The Bookseller.com

3rd December 2008

Neill Denny

Neill Denny is editor-in-chief of The Bookseller. He will be blogging on the book business and on how the print magazine is produced each week.

Blogging the BA: final thoughts

14.05.08

It’s hard to be in a bad mood in Brighton when an early summer heatwave is turning the town into a little slice of the Med in Sussex. Perhaps it was nothing more than that that made this year’s BA conference a far less fractious affair than last year’s excursion to Harrogate, where there was a distinct rancorousness to the traditional retailer/publisher spats.

The gloom that has gathered so rapidly over the wider economy since last May has certainly served to put the book trade’s problems into some sort of context.  The tone was set by Graham Rand’s pragmatic and balanced presidential address, in which he predicted that the slow but steady growth the trade has seen in the last five or six years would continue for at least this year and next. He also asked some semi-rhetorical questions of the publishers: why do we publish all our best books in 10 frantic weeks before Christmas, and, if we can’t have the NBA back, can we at least ‘not discount the heart and the profit out of all our bestsellers.’ Less rhetorically, he warned against any unilateral decision to impose firm sale on backlist by publishers, and revealed one large one (Hachette it transpires) had amended its policy after a meeting with the BA Council.

As last year digital reared its pixellated head in many sessions, but some of the fear and heat that the subject engendered in Harrogate has also evaporated. People seem to have finally accepted that digital is happening whether they like it or not, and that the thing to do is to turn it into a money-making opportunity.

New Borders owner Luke Johnson was surprisingly respectful of the book and the ‘noble profession’ of bookselling. People left his session wondering why such a hard task-master had been so emollient. Perhaps his 18-hour trip to the podium from the US had mellowed him - or perhaps, dare we say it, the book trade is actually a little better than we sometimes think it is.

Another speaker mentioned that the music industry has halved in a decade, which kind of puts things into perspective.

As ever, the Henley Centre research was thought-provoking. Apparently the next big thing is a shift from ‘me time’ to ‘we time’ - a return of family and community, demonstrated in book terms by festivals and reading groups - but hard to turn into revenue in a bookshop. One bright spot was libraries, which seemed to being growing out of their IT obsession and returning to books, according to Glasgow’s chief librarian. Amen to that.

Personal highlights for me were Gerald Ratner's funny, honest and likeable speech about bouncing back from failure. He's probably unique amongst senior retailers in being able to laugh at himself. Another was the Henley Centre's observation that the so-called Millennial kids - those born post 1982 had much in common with the baby boomers - both were optimistic early adopters with a positive outlook on life. Conversely I am one of Thatcher's children - who come between the boomers and the millennials - the scarred, cynical,
why bother Generation Xers. Another was Orion's very posh dinner on the Monday night, held in a very Dallas Manderson restaurant out in the sticks.

Overall I think this year's BA was much helped by the relaxed mood engendered by the indecently good weather, having the conference and the accommodation all under one (Grand) roof, and the proximity to London, which meant more of the big hitters from publishers seemed in evidence. Overall the programme was perfectly decent if lacking some of the fireworks of last year, whilst the genuine voice of the rebellious indie seemed to have been blanded out by all the slick organisation. Roll on Newcastle next year, where I'm sure it will be a very different feel.

Neill Denny BA Home Booksellers Association Annual Conference