Industry responds to Minister’s ‘end of bookshops’ prediction

15 June 2011 Books+Publishing

Members of the Australian bookselling community have expressed outrage at comments made by federal Minister for Small Business Nick Sherry about the future of Australian bookshops this week.

Speaking at an online business function in Canberra on 14 June, Minister Sherry said that apart from ‘a few specialist booksellers in capital cities’ bookshops would cease to exist in Australia within five years because of competition from online retailers.

‘Bricks and mortar bookshops and book printers around the world are feeling the pressure of the changing environment more than any other part of the supply chain,’ said Minister Sherry in a statement following the event.

Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) president and owner of Pages & Pages Bookshop Jon Page said in a statement that the minister has ‘acted irresponsibly and put thousands of jobs at risk’ by making the comments.

‘I find it extraordinary and very alarming that a federal minister is talking down an industry that is facing tough times like so many businesses in the retail sector,’ said Page. ‘As if bookstores weren’t facing enough hurdles with the ongoing fallout from the GFC [and] a slow retail market, we now have a person who is supposed to be our Small Business champion telling us we may as well close up our shops now and leave Australians without a local village bookshop to access.’

The ABA said that it is ‘working hard on finding solutions for its members … to be able to provide their customers with ebooks by the end of this year’. ‘We do not have our heads in the sand,’ said Page. ‘We are embracing the digital future. Ebooks are a wonderful opportunity for bookshops, not a threat.’

Dymocks CEO Don Grover described Minister Sherry’s comments as ‘bizarre’, telling the Weekly Book Newsletter that the Minister’s comments are ‘inaccurate’ and ‘not well-informed’.

Grover said that Dymocks has been a ‘multi-channel retailer for years’ and ‘the great majority of Dymocks customers are still buying print books’.

Grover said that if the government was serious about helping the bookselling industry it would remove parallel importation restrictions and resolve the ongoing issue around overseas purchases which do not attract the Goods and Services Tax.

Collins Booksellers managing director Daniel Jordon also dismissed Minister Sherry’s comments, telling StartUpSmart that ‘to assume that bricks-and-mortar retailing won’t exist in five years is just plain wrong’.

Steve Belton, manager of the Paperchain Bookstore in Manuka, ACT told the Canberra Times that Minister Sherry’s comments left him ‘open-mouthed’. ‘I can’t believe someone has said that,’ said Belton. ‘As the Minister for Small Business, [such talk] is not really supporting small business.’

Belton’s reaction was shared by Robbie Egan, manager of Readings Carlton, who told the Age that Minister Sherry’s comments were ‘immensely disappointing’. ‘I think he is pretty misguided about Australian’s love for literature and books,’ said Egan. ‘There are huge challenges, and we understand that, but we are planning on being here a lot longer than five years.’

‘It just doesn’t make sense to me that Melbourne, a city of four million people, can’t support more than a few bookstores,’ said Egan.

The federal opposition has also criticised Minister Sherry’s comments, with opposition parliamentary secretary for small business Scott Ryan saying that ‘booksellers in Australia have every right to be angry’.

‘Nick Sherry should be encouraging the prospects and aspirations of small business, not predicting doom and gloom and the end of book retailing–especially when one of the major problems for domestic books sales is a direct result of Labor policy,’ said Senator Ryan, referring to the government’s decision in 2009 to maintain parallel importation restrictions.

Minister Sherry responded to the reactions from the bookselling community on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon. ‘Great to see the lively debate about bookshops in the digital age,’ tweeted Minister Sherry. ‘For the record–I’m a book lover and I don’t have an ereader. I’m a traditionalist, but obviously part of a dying breed.’

Category: Local news