanity take place. The universal exhibitions of Paris and London, fruits of industrial growth and imperial expansion, are responses to the need to make that supremacy public on the world stage. They are megaphones, monstrous shop windows for the Myth of Progress. Fashion is born, develops at a vertiginous pace that requires mass production, the new consumer society, based on the requirement that everything, absolutely everything must have a sell-by date. Fashion and lightness also shape books: paperbacks, cheap miniatures, discounted titles, bargain boxes, trestles where second-hand books are displayed. All this happens in England and France, in London and Paris, the same contexts where the modern bookshop is created and, alongside, the bookshop chains.
The first Hudson News, with its offering of newspapers and trade books as we know it today, opened in La Guardia Airport in 1987 after a previous attempt in Newark. It now has 600 outlets in the United States. It belonged to the Hudson Group until it was acquired by Dufry in 2008, a Swiss group specializing in duty-free shops. Until his death in 2012, Robert Benjamin Chen was the visible head of the firm that, over decades, had principally focused on the distribution of newspapers and magazines. According to his obituary in the New York Times, he received a court sentence in 1981 for bribing the newspaper distributors’ union in return for favourable terms. The Hudson Group opened hundreds of bookshops and kiosks in airports, train stations and coach terminals throughout the world and also ran adjacent fast-food restaurants. If the world speeds up in the nineteenth century, the United States is responsible for a second big spurt after the two World Wars. And independent bookshops and book chains—if that polarization is entirely valid and is not challenged in part by an infinite number of intermediate states—develop their structure in the twentieth century, and from the 1950s begin to incorporate the big changes in the consumption of space and time brought by mass culture in North America. The shopping centre that initially imitates a European model (the arcade) is established in city centres, and progressively becomes a suburban phenomenon. And the theme park melds into the fast-food restaurant: in the same year that Disneyland is launched, the first McDonald’s franchise is opened, and, with the motel, both connected through the US roadway network, an imperial complex that is duplicated by air routes, the twentieth-century equivalent of the nineteenth-century European rail networks.
Bookshops in the second half of the twentieth century possess the agglutinating character of shopping malls, where the display of books, kindergarten, children’s playground, entertainment palaces, restaurants and, gradually, videos, CDs, DVDs, video games and souvenirs cohabit or are neighbours. This vibrant, rather bookish North American model for urban living is copied in large measure by other countries like Japan, India, China and Brazil, and, by extension, everywhere else. The old empires have no choice but to adapt to that hegemonic tendency of a massive leisure offering that ensures the indiscriminate sale of cultural consumer items. In Canada, WHSmith and Coles merged to create Chapters. And Fnac, born in 1954 as a kind of literary club with a socialist ethos, will end up selling televisions and owning some eighty branches in France and more than sixty in the rest of the world. All chains have something in common: what they have on offer is dominated by American cultural products.
In his Atlas of the European Novel 1800–1900, Franco Moretti has drawn maps of the influence wielded by writers like Scott, Dickens, Dumas, Hugo, Stendhal or Balzac, and of the viral spread on the Old Continent of sub-genres like the sentimental, nautical, religious, Oriental or silver-fork novel (which were sometimes read only in certain regions). This allows him to analyse the logic of the novel form during the nineteenth century as a rendering of two predominant models:
Different forms, different Europes. Each genre has its geography—its geometry almost: but they are all figures without a centre. See here how strange novelistic geography is—and doubly strange. Because, first, the European novel closes European literature to all external influences, it strengthens and perhaps even establishes its Europeanness. But then this most European of forms proceeds to deprive most of Europe of its creative autonomy: two cities, London and Paris, rule the entire continent for over a century, publishing half (if not more) of all European novels. It’s a ruthless, unprecedented centralization of European literature. Centralization: the centre, the well-known fact; but seen for what it really is: not a given but a process. And a very unlikely process: the exception, not the rule, of European literature[ . . .] With the novel, then, a common literary market arises in Europe. One market: because of centralization. And a very uneven market: also because of centralization. Because in the crucial hundred years between 1750 and 1850 the consequence of centralization is that in most European countries the majority of novels are, quite simply, foreign books. Hungarian, Danish, Italian, Greek readers familiarize themselves with the new form through French and English novels, models to be imitated.
If we were to apply Moretti’s analytical method to the stock of Barnes & Noble, Borders, Chapters, Amazon or Fnac, as he does to nineteenth-century circulating libraries and cabinets de lecture, beyond the corresponding percentage of local tit
les, we would find that the global consumption of fiction is above all the consumption of products from North America or inspired by them. The same strategy that England and France pursued with the novel in the nineteenth century was adopted by the United States, which in Hollywood, and later in television, created a model of audio-visual fiction that was worthy of being imitated—just as London and Paris imposed their idea of the bookshop—a way of shaping the space for the experience of family life (with the television at its centre), the experience of watching films (in multi-screen cinemas) and the experience of reading (fusing bookshop, souvenir shop and Starbucks-style cafeteria).
The big North American book chains are consequently the epitome of that way of conceiving the distribution and sale of culture that we constantly mark out with the adjective “big.” Because the small chain, the half-dozen bookshops with the same owner and the same brand, may still be capitalized locally, a feature of independent businesses, while the big chains are nearly always transnational conglomerates, where the bookseller has ceased to be simply that, because he has lost that direct—artisanal—relationship with books and customers. The bookseller is a shop assistant or executive director or buyer or personnel manager. Bookshop chains, subject to shareholders and boards of management, trigger series of events that are typical of large enterprises: Waterstones was created in 1982 by Tim Waterstone after he was fired by WHSmith, which, in its turn, bought it in 1999, only to sell it years later to the company that had already purchased its main rival, Dillon’s, the branches of which were transformed into Waterstones. Under its new management, Waterstones in Cardiff cancelled a reading by the poet Patrick Jones, after the Christian Voices Association threatened to boycott the event because the book was “blasphemous” and “obscene.”
When I visited London early in 2016 I had the opportunity to interview James Daunt, the managing director of its 300 branches as well as owner of the eight branches of his Daunt chain. When we met in the cafeteria in the Piccadilly Waterstones, I was surprised that the first thing he did was ask me what I wanted to drink, then went to the bar, asked for a coffee and served me with a broad smile. The fifty-two-year-old James Daunt struck me as tall and elegant with a friendly, extremely soothing manner that contrasted with his sharp, incisive eyes. He was appointed in 2011 by the Russian multimillionaire Alexander Mamut, who had just bought the practically bankrupt chain from the HMV Group for 67 million euros. In other words, I interviewed the man who set about saving Waterstones.
“How did things look when you were put in charge of Waterstones in 2011?”
“The chain was bankrupt. Kindle had made big inroads and the market had been reduced by a quarter. What did I do? My first thought was that I must motivate the booksellers, but unfortunately before I could do that I had to sack a third of my staff. My idea was to change Waterstones into a company where I myself would feel comfortable working. It wouldn’t be easy, if you think how fixed retail prices are a thing of the past and Amazon can sell books up to 40 per cent cheaper than you can. Consequently the bookseller must make up for the price difference with his humanity, commitment and enjoyment of the synergy existing between the reader, the book and himself. Amazon cannot offer that kind of synergy.”
“What were the main changes you introduced, apart from the cutback in staff?”
“Changing a bookshop is a slow process. Hatchards was an historic, very important bookshop, but it was going downhill, and it took three years to reinvigorate it within the Waterstones framework. We are also managing to do that with other shops in the chain: our takings increased from £9 to £13 million last year. The first thing I did was to put my trust wholeheartedly in our booksellers and give them the independence to decide which books they wanted to sell and which they didn’t. To that end I was forced to make Waterstones the only chain that didn’t allow publishing houses to purchase window or table display space. Previously Waterstones had earned £27 million from selling display space. But it means being pressurized by the publisher and your bookseller isn’t free to select books, he isn’t the curator of his own bookshop: the job ceases to be stimulating. The purchase of display space creates bookshops that are all the same. The other big change I introduced was in the area of returns. We’ve gone from 27 to three per cent and my aim is nil.”
“The whole system is based on the delivery of new stock and regular returns. You must have a hard time negotiating that with publishers . . .”
“They hated these measures. You have to be courageous if you want to change the publishing world. I met with them and asked them the following: ‘Have you got a better idea, because if we don’t make changes this business is done for.’ They gradually came round. If you are a great publisher, building an important list, you can survive with us; but if you are only interested in novelty, mediocre books you can sell using gimmicks, you will sink.”
“What’s your relationship with your customers, your readers?”
“The challenge we face is satisfying the most intellectual customer without frightening off the least intellectual. I want taxi drivers to feel at home in all my bookshops. They are people who read a lot, whether it’s newspapers or books, and I want them to come into my shops and find what they want to read. I’m not being disingenuous, I know that Waterstones is a middle-class bookshop and my customers in Daunt’s have cachet. Each bookshop must get to know its clientele and not attempt to compete with the supermarkets or other establishments that sell books.”
“What is a Waterstones bookseller like? A Daunt’s one?”
“I hope they will end up being similar. A good bookseller must be friendly, interested in culture and able to communicate that interest, be committed to books and what’s more energetic (we mustn’t forget it is physical work, too). We want young, well-read staff who choose us because they realize we value a spirit of curiosity and a passion for books. That’s why we’re changing the design of the space. Whenever I go to Spain I visit La Central, one of my models, like Feltrinelli in Italy.”
“You can see that in the warm, welcoming wood on the first floor that recalls La Central in Callao, Madrid. It’s clear the same designer is behind these projects: the Argentinian Miguel Sal—”
“Indeed! I would have dinner with Miguel whenever he came to London. He was an intelligent, amusing and provocative man . . . What’s more he was an excellent customer, he always ended up buying books like a madman. His recent unexpected death was a great shock.”
“What do you think about Amazon’s great new idea, opening bookshops that exist physically?”
“I have just returned from Seattle. The bookshop is amazing. The books aren’t placed on their side but face up, showing the front cover. There are only 5,000 and they are arranged according to a mathematical pattern; there is no hierarchy of taste, no possible sense that you are discovering anything. They have deconstructed the idea of a bookshop: it would be ridiculous under any other name, but as it is Amazon it’s brilliant. Because one should never forget that WHSmith isn’t a bookshop and Amazon certainly is.”
“Who better to go to war against Amazon than an Amazon?” asked Jan Hoffman in a report on McNally Jackson Books published in the New York Times. The warrior would be Sarah McNally, who installed the Espresso Book Machine in an emblematic corner of a bookshop famous for its generosity towards Latin American writers (managed by Javier Molea), for its many activities and its stock of geographically organized books—a machine able to print and bind in a matter of minutes any of the seven million titles in the bookstore-cloud that depends on the tangible Manhattan bookshop.
In a scenario engineered physically by Barnes & Noble and virtually by Amazon, after the closure of hundreds of Borders bookshops, the American Booksellers Association launched the Book Sense and IndieBound campaigns, the keystones of which are a literary prize and a list of the most sold books that only takes into account those purchased in independent bookshops (unlike the New York Times, wh
ich tots up the sales in kiosks, chains, drugstores and gift shops, as well as the numbers from the publishers themselves, thus often doubling the figures for the same book). In 2010, André Schiffrin commented on that situation in Words and Money:
New York, which in the post-war years had some 333 bookstores, now has barely thirty, including the chains. A parallel development had taken place in Britain, where the Waterstones chain, which had driven many of the independents out of business by its use of huge discounts, was itself bought up by WHSmith. Long known for its commercialism and political caution, WHSmith soon changed its new purchase into a chain focusing on discounted paperbacks.
In his book the publisher uses various labels to differentiate quality bookshops from bookshop chains: “bookstores with a cultural function,” “intellectual bookstores,” “landmark bookstores,” and refers to the protectionist strategies pursued by the French government to guarantee their survival. Years later Hollande’s government introduced others. Unlike the Video Club, though never scaling the heights of the Library, the Bookshop wears a halo of prestige, a traditional importance comparable to the Theatre or the Cinema, as a space that must be conserved and developed through state support. This consciousness does not exist in the United States, but it wouldn’t be at all surprising if the void left by Borders, rather than being filled by other chains, was occupied locally by new establishments with intellectual ambitions that offered a personal touch and aspired to become centres of culture and future landmarks. Places intensely active on social media, with good web pages, and able to offer printing on demand or nearby printing facilities. Small shops that serve coffee and home-made cakes or offer writing workshops, like those sophisticated wine bars that provide wine-tasting courses. Bookshops that are not dusted by anonymous cleaning agencies but by the booksellers themselves, wanting to remember the precise spot for each of those rare, minority, hand-crafted, out-of-fashion volumes that don’t belong in the big book chains and which only booksellers from the family of Beach, Monnier, Yánover, Steloff, Sanseviero, Ferlinghetti, Milla, Montroni or McNally will know how to place on shelves or tables for new books, and thus give them visibility.