When we write books and buy them we are aware of many things; the genre, the latest fashion, awards and recommendations from television and papers but seldom do we consider the person who takes our money and hands us our purchase.

The book seller.

Can a book seller in a store have an effect on an author’s career or a book’s journey into print and onto the public’s bookshelves? A keen instinctive book seller can have considerably more than you might think. One such book seller is an extremely helpful, cheerful and courteous man, Ewan Wilson who now works with Waterstone’s in Glasgow.

 

A perfect setting for lovers of the ‘Golden Age’ crime books is afternoon tea at 1 Devonshire Gardens. So on a wet and dreary Glasgow afternoon we discussed the little thought of role of the book seller (since we both have the same initials, E.W. I will be identified as H. and Ewan, E.)

 

H: How did you come to be a book seller?

E: Like many book sellers it happened by default rather than by design. My first career was as a school teacher which I endured with incredible fortitude for two and a half years before I gave it up. I decided that I wanted to pursue librarianship but then was asked to teach adults at Anniesland College in Glasgow. Whilst I found that enjoyable, the prospects were poor and uncertain so in the lull between the College and studying librarianship my father approached a friend who worked for John Smith, Glasgow Book Sellers, and asked him if there was anything in the book trade that I could do meantime. There followed phone calls and interviews and periods of no contact culminating in my opening the door to the Company Secretary one day telling me, when all hope had died, that I had a job in the Byres Road branch to start as soon as possible. That was in 1988. I stayed with John Smith until 2000 when Ottakar's opened and then when they were taken over I moved to Waterstone’s where I am presently.

H: I have heard you refer to ‘instinctive’ book selling what is that?

E: It’s a result of people knowing their own specialist area. Not only are they familiar with it but can gauge what is likely to succeed commercially. There is no room for sentiment… or only exceptionally.

H: Your particular specialist area is crime, what makes you enthusiastic about the crime genre?

E: It’s what I personally enjoy reading. Since I was a kid I read mysteries starting off with Enid Blyton, Famous Five, Secret Seven etc. I even wrote a tiny mystery myself. Then when I was about eleven I was getting a bit old for them and on holiday in Girvan there was an old fashioned newsagents down by the harbour with a ‘spinner’ (display stand) that had masses of Agatha Christie books with the Tom Adam’s covers. I picked out ‘A Murder is Announced’ and was hooked. But then there were Anthony Trollope’s tales of ecclesiastical skulduggery, like the Last Chronicle of Barset. Delicious stuff! Not exactly murder stories but laced with lots of minor mysteries central to the narrative. The main element for me in any crime writing is the mystery but it also has to have a good plot good characters and realism. You can get some books which are surreal like Jasper Fforde and with humour but the mystery anchors the whole thing- the mystery and its solution (or the latter only, in the case of the inverted crime story) is the focus of the plot.  I have moved over the years from the common names in the genre to the more obscure, unusual, overlooked or forgotten

H: Are there any differences between the way that a small book seller and the big chains sellers operate?

Nowadays the main buying in the big companies is done by central buyers but it is hard to ensure that every book down will work down to the local level where local circumstances can dictate success or failure. What sells in London may not in the provinces and vice versa, of course. But central buying has its advantages; books that are eagerly awaited and are potential best sellers can be bought in great bulk and discounted. However, because of competition from supermarkets for these books, the trade discounts them to the point where there is little profit left. Publishers and book sellers can be their own worst enemies over this. The resultant financial pressure was one of the main reasons why Ottakar’s finally could not compete any longer, not because it didn’t have good books or was too big. The Glasgow shop was the perfect size. It was like a local book shop in the city centre and of course it had its own book buying fanatics, our local clientele.

As far as more specialised stuff is concerned, books you can’t get anywhere else, they can be bought in by an individual book seller like me.  At Waterstone’s the book seller has a fair degree of autonomy in the buying in of titles. There is, as explained, a core or ‘model’ stock that is determined centrally by computer calculation with each store size-graded for the number of such titles it takes and that will be for every store but individual book sellers can buy in books, perhaps of local interest, that will sell and become core stock locally. We can but in American publications through our USA agent, Baker and Taylor. We research titles/authors/ISBN details and email orders to B&T who confirm shipping to us. So we don’t only deal in British books.  In this way you have the power to promote a book or author that is perhaps being overlooked. These books can’t be discounted but you can have them as a recommended reading or put them forward to be read at book groups. The book seller can push a book in this way. Other chains are far more tightly controlled from the centre so that local initiative is less stimulated.

H: This presumably means you can have books from small press publishers as well as American.

E: Yes, Allison and Busby, Constable, Serpent’s Tale etc. You can have a big effect. The way that I approach this is to perhaps begin with recommending a book and see if that helps move it. If it does then you can buy it in. With James Anderson, I was convinced here was a triumph of the Golden Age pastiche yet tragically accessible only in a few remaining obscure USA imprints. I approached an editor at one publisher but he then moved to another company so I went to Allison and Busby and suggested the books. They asked to see it and I sent my own personal copy of ‘Affair of the Bloodstained Egg Cosy’. Allison & Busby liked it, saw its commercial potential and published. Then Waterstone’s central buyer adopted it so Allison & Busby gambled on a trade paperback (i.e., larger format pbk) as well as the hardback and the rest, as they say, is history –and very gratifying too! The second book in the series is now out and it is selling well too. Sadly James Anderson died in 2007 just after the first book was released. It is often the case that our feed-back to a publisher (the smaller ones in particular) can mean the difference from their proceeding, or not, to softback where the main sales are.

H: What about self published books?

E: Self-publication, in today’s fiercely competitive climate, is not at all recommended. Very occasionally a local interest title might work but by and large to be avoided like the plague.

H: Do you think there is more or less interest in reading and buying books now?

E: The market has some very pernicious phenomena for the traditional book seller these days- the net book agreement has led to some crazy discounting wars, supermarkets are elbowing in on the trade’s staple of best sellers and internet buying also has eroded high street sales.  Generally crime has been the best seller for some years although I’m not sure that we might have reached saturation point. I remember when I started in the trade that the best sellers were science fiction and John Smith had more of that than crime but within about two years that changed and crime was the big seller so there are fashions as in anything else. At the moment books with a supernatural, paranormal theme are on the increase; hard-boiled can be harder to move, although certain authors can still attract loyal fan bases. The book buying public though have their favourites. You get people who are hard core fans of a particular author or type of book who won’t be swayed to try anything new but there are more who are open to suggestion. Police procedurals are hardy perennials. We know that from the crime book group in the Sauchiehall Street store that it is still very popular. But anything with an escapist feel and a bit of light relief is good.

H: When we go into bookstores it’s the norm now to see handwritten ‘Staff Recommends’ are they real? Do the staff have freedom over which books to recommend?

E: Recommends are entirely down to the individual’s choice and must be absolutely genuine. I for one would refuse to ‘push’ a book I did not like or had not even read.

H: What is your relationship with the sales reps? Is there pressure on them to sell you their list or do you know beforehand and tell them what you want?

E: If they are doing their job properly then the pressure should be on them but as the industry has become more technology driven their role has shrunk and now there are far fewer reps with perhaps only one where before there were several for each type of book. As I have said so much is now done centrally but I think most publishers realise that they need at least one representative in an area. Harper Collins, the old Scottish publisher, has gone from having about five Scottish reps to not a single one exclusive to Scotland. Under the Waterstone’s system the rep comes in and brings his catalogue or laptop. He should be able to tell us what he thinks will sell but when it comes to specialist areas then the individual book seller will decide what he is going to take and of course you examine the catalogue carefully because you might miss something. An example was MacMillan New Writing, not a signal success in hardback. But for every failure there are usually compensating success stories, thankfully.   

H: What about the small presses? Can you ensure that not only the big publishers are filling the shelves?

E: Yes and no to that one. The front of store is paid for by the publisher, all those promotions are graded. They are centrally bought and a publisher has paid for them to be displayed in the store so they have to go out there and be seen. Most Waterstone’s branches have one person whose job it is to ensure that all those are properly displayed. If they are not and a publisher comes in and sees it there will be trouble.  So front of store is pretty well dominated by the publishers who pay for the space but further back in the ‘Recommends’ section if you have room and you are enthusiastic enough you can ensure the prominent presence of small publishers with less clout.

H: Are you committed to taking a certain amount of books from big publishers each year?

E: We are NOT committed to a certain budget. It is down to the central buyers to assess the commercial potential of what’s on offer and that determines our spend.

H: Does the store manager have any say in whether a store holds promotional events?

E: This is done almost entirely at store level. I say that because with the bigger events, the ones that make money with best selling authors the publishers expect you to put in what is called a pitch. But most stores have an events guru who organises them. Each section, such as crime of course, will have an input. There will be local authors  who will annually have their book launches in one particular store and that’s a good way for an author to promote their work in their local area. Another way a new author can promote themselves is to go to a lot of the conferences because the hard core fans go there and they come back to their local store and ask for work they have heard of at these events. Of course we all know that publishers like their authors to produce books regularly, so do book sellers. If you don’t produce the books they won’t be published and then your fans will turn to someone else.

H: Now although you have been a book seller for many years I understand that you are now diversifying and doing some freelance editing?

E: My role is to talent spot. This can come about by an In house editor feeding me manuscripts from the ‘slush pile’ from which I then filter out anything that seems promising or for which I will confirm the Editor’s original approval- Suzette Hill’s fantastic whimsy, A Load of Old Bones, being one such. Otherwise, it can be from my own personal reading of stuff not currently available in the U.K., either out-of –print titles or USA authors.

Whilst some publishers will simply not consider anything that is not supplied through a recognised agent, others will cast their net more widely.

Though smaller publishers may have much less to offer in the way of financial ‘advances’ it is worth remembering some of the current ‘big hitters’ started off their careers with the modest smaller houses.

 

H: You’ve given me a whole new perspective on the role of the book seller and I’ll be looking out for the ‘recommends’