Until today I was unaware of Tower Books, an independent distributor in Australia. Neither do I know its director Michael Rakusin. He has just written a letter to the major bookshop chain, Angus & Robertson, which you can read about in the Sydney Morning Herald blog complete with 176 comments, so far. A&R are demanding lump sum payments from small and medium-sized publishers if they want to continue to be stocked.

This letter is to be treasured and I reproduce it here in full for your enjoyment and appreciation. I can think of other potential recipients of such a letter. It's also worthwhile going to Sydney Morning Herald link to view the original letter from Charlie Rimmer, particularly the last line: 'If you would like to discuss this with me in more detail, I am delighted to confirm an appointment with you at 1.00 p.m. on 17th August for 10 minutes at my offices at 379 Collins Street, Melbourne.'

6 August 2007

Mr Charlie Rimmer
ARW Group Commercial Manager
14th Floor, 379 Collins Street,
Melbourne, VIC 3000

Dear Mr Rimmer

We are in receipt of your letter of 30 July 2007 terminating our further supply to Angus & Robertson. As you have requested, we will cancel all Angus & Robertson Company orders on 17 August and will desist from any further supply to your stores.

I have to say that my initial response on reading your letter as to how you propose to "manage" your business in the future was one of voluble hilarity, I literally burst out laughing aloud. My second response was to note the unmitigated arrogance of your communication, I could not actually believe I was reading an official letter from Angus & Robertson on an Angus & Robertson letterhead.

My reply to you will perforce be a lengthy one. I hope you will take the trouble to read it, you may learn something. Then again, when I look at the level of real response we have had from Angus & Robertson over the past six or so years, I somehow doubt it.

The first thing I would say to you is that arrogance of the kind penned by you in your letter of 30 July is an unenviable trait in any officer of any company, no matter how important that individual thinks himself or his company, no matter how dominant that company may be in its market sector. Business has a strange habit of moving in cycles: today's villain may be tomorrow's hero. It is quite possible to part from a business relationship in a pleasant way leaving the door open for future engagement. Sadly, in this case, you have slammed and bolted it.

More to the point, however, we have watched our business with Angus & Robertson dwindle year upon year since 2000. We had to wear the cost of sub-economic ordering from you through ownership changes, SAP installation, new management, and stock overhang. In summary our business with you has dropped from over $1.2 million at the end of 2000 to less than $600,000 in 2007.

You would be quite correct to question whether our offering to the market had changed in any way. The answer can be derived from the fact that during the same period our business with Dymocks, Book City, QBD and Borders continued to grow in double digits, our business with your own franchise stores has grown healthily, and our overall business during the same period has grown by more than 50%.

Six years ago we were allowed to send reps to your company stores and do stock checks. Then these were "uninvited" and we had to rely on monthly rep calls to your Buying Office. Subsequently even that was too much trouble; your Buying Office was too busy to see us, so we were asked to make new title submissions electronically. Every few months the new submission template became more and more complex. This year, we have been allowed quarterly visits to your Buying Office at which we were to be given the opportunity to sell to all your Category Managers. At the first, we did indeed see all of the Category Managers - but they didn't buy any of the titles offered. At the second, one Category manager was available, and again no purchases resulted. At the last (only last week), two Category managers attended. Through all of this, your overworked and under resourced Buying Department never got to see, let alone read, an actual book. While one may be forgiven for believing that Angus & Robertson is actually a company purveying "Sale" signs, I do believe you are still in the book business?

That Angus & Robertson is struggling for margin does not surprise me. It amazes me that the message has not become clear to your "management": there are only so many costs you can cut, there is only so much destiny you can put in the hands of a computer system, there are only so many sweetheart deals you can do with large suppliers. After that, in order to prosper one actually has to know one's product and have an appropriately staffed buying department. Most importantly, one has to train sales people of competence. You will never beat the DDSs at their cost cutting game, you will only prosper by putting "books" back into Angus & Robertson. And it would seem to me paramount to stop blaming suppliers for your misfortunes, trying ever harder to squeeze them to death, and actually focus on your core incompetencies in order to redress them.

How a business that calls itself a book business is going to do without titles such as the Miles Franklin Prize winning book or titles like Rich Dad Poor Dad (according to this week's Sydney Morning Herald it is still the fifth best selling business title in Australia nine years after publication) is beyond me. And how in good conscience Australia's self-purported largest chain of book shops proposes to exclude emerging Australian writers who are represented by the smaller distributors, is an equal mystery.

We too have expectations Mr Rimmer. We have had the same expectations for many years, none of which Angus & Robertson have been willing to deliver:

•That we are treated with equal respect to the larger publishers within the obvious parameters of commercial reality;
•That your Buying Department is able and willing to assess our books with equal seriousness to those of the big publishers and buy them appropriately;
•That you recognise the fundamental differences between the smaller distributors and the larger publishers and stop demanding of us terms that we are unable to deliver;
•That you would support and help develop Australian literature.

Had you made any effort to meet these expectations you would have found the niche we should have occupied in your business, as have all other book shops, and you would have found our contribution to the profitability of your business would have been dramatically different.

In summary, we reject out of hand this notion that somehow, even giving you 45% discount on a Sale or Return basis, with free freight to each of your individual stores, where we make less than half of that on the same book, puts us in the "category of unacceptable profitability". We have seen Angus & Robertson try this tactic before - about 12 years ago Angus & Robertson decided that unless we gave them a 50% discount, they would not buy from us any longer. We refused. Angus & Robertson desisted from buying from us for seven months. We survived, Angus & Robertson came back cap in hand.

We have seen Myer effectively eliminate smaller suppliers. We survived and prospered but look at the Myer Book Departments today.

We have seen David Jones decide that it had too many publishers to deal with and to exclude the smaller suppliers. We survived and prospered but look at the David Jones Book Departments today.

David Jones and Myer sell other goods; Angus & Robertson does not.

That the contents of your letter of 30 July are both immoral and unethical, I have no doubt. That they probably contravene the Trade Practices Act, I shall leave to the ACCC to determine. (Five percent interest PER DAY !!!)

If you wish to discuss any of the contents hereof you may call my secretary for an appointment at my office in Frenchs Forest. I shall be marginally more generous than you and at least allow you to pick a convenient time.

Michael Rakusin
Director
Tower Books Pty Ltd
Carpentaria, Alexis Wright : Winner of 50th Anniversary Miles Franklin Literary Prize, 2007

Copy: Graeme Samuel, Chairman, ACCC
Rod Walker, Chairman, ARW Group
Ian Draper, ARW Group Managing Director
Rickard Gardell, Managing Director, Pacific Equity Partners
Simon Pillar, Managing Director, Pacific Equity Partners
Barbara Cullen, CEO, ABA
Maree McCaskill, CEO, APA

This week's Bookseller has a headline which may mark a turning point for the better in the sad saga of the decline of the British public library system: 'Tim Coates to save Hillingdon £260,000'.

Tim has reproduced the article in full on his Good Library blog but here is an extract:

Library campaigner Tim Coates has designed a major overhaul of Hillingdon libraries that is projected to increase opening hours and book stocks, and save £260,000.
The plans have been approved by the borough council and are expected to be implemented from September. They will see all 17 libraries in the borough entirely refurbished, Starbucks coffee made available in every branch, opening hours extended and the supply chain simplified.

Tim has made himself rather unpopular among the mandarins of the public library service by pointing out uncomfortable truths, by challenging politically correct but absurd views on the role of libraries, and by being consistently rude and abrasive. This unpopularity has from time to time set his campaign back. There are those in positions of power who would vote against absolutely anything Tim suggests.

However, perhaps his approach is correct. Perhaps campaigners need to be obnoxious from time to time. Perhaps civil servants and politicians need to be insulted. In any event I believe the tide may be turning for the public library service and that Tim's ideas will be seen to be sensible.

The objective is to have libraries better stocked with books (radical idea), open when people want them to be open (seems sensible), in a safe and clean environment (sound thinking), managed by front-line librarians ( they understand how libraries work) and at no extra cost to the taxpayer (phew). All pretty straightforward but there are those who want to see libraries as something else - as tools of social change, as outreach centres, as vehicles for diversity - just take a few minutes to scroll through some of the stories on the Good Library Guide and be horrified.

Here is a reminder of the simplistic but hard-hitting Occam's Razor version of his views which I originally wrote about in January:

-  The library service is for people and its only purpose is to respond to their needs  (currently it does not do this adequately)

-  It is essentially about reading  (currently it is not sufficiently so)

-  Its operation must be simple (because at present it is too complex)

-- Those responsible for providing the service are those who work in the libraries (currently they are not able to be).

-- Those accountable to the public are councillors  (currently they do not account).

I was in Surrey yesterday attending part of the brilliantly organised Palgrave Macmillan sales conference. Do click on the link which will take you to their US site which naturally enough has a slant towards books published originally in the USA but which are of global interest. The blandness of offerings from the much of the retail trade can sometimes undermine confidence in the publishing of high-quality, challenging and non-TV-related titles but a day at that sales conference and a trawl through the websites here and in the USA dispelled all that. And the surroundings were pretty palatial (but economic) too.

I used the opportunity to discuss with our sales and publishing people some of the concerns, threats and opportunities of the digital age. Of course, Palgrave Macmillan, being an academic publisher, has fewer concerns about territorial erosion than a general trade publisher would.

Nonetheless there are real challenges and the principal one in my opinion is the devaluation and commoditisation of information. 'Free' does not always (or often) mean better but somehow the Internet has encouraged the view that information should be free. The row over the Google heist showed that many people value physical objects such as laptop computers far more highly than the information, wisdom, entertainment the computer might contain. 

Another area where 'free' is considered ethically superior is within the open access debate which has been reignited recently by Yale University science libraries' decision not to continue funding BioMed Central's open-access publishing experiment on the basis that the business model was not viable in the long run. BMC have responded robustly and the debate will continue but it is just one example of the turbulent waters in which publishers are having to swim.

All this simply underscores the importance of the value of copyright, not just to authors and publishers, but to students, teachers, researchers, readers and to all developers of new ideas. Thank goodness there are powerful laws and organisations protecting creativity.

How many times does something have to happen for it to be an annual event? In September 2006 I wrote about the first SciFoo camp.  It's just happened again (which makes it a tradition in contemporary time scales) and Timo Hannay has blogged about it. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about just follow the link and be (a bit) enlightened and here is a para from Timo's blog with some more direct links:

'SciFoo '07 was wonderfully intense, mind-expanding and surreal. Organisationally, it was a bit less stressful than last year's inaugural event (at least for me), mainly because we knew it was going to work to some degree. Indeed, the success of SciFoo '06 lead to a fair amount of anticipation this year, best described in words by Jonathan Eisen and in pictures by Pierre Lindenbaum. (See also Pierre's cartoons from the event itself.)

Such is the variety and (relative) anarchy of the event that there's no such thing as one SciFoo experience, only 200+ personal experiences. To give a feel of the occasion, read Henry Gee's opening post and have a look at Bora's photos, photos, and more photos.'

On the other side of the world, everyone at Macmillan has been delighted for the Pan Macmillan team in South Africa who have just been voted International Publisher of the Year at the awards evening in spite of being one of the smaller operations. In particular, our team was commended for its commitment to children's books, excellent service and good pricing structures. I would offer an additional personal accolade. Pan Macmillan are the crew everyone wants to succeed because they are so professional and so pleasant too. Here they are, small in numbers, showing but perfect in performance, showing off their Oscars.

A propos of absolutely nothing, I am ashamed to admit that I have only just discovered (pointed to by a friend) Uncyclopedia, the content-free competitor to the ultra-serious reference websites. I particularly liked their definition of wiki:

The lottery has begun. Thirteen out of 110 entries have got through to the next round, the shortlist of six to be announced on September 6. Picador has one title on the list, Self Help by the youngest writer on the list, Edward Docx. Fingers crossed.

Of course the list can be interpreted any which way. The Bookseller's headline 'Indies shine on Booker's dozen' isn't really borne out by the facts. I'm not sure that two out of thirteen is a particularly high strike rate. And where are the darling 'indies' such as Faber, Canongate etc? A more appropriate headline might be 'Triumph for conglomerates as Random House bags four'. The Guardian went for the shock giant-killing story but I'm not sure that Ian McEwan and A.N.Wilson count as complete outsiders. The Chairman of the Judges, Sir Howard Davies, goes for the quick win approach by describing the list as 'diverse', which means absolutely nothing but wins political correctness brownie points for implying racial diversity.

The one thing I'm pretty sure about is that the dreadful shock as described in the Guardian article will soon pass and editors and literary agents wil be assuring each other that the literary manuscript in hand will definitely win next year's prize.

'The news will produce as much shock among literary agents as authors - and the editors who entered them with some confidence for yesterday's long list.'

You may have noticed the Google-supplied ads to the right of this column, although very few of you click on them to judge by my earnings from this source. I occasionally click if one catches my eye and I clicked on Manuscript Editor Online yesterday. It's a service offering scientists help with preparing their manuscripts for publication but it's a shame they can't spell 'ophthalmology' in their main catalogue. It makes you wonder. Grumpy old ex-copyeditor speaking - and I know this column is anything but literal-free, but still...

I am absolutely clear that I am incapable of writing a book. So are most people (incapable of writing a book that is). It is extremely difficult. It is even more clear that - and I know it - I couldn't write a great book. Great books are rare and wonderful and require a slice of genius. However, there are some books which I half-think I should have had a crack at writing. I've just read one such.

The book is about a team of (almost entirely) useless cricketers known as the Captain Scott XI, named after the (failed) great explorer and against whom the Baldons Cricket Club (for whom I have played for more than thirty years) battled annually. The author, Harry Thompson, tragically died before the book was published. I remember him as a highly competitive, irritating and rather untalented opening batsman (not unlike me). He has, however, written the book I would love to have had the talent to write.

It is not just about low-quality cricketers touring the world. As a producer and writer of, amongst other things, Have I got news for you, he knows how to put the boot into the likes of British Airways. However, he is also wise. In one scene, the team is enjoying the low cost of food and drink in Buenos Aires. A bottle of Malbec which would cost £20 in London was selling for £2. Rather than buy the £2 bottle they wondered how a £20 bottle of Malbec in BsAs would taste. Out of this world, of course. And a good strategy.

It's an excellent and funny book published by John Murray and I'm sure they won't mind my pointing out the mis-spelling of 'genius' in the blurb of the hardback.

PS on book prices. The average price of a meal for one in the new restaurants in London as recommended by food critic Fay Maschler is £41. Makes Harry Potter,even at full price, a real snip.

From left to right: Christopher West, Macmillan's Regional Director for Latin America; Zsolt Agardy, Chairman of Angel Estrada; and Richard Nathan, Macmillan's Strategy Director. They are formally signing off the documentation for the purchase of Editorial Estrada, Argentina's first domestic publishing company founded in 1869, the same year as Nature and only 26 years after Macmillan itself. The location is the dining room of Estrada's offices which they have occupied since the beginning.

If you're Spanish is up to it, here is the full press release:

Ángel Estrada y Compañía S.A formaliza la venta de

Editorial Estrada S.A.

La operación se realizó con Macmillan Publishers Limited.

Buenos Aires, julio de 2007.  Ángel Estrada y Cía. S.A, empresa con una trayectoria de 138 años al servicio de la educación, la cultura y la papelería escolar y comercial, dio a conocer la formalización de la venta de su división Editorial Estrada S.A a Macmillan Publishers Limited, anunciada oportunamente.

La operación concretada por parte de Ángel Estrada, se realiza en un momento de sólido crecimiento de su unidad de negocio editorial, manteniendo una significativa participación de mercado y buenos resultados.

La venta dará lugar a que Ángel Estrada y Cía. S.A incremente su posición de liderazgo en el negocio de papelería escolar y comercial a través de sus marcas Rivadavia, Arte, América y el Nene, tanto en el mercado local como en el internacional.

Zsolt T.J. Agárdy, presidente de Ángel Estrada y Compañía S.A manifestó: "Estamos satisfechos con la transacción, ya que permitirá una mayor focalización y crecimiento de Ángel Estrada en su negocio de papelería escolar y comercial, ampliando su oferta de productos al consumidor local y aumentando sus exportaciones. Estoy seguro de que el ingreso de Macmillan será positivo para la Editorial”.   

Christopher West, Director Regional de Macmillan para Latinoamérica comentó: “Estamos muy conformes de haber llegado a un acuerdo en la compra de una de las Editoriales argentinas más antiguas y prestigiosas.  Las publicaciones de gran calidad de Editorial Estrada complementan nuestras actividades existentes en Argentina y marcan un nuevo paso en nuestra expansión en uno de los mercados educativos más importantes de América Latina”.

Información para editores:

Ángel Estrada & Compañía S.A fue fundada en Buenos Aires en 1869. Con una trayectoria de 138 años comprometida con la cultura y la educación del país, Ángel Estrada es dueña de un sólido prestigio en el negocio de la papelería escolar y comercial. A través de sus marcas Rivadavia, Arte, América y El Nene, la empresa ha sido capaz de mantener intacta su firme vocación orientada hacia la calidad, el compromiso y la innovación permanente.

Macmillan Publishers Limited fue fundada en 1843 y es integrante del grupo editorial alemán Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH. Tiene presencia en la Argentina desde 1998 en el área de textos escolares y es líder en publicaciones para la enseñanza del idioma inglés.

This acquisiton is a further extension of our Ibero-American strategy reflected in Grupo Macmillan. Across Latin America and Spain we now have nearly one thousand employees and the businesses represent a substantial proportion of Macmillan's overall business. Exciting times.

I've been immersed in a fascinating newspaper aimed at ex-patriate Brits living in France - French News. The main story is, as you might expect, 'Traditional dinner keeps French slimmer.'

But there's plenty of other stuff. France's suicide rate is double that of Britain's. There is detailed analysis of the new President Nicolas Sarkozy's tax-reducing policies and how it affects British immigrants. I enjoyed this headline in the La Vie est Belle section: Supervising his erection in the Haute-Vienne, Barry Cornell finds he has to contend with tradesmen who speak French, Welsh, Yorkshire and Latin.' I was pleased to note Le parti du plaisir led by ex-stripper Miss Cindy Lee has promised to create a network of nudist camps across France if elected next time around.

However, I was most pleased to discover in the sports section that 'Et alors' is the equivalent of 'Howzat' and that on Sunday 26 August on the Damazan Cricket Club ground there will be the finals of Siddalls Cup between Tarn and Toulouse.

The main book review was, of course, Pardon my French.