Friday, March 14, 2014

Booksellers tackle direct selling

The Bookseller -  13 March, 2014



Direct-selling to institutions by publishers proved a thorny issue at the Bookseller Association's Academic, Professional and Specialist conference in Brighton yesterday (12th March). Giving a welcoming address at the event at the Old Ship Hotel, Dan Johns, the chairman of the BA's academic group, warned he would stop providing publishers with vital information if they continued to sell directly to universities. 
The owner of independent academic bookshop The University Bookseller, Plymouth, said the practice was like "self-killing" by publishers because it damaged the important and long-established relationships which have existed between publishers, booksellers and universities and undermined the market as a whole.

Publishers gave guarded responses. Richard Mollet, c.e.o of The Publishers Association said on the subject: "We will reiterate the point at our meetings with publishers but there is some experimentation with the business model going on at the moment."

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