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Triple crowns for APSBG winners

10.03.08 Tom Tivnan

Blackwell's Broad Street branch, John Smith & Sons and Oxford University Press were all winners for the third year in a row at the awards handed out last Friday at the APSBG conference.

The flagship Blackwell shop picked up the booksellers' year-round service to publishers gong. It has now topped the table for four out of the last five years, a run broken only by Foyles in 2005. Sales reps from 25 publishers rated close to 200 shops by criteria such as how well they subbed new titles, how empowered they were to negotiate with reps at a local level and receptiveness to promotions. John Smith held onto the chain award, pipping Blackwell to the post.

OUP went home with awards for both publisher and academic service standards, in top to bottom ratings from a cross-section of academic booksellers. Taylor & Francis came in second in the publisher stakes, while John Wiley narrowly lost out in the distribution category.

Publisher category presenter David Prescott, Blackwell head of retail operations, quoted one respondent as saying, "OUP is a model for all academic publishers".

Presenting the distribution category, Colin Marshall, Leicester University Bookshop manager, said respondents praised TBS, "once an industry joke", for its improvement up to seventh place. Academic giant Pearson, however, came in 18th out of 22 distributors. It was lambasted by respondents for failing to have a dedicated hotline during the 'back to university' (BTU) period.

The awards in full:

Year-round Bookseller's Service Standards Shop
1. Blackwell Broad Street, Oxford
2. Waterstone's University of Derby
3. Union Bookshop Leeds

Chain
1. John Smith & Son
2. Blackwell
3. Waterstone's

Year-round Publishers' Service Standards
1. Oxford Univesity Press
2. Taylor & Francis
3. Cambridge University Press

Year-round Distributor's Service Standards
1. Oxford University Press
2. John Wiley
3. Sage

tom tivnan APSBG Prize academic

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