After the debacle that was the Brewer brothers’ rape and pillage of the SPCK chain of bookshops, the Wesley Owen chain now looks to be heading towards the event horizon of the recession’s black hole. Mouse has the details. He also notes Phil Groom’s optimistic hope of a buy out.
It’s probably worth noting that in 2008-9 financial year, Waterstones – the only sizeable bookchain saw sales fall from £564.3 million (GBP) to £548.3 million (GBP). Operating profits fell from £16.3 million to £10 million. That is still a profit, but it indicates something both of the increasingly narrow margins, and the effects of the recession.
There may be one possible future for Christian bookshops, and that is if they are truly community bookshops working as part of local churches working together and seeing a bookshop as a hopefully self-supporting but non-profit making component of their community mission and Christian education, which they are prepared to subsidise if necessary.
However, should churches and booksellers be asking a different question? I can’t help but note that the Mind, Body and Spirit section of large bookshops is ever expanding. I note that in Waterstones Birmingham this has now expanded to include a whole bookcase on witchcraft.
What, though, would Waterstones look like if the contents of the now (about to be) closed Wesley Owen, and the closed a while back SPCK, both of which were substantial, were decanted onto its shelves. There is a sufficient market to make a full theology and religion section viable in larger stores, and a couple of decent-sized bookcases in smaller ones. The larger stores at least might even start employing staff with specialist knowledge.
As a consequence, not only would Christian writing and theology (some of it admittedly very bad and of the self-help variety) regain a public profile in the bookshops most people shop in, but they may well start to choose some of it over the other “spiritual” alternatives.
Does this apparent commercial failure actually offer a challenge and opportunity to emerge from the tucked-away twilight of a sub-cultural ghetto and stake a place in the common spaces and ordinary lives of the book-buying public?
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Well said, Doug: thanks. Ian Matthews raises some good points too in his response to Eden’s gift voucher offer: Eden and the high street. If Christian bookshops are to survive — whether as standalones or integrated into something more broad based — they need to be places people want to visit: what we’re selling these days isn’t the books, it’s the experience. The books are the prize at the end of the ride.
I’ve often wondered if Christian bookshops are a business or a ministry. This is probably the time to decide.
If Waterstones did expand their Christian context, would they not end up stocking the content of your average bland Cathedral bookshop?
It seems to me that a specialist bookshop is closer to a specialist library than a commercial and more general shop.
You wouldn’t go to Waterstones if you wanted to read degree level biology and I don’t see theology as being any different.
@Erika That would, I think, be for a bookseller to answer. However there is a substantially wide range of Christian literature from the don’t-touch-with-a-bargepole Osteen, through a wide range of mid-level books to the more specialist reaches of theological-significance-but-completely-overpriced-waste-of-money like most things published by Brill.
Wesley Owen is NOT closed yet (paragraph 5 of the first post)
The Waterstones figure is less than OXFAM made from its bookshops in 2007-8.
Matt, I’m trying to work out why WP always places your comments in the moderation queue. By all the rules it ought not to, so sorry while I work on that. (there are one or two others it does this to as well, so don’t feel unfairly persecuted!)
You pose a great question, although I’m not sure I can be quite as optimistic. As much as I would to see the quality writers and a decent range of Bibles and bible resources in Waterstones, in the past the books that have done well there have been of a more ‘popular’ bent: Prayer of Jabez, Purpose Drive Life, The Shack etc.
Just as Waterstones fails to serve the deep backlist of many subjects, it will be the same with religion. If I want decent computing, business, philosophy, poetry, lit crit etc then Waterstones is generally not the place to go.
However – the missional potential of books in big high street stores cannot be ignored.
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