The Bookshop is Moving

Books Books Books is Moving....I hope you'll come with us!

From Tuesday, 22nd May the bookshop will be at Rue Jean-Louis Gaillard 2. This is located in the Chauderon/Tour section of town, about a 2 minute walk from Holy Cow at Rue des Terreaux. 

Please note that there is parking directly outside the shop. We are still selling literature and non-fiction. We are still doing events. The life of the bookshop continues.

The shop is going to be closed from Thursday, 17th - Monday, 21st May while we make the move (this is the Ascension weekend). Please note that the new shop will be closed every Monday from 28th May until the end of August after which we will resume the normal opening hours. Having worked 6 days a week for 3.5 years I need a break!

In the next three weeks we will be liquidating more stock. We are also giving away 20 small, black 'Billy' bookcases - feel free to drop by the shop if you want to take some away.

Opening Party

Come and celebrate the new shop on the evening of Friday, 25th May. We'll be serving a sophisticated choice of cocktails from 6pm and have invited the bestselling writer Jon Steele to talk about his book The Watchers. Jon earned many awards as a camerman/editor, reporting the news from every corner of the world. In 2008 he lived for three months with an American combat unit, recording their lives for the documentary film, The Baker Boys: Inside the Surge.

He moved to Lausanne where he wrote The Watchers sitting in LP's bar at the Palace hotel and in the bell tower in the cathedral. The book is a gothic thriller and takes place in and around our beloved cathedral. Jon is an interesting guy and an excellent raconteur, particularly after one of my fabled cocktails.

Please sign up for the event here: http://www.doodle.com/z998bu6g8rvbw2fr
I look forward to seeing you at the (new) bookshop soon,

Matt

The Shop is Moving

There are many reasons to move shop, some large, some small. There are also particular reasons why Books Books Books is moving to Louis-Gaillard. This is going to be a long post, but if you are interested in the shop and the retail market in Lausanne then you may find it interesting.

Something I noticed right away in Lausanne is the large number of shops that never seem to have any customers. 'How can they survive?' I asked myself, 'And why would you bother if you don't make any money?'

Part of the reason for the plethora of idle businesses is the fonds du commerce. Although illegal, this works in the following way. There is a real pressure on downtown retail space. If you have a place you can sell your 'goodwill' to the highest bidder. So, even if you haven't sold a bean for years your rental property is worth something and many people will wait years for the right offer.

This payment is normally dressed up one way or another to circumvent the letter of the law, but if you are looking for a space that is already occupied you should be ready to pay a mimimum of 60K just to get your foot in the door. I have heard of prices as high as 150K for shops as small as 40 m2.

This means that small shops struggle to get a foothold in Lausanne. When they go out of business they are replaced either by large shops who have the required capital to take the slot over, or by businesses with high profit margins, such as opticians and hairdressers.

I have been looking for a new space for the shop for about two years. I have both responded to adverts and sought partnerships with other independents. None of these have come to anything. The search became particularly acute last year when Holmes Place changed management and started to expand. From that moment I knew that I had a tenuous grip on my lease and I had to find a new place sooner rather than later.

I essentially had options on three places. One had a 50k price tag, but was a lovely place. Another was in a partnership with a bookshop, and finally I was also hoping my neighbour might find a place for me in his shop. These places were within a short walk of the current location and for different reasons these leads dried up. It seems that the local commercants are not so commercial after all.

As you know, the book market has also radically changed over the last two years. I estimate that four years ago the online retailers probably held about 80% of the local market. It was a tough environment, but there was enough of the pie left to make a living. E-readers have further expanded the online market share. Whereas before you wanted a book so you decided whether to buy it online or on the high street, now you have an extra choice of downloading it, further shrinking the role of the bookshop. Video did indeed kill the radio star.

Happily for BBB, our sales have expanded every year and 2012 should be no different. However, sales to expatriates, the mainstay of my first year, have shrunk. I was faced with a choice. I could rent an office, work less, earn the same or I could continue in a shop and continue earning the same and work everyday. I chose to keep going.

I still think that bookshops play an important role in the intellectual life of the community. I am still passionate about literature. If I wanted to work in an office I could do that tomorrow and earn more. Ultimately not everything can be measured in a balance sheet.

The new shop is in my neighbourhood and I see it very much as a neighbourhood bookshop. I am also looking to make links with the School of Life or any other organisation that can add to Lausanne's intellectual or cultural enrichment.

Most importantly, though, I will still be selling books, specialising as always in quirky fiction and non-fiction. This is where my passion lies and this is the reason I am still here. My thrill is selling a book I love to a person I like.

There's not much more to add, other than thanks for reading and I hope I'll see you in the new bookshop soon,

Matt

Put the book down and step away from the sofa

The sign of a good book is that you can't stop reading it. I've lost count of the times I have woken up with a book on my face, or by the loud bang as it slips out of my fingers and hits the floor.

I am on a noir kick at the moment having read through 'The Best American Noir of the Century' edited by By Otto Penzler and James Ellroy. In the introduction Ellroy describes noir saying 'It’s the long drop off the short pier and the wrong man and the wrong woman in perfect misalliance. It’s the nightmare of flawed souls with big dreams and the precise how and why of the all-time sure thing that goes bad.' While not every story lives up to this expectation there were enough good tales that I decided to buy Ellroy's L.A. Noir to see how his writing measured up.

L.A. Noir is a trilogy set around Detective Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins, a deeply flawed LAPD homicide cop. Hopkins' ability to understand killers makes him Homicide's most effective cop, it also makes him obssesive, exacting and an extremely difficult husband. In the first story in the trilogy he is hunting a serial killer who had killed more than 20 women across the decades.

Sometime ago I read Steig Larsson's Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and hated its depiction of violence and sexual depravity. Ellroy adds casual drug use to this mix and I really liked the book. Why the sadistic violence in this book works better than in others I don't know. Maybe because it's in the context of the story. In any case, the plot is rivetting. In the small hours of the morning I realised I had started to read the book in extreme close-upand called it a night.

I can't wait to get back to it this evening. Forget about all these modern crime writers - buy Ellroy from your nearest independent bookshop to discover what the genre is really about.

Bookshelf by Alex Johnson

Oh, unhappy life!

Don't read this book.

You'll want something on every pages. You won't be able to tear your eyes away.

Put it away. Lock the drawer. This way misery lies.

Laquered steel, silicon, recycled wood, plexiglass
Slings, wheels, balances, arrows
Chairs, staircases, expresso bars, dresses

Bookshelves in varieties, designs and colours that you have never imagined.

Porn for the book lover.

I have signed copies.

I'll wrap them in brown paper.

I promise not to tell if you buy one

The Difference Between e-Books and Real Books

e-Books vs Paper Books. What's The Difference?

I wouldn't send my wife an e-card for her birthday.

The Swiss Vote on the Price of Books

Fixed prices for books in Switzerland?

Next month the Swiss will vote on 'The Federal Law on the Control of Book Prices'. It's creating a brouhaha in the book world and will affect the majority of books in Switzerland. Despite not having a vote I have been following the law for some time and thought I'd explain it as best I can.

What does it mean?
 

Assuming the Swiss people vote in favour then the law be applied only to new books, written in one of Switzerland's national languages that are published or sold in Switzerland. The law will extend to online sales, including cross-border transactions.

If the law is implemented then publishing houses or the importers (distributors) will set book prices and the bookshops will be oblidged to respect this price. The 'Surveillant des prix' will keep an eye on the prices and if they are too high in relation to prices in other countries then he has the authority to propose a maximum authorised price to the Federal Council.

Why is it being discussed?

There are many reasons why this law is being proposed. Currently bookshops  are being, frankly, screwed by the publishing houses as they must go through distributors to get the books. This means that a book costing 5 Euros in France costs CHF 11.50 in Switzerland. And there is no other channel to get the book.

On the rare occassions I have been asked to buy French books I have tried to short circuit the system by buying the books from another bookshop, or as a last resort through an online retailer. This works for the very small quantities of French books I buy, but clearly does not work for large French bookshops. The situation for German books is not quite so acute - there are many large wholesalers in Germany who offer reasonable terms - but French publishers and their distributors exert have rigid price and ditribution controls.

The law is also intended to protect small bookshops who struggle to compete on price with the big sellers, particularly those online, who offer huge discounts. This problem is particularly acute in Switzerland where 90% of books are imported. Fixing the price is intended to level the playing field and bring customers back to the independents who offer a quality service and can make informed recommendations. It is an attempt to maintain the biodiversity in the Swiss book market.

Finally, the law aims to protect Swiss publishers and writers. Currently these publishers produce a small amount if books in comparison to their international rivals. This means that they have little power in their own market where their books have to compete with a few, large publishers.  By fixing prices it is hoped that they too will compete more equally with the big boys of publishing which will in turn assist Swiss writers and protect the book as a cultural object.

The view from the bridge

You might think that I am jumping up and down in support of this initiative, but I feel quite ambivalent. I think the law over-simplifies a very complex situation. I am also wary of the fact that it will be publishers and importers who set the price. In whose interest will they do this?

I am also unsure that the state will be able to effectively police online retailers. As the law's opposition point out, these retailers will be rubbing their hands together in glee if they can find some way not to submit to the initiative. A legal challenge by the onine giants is not unthinkable and you can be sure that they will make hay while the challenge winds its way through the courts.

How to vote? 

In the ideal world the consumer would value books as objects and fully appreciate the benefits of buying from a bookshop. In my experience most readers consider price and convenience as the main determining factors and have already voted with their wallets. This law does not and cannot address this situation and, in my opinion, makes the debate something of a sideshow.

If you vote against the law then you more or less approve of the current system, with all its imperfections. If you vote yes then there is no guarantee that the system will improve. It may even deteriorate.

Whichever way you vote you can be certain that no-one will ever open a new bookshop in Switzerland. Globally, the number of bookshops is only ever going to decrease. Our children will be the last to ever walk into a bookshop and be blown away by the presence of so many books. This is a very high price for convenience.This is the crux of the matter.

The Perks of Owning a Bookshop

One of the perks of owning a bookshop is that quite often I get to meet the authors of the books I read. I am especially spoiled this month as I went to the Geneva Writer's Conference where I met Patricia Duncker and Bret Lott. Regular readers will also know that Jonathan Coe will be in Vevey next month.

I believe that meeting a writer provides some insight into their books. In the case of Bret Lott, for example, it was fascinating to hear how he began his career as a VC Cola salesman and how this experience influenced his first novel, which incidentally centred around a VC Cola salesman. Having heard Bret speak it was also easier to 'hear' his words as I read his words.

On this month's World Radio Switzerland SpeedRead it seemed appropriate to review books by these three novelists.  At the end of the slot Alex asks me which one of these novels I preferred. Honestly, I believe you could buy any of these books and be treated to an enjoyable read and maybe even discover a writer you really like. The choice I made was strictly personal...

You can listen to the interview here.

I would post an image but in 2012 it seems to be beyond Bluewin to provide me with a wifi connection capable of uploading a 72 kb image.