The Book Battle of Britain

The Great Bookselling War has begun. And a very quiet war it is so far: typically British.

In our last exciting episode (Endpapers, April 30), we left the Net Book Agreement in grave peril, twisting in the wind at the mercy of the Office of Fair Trading, whilst the chain booksellers snapped hungrily at its hovering toes.

Now one of the chains has moved “aggressively” (“Dillons continue to push for the abolition of price-fixing on books”) against the Net Book Agreement, brandishing its self-bequeathed sword of public liberation.

The NBA, you will recall, requires sellers to charge the prices publishers set. Not that books don’t eventually get remaindered; they don’t get discounted.

“Unfair!” cried Pentos (Dillons’ parent), one of the bigger sellers in competition-oriented Thatcherite Britain. It threatened to cut prices. The Publishers Assn. invoked the NBA, stressing the damage (supermarkets could muscle in and “cream off” the 30 best sellers, ruining small booksellers) that discounting could wreak.

The Office of Fair Trading intervened. Was the NBA truly fair? (This is where you tuned out.)

In August, the OFT opined that there was “insufficient evidence” of restrictive trading practices to have the Net Book Agreement further investigated.

The NBA’s relief was momentary, or perhaps it was postponement-by-inaction instead of relief. In 1990, according to the inside dope, a government bill, looking ahead to the 1992 European Single Market, would likely abolish or greatly change the NBA.

In late fall, Pentos said it wouldn’t wait, and at Christmastime would challenge the Net Book Agreement head-on!

What has really happened is fraught with technicality and speculation.

“Dillons Starts Price War on Books,” ran the typical early December headline. It took 20 to 25% off the cover price of eight titles that had been published “non-Net” in the first place. (Publishers always have had the right to publish “non-Net,” but few have done so.)

The “best sellers” might not cause most American minds to reel. At the top, according to a Dillons spokesman, was a pocket-sized guide to wine (discounted from about $9.50 to about $7.25--the standard non-NBA argument is that American books are cheaper).

Add an antique guide, two cookbooks, a Batman book, an atlas, a history of the 20th Century and a bird-watchers’ manual. Is this the stuff that makes bookselling history?

Pentos has 6% of the book-buying market in this land where only political revolutions can nudge trade figures off the front pages, and the real question posed by its action is whether Pentos will sell more copies of non-discounted books than it used to ( This is also a land with an iron Corporate Veil, and figures are hard to come by). And how W. H. Smith might respond.

Smith, named for its Victorian founder (the non-seagoing model for the ruler of the Queen’s Nayvee in “H.M.S. Pinafore”), has about 20% of the market, a strong presence in America, and recently gobbled up Waterstone’s--the chief proponents of the “stockholding” function of bookshops, hence the NBA heroes in April’s Endpapers.

Ever since Pentos’ Terry Maher started making his noises more than a year ago, Smith’s monarch, Sir Simon Hornby, has been promising a “strong response” to any NBA-breaking move.

The early reaction from the Publishers Assn. in the Sunday Observer was suitably British: “We welcome book-promotion efforts, and the option of discounting of non-Net books demonstrates the flexibility of the agreement.”

Meanwhile, the real best sellers roll along undiscounted: Umberto Eco’s and P. D. James’ latest puzzlers; Kazuo Ishiguro’s delicate, on-its-Wodehousey-ear prize winner; Julian Barnes’ exercise in stylistics; Stephen Hawking’s (soon to be Stephen Spielberg’s) time-theory; beetlebrowed Denis Healey’s jolly political memoirs. The average price of these biggies is $17.50.

They know about Phony Wars over here, and this may be one. On the other hand, the last Phony War preceded the Blitz.