The Bookseller.com

7th October 2008

Philip Stone is charts editor of The Bookseller. He was formerly a bookseller at Waterstone's.

A token gesture

08.07.08

Difficult. Very difficult. Dodgy? Maybe, slightly. Understandable? Certainly. The store voucher/National Book Token (NBT) dilemma is certainly a complex one. On the one hand, you want to support a national scheme that gets people buying books. On the other, you want repeat customers coming into your store and your store only. Or, at the very least, your company—be that Waterstone's, Borders, or W H Smith.

It is a balancing act that both National Book Tokens and the chain booksellers are aware of. Up to now it seems to have worked.

There are now reports that Waterstone's has tipped that balance—in its own favour. But from the branches I've visited recently, and the members of staff I've spoken to, the suggestion that Waterstone's staff have been told to stop selling NBTs is well wide of the mark. Either someone is mistaken or there is a branch manager out there who is trying a little too hard to hit targets.

In the olden days, and by "olden days" I mean pre-electronic gift cards, and speaking from my experience in the various branches I worked in during my, largely happy eight years with the Big Golden W, booksellers were encouraged to push store vouchers as opposed to NBTs for the business reasons stated above.

Only if a customer asked specifically for a "book token", were we told to explain the difference, trying to convince them subtly to change their mind. Usually the clinch was mentioning that you could use the card in branches of HMV.

It wasn't pretty, but it worked.

Occasionally, a customer would insist on an NBT as they wanted to be sure that the recipient would use the voucher to buy a book, as opposed to a CD, DVD, or video game, oblivious to the fact that the vouchers were redeemable at branches of W H Smith and Borders which stocked multi-media. Of course, HMV cannot accept the current Waterstone's electronic gift card, which is a persuasive argument to use to these folk.

You were set bonus-related benchmarking targets – voucher sale year-on-year uplifts, and, most importantly, voucher sales in proportion to NBT sales. They still exist. And it is certainly understandable. As a branch, voucher sales count for diddly squat. They're subtracted from end-of-day sales because all you're doing is selling money for money. Nothing is being bought. Only voucher and token redemptions are counted towards net sales. So if you can increase the likelihood that a customer will redeem their voucher at your store, or your chain, then it makes complete business sense to push sales of your own brand than that of an alternative.

And it is vitally important to note that this isn't just a Waterstone's issue. W H Smith and Borders both have their own versions of electronic gift cards, so if any criticism of a lack of national support for the NBT is being made then the net needs to be cast wide.

But the truth is that from the branches I've visited and the staff I've spoken to, Waterstone's are still selling National Book Tokens and still redeeming them. Although bosses and staff have been encouraged to push voucher cards, book tokens are still available and are still being ordered on a weekly basis by cash office gurus.

Comments on this article