In this post I’m going to rip into Waterstone’s, the chain of booksellers for whom I worked for a substantial number of years. In the unlikely event that this post comes to the attention of anyone at Waterstone’s or indeed anyone who has an interest in this kind of thing it’s worth pointing out some things. Firstly a lot of what I’m saying is based on hindsight. I left the company in 2003 and have no inside information on how the business is operated today. Secondly, while I do have friends who still work for Waterstone’s none of this is based on company secrets they’ve told me because, to be honest, they haven’t. This is all based on my experiences back in the day and conjecture. And while I did leave Waterstone’s under something of a cloud I don’t hold any grudges against the company as a whole. I’m not one of those romantic idiots who thinks Waterstone’s has betrayed the essence of retail bookselling – if anything I’d adjusted to the new regime rather well in my final years. My leaving was more personal involving specific people, which is why I’ve never really written about it.
So, onwards.
Retail bookselling is doomed. In the UK retail bookselling can be summed up as Waterstone’s since that company comprises nearly every chain of the last few decades. Dillons, Hammicks, Ottakars, Sherratt and Hughes, etc, etc – they’re all under the W now. (I’m not counting WH Smiths because they sell other stuff and, to be honest, I don’t know anything about them.)
A bookshop gets its money from two main areas – bestsellers and backlist. The bestseller market has been eaten up wholesale by the supermarkets who will happily sell a book at 5% margin because to them that’s way more than they make on milk. Bookshops are historically used to getting 35-50% and they need this because they have to pay for all those books on the shelves. Tescos will only stock a few books that will sell in days. Waterstone’s stock thousands of different books that might sell in a few months. On top of this because supermarkets are buying titles in huge qualities they’re able to negotiate very high discounts – over 60% at a guess – so they can undercut the bookshops by a long stretch. Bookshops have to either match these prices or give up selling the bestsellers – suddenly their honey pot has gone dry.
Since bestsellers, especially at Christmas, are what pay for everything else in the shop the range of backlist is going to suffer. Generally speaking invoices have to be paid within 90 days so those books on the shelves have to pay for themselves (and the rent, the staff, and so on) or be returned for credit way before that. This might seem reasonable business sense but it’s not conducive to a bookshop that wants to have a deep range of books. Now to the untrained eye 10,000 titles looks a lot like 100,000 titles but to someone who’s worked those shelves Waterstone’s is not only bare, it’s bland. There’s no depth there.
This is not a criticism. This is reality. If those huge emporiums of the written word are to survive they have to aim for the lowest common denominator and hold onto it for dear life.
Which brings us to Amazon. I can’t say whether Amazon stole the backlist market from Waterstone’s or whether they just mopped up after Waterstone’s abandoned it but they own the specialist book market now. Yes, they also have a healthy slice of the discounted bestseller market but that’s really just the hook. Backlist is where they make their money. To invoke the buzz phrase, it’s all about the Long Tail. Waterstone’s used to nibble at the Long Tail and, pre-internet, could claim ownership of it, but no longer.
The funny thing is, despite all the hard evidence to the contrary, Waterstone’s still trades on this reputation as a depth and range bookseller. Certainly the average punter entering one of their massive superstores would be forgiven in thinking this was true. But it’s not. In marketing terms it’s known as “a lie”. Waterstone’s sells books that it knows will sell and returns books that don’t sell with ruthless efficiency. This is great if you want a bestselling book, except you can get it at Tescos or Amazon for less, but useless if you want something that isn’t a bestseller. You know, something interesting.
You can’t blame them for holding to this myth. It’s what their customers want after all. That sense that even though they’re buying overly hyped novels from the 3 for 2 table they’re really partaking in some high-falutin literary scene with sexy black carrier bags and shabbily cool staff. Shopping at Waterstone’s lets them pretend they’re mixing with the literati while still keeping everything safe and high street. (Which isn’t a bad thing as the literati, as evidenced by trade magazine The Bookseller, are tossers. But that’s another story.)
So Waterstone’s, trapped between a rock and a hard place, is doomed.
[Interesting historical thought: Bookselling as we know it didn't really exist 30 years ago, at least not outside London. It was only in the 80s when Terry Maher bought Dillons and Tim Waterstone started his empire that the concept of a national chain with deep stock really took off. Compared to the long history of selling books going back centuries what we're on the verge of losing is really just a footnote. A failed experiment based on delusions of accessible highbrow ideals and short term Thatcherite economics. Hmm.]
After that extended preamble, to the meat of this post. Waterstone’s, I see in the Guardian, has relaunched it’s online shop. Presumably accepting that they’ll never be able to match the supermarkets they’re going for Amazon. Amazon stole their business away from them and now they want it back. Rather amusingly they appear be under the impression that they can do this.
The first thing that struck me about the brand new waterstones.com was rather superficial: the cartoon at the top of the page.
Any bookseller who lets their section get into that state under the current regime would be subject to at least a disciplinary, and yet that’s the message they want to put out. Kinda messy, cosy, non-threatening, homey. Where are the bestseller faceouts? Where are the “shelf talkers” pushing bestsellers to the uncertain browser? Where, indeed, are the pyramid tables stack high with 3 for 2 offers? The dissonance between fantasy and reality would be worrying if it wasn’t how retail works. This stuff isn’t problematic – it just amuses me in the same way people think working in a bookshop must be a doss when it’s actually rather stressful and badly paid (though you do meet interesting folk some of whom will be friends for life and you get a decent staff discount, so it’s not all bad.)
Other than that, it’s a rather nice website, so all credit to those involved because it could have been awful. But it’s not.
That said, the actual content is rather superficial, mainly geared around bestsellers and surefire new titles. Editorially it doesn’t stray from the mainstream, which leads me, finally, to my big point.
In the advertising for the new site they really push the human element. “Humans make the best search engines” runs the headline. This ties into the notion that all these nasty computers are stripping away the soul from the book buying experience when what you really want is someone with actual knowledge to guide you through the labyrinth. There’s a lot to be said for this. If I, as someone who doesn’t know contemporary fiction that well, want advice on a new novel to read I’ll ask one of my fiction loving chums for advice. This is the great Waterstone’s (and Dillons and Ottakars and Hammicks and Sherrat and Hughes etc) way – staff your shops with young arts graduates who don’t know what they want to do with their lives but know a fair bit about books – so I’d be interested to know exactly how their online Ask a Bookseller service works.
“Let real people with expert knowledge help you find the best books and brilliant prices” continues the advert. Interesting choice of words there. Not the “book you want” but the “best books”. But it’s the “real people with expert knowledge” that really has me curious. Who are these real people?
Another somewhat inevitable effect of the supermarket/Amazon squeeze is Waterstone’s doesn’t have as many staff as they used to. Actually, that’s kinda generous. They’re running their stores at skeleton levels. Just visit one and have a look for yourself. Back in the late 90s there was a very good case for cutting back on staff. Working for the company really was a bit of a doss. You could spend ages chatting with customers (and each other), pouring over stock sheets to improve your range, drinking coffee with publisher’s reps and so on. A cull of, say, 30% was quite reasonable, if a little hard to adjust to. I wouldn’t like to speculate what the levels are at now but they’re very low. Much lower than in my time. This has partly been achieved by taking a lot of responsibility for stock away from the shop floor and into the smaller pool of managers and head office buyers, which makes sense if your range has been reduced to that which can be decided on cold sales figures. The result is a bunch of disempowered shelf stackers and till monkeys whose knowledge of the wider book industry is minimal at best, not because they’re stupid but because they’re never exposed to it. On top of this, they don’t give a shit anymore. We used to give a shit back when we actually had some control over our departments because they were our departments. That ownership might have been an illusion but it was a powerful one. If a book was sold out from my section, which I knew back to front, I took it as a personal failing. Now, with a few exceptions, working for Waterstone’s is like working for any other high street retailers. It’s a minimum wage job. If you do get impeccable service at Waterstone’s that’s because the person serving you is a human being with a soul and you sparked something in them. It’s got nothing to do with the company.
At least that’s my perception from the outside, based on trends I witnessed in my time there. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure I’m right.
So, who are these human beings doing the recommending if they’re not the shop floor staff? Store management, probably, although they won’t have a lot of time since they’re, y’know, busy managing the store. Which leaves us with the marketing department at head office. Now, they’re not evil people – many of them are ex-booksellers – but they’re not exactly at the front line.
Meanwhile this website is supposed to grab back market share from Amazon.
Where do I start?
Amazon might be, at heart, a big bunch of computer algorithms but they’re a darn sight more interesting that the sales charts and publisher hype that Waterstone’s work with. I’m as cynical about these things as can be but having bought a fair few things from them over the years their personal recommendations have an alarming tendency to be unerringly accurate. Maybe Waterstone’s will also do this with their online customers, I don’t know, but it’ll be a catch-up operation rather than anything novel.
Amazon put a lot of weight in their customer reviews. Yes, a lot of them are really stupid, but you can spot the stupid ones and dismiss them. The fact remains that your personal recommendation is there, on the screen, in multiple, for you to take or leave. Amazon leverages its enthusiastic customer base while Waterstone’s is relying on minimum wage slaves and managers who are scared not to toe the company line.
Amazon look at sales data and customer behaviour within the site and generate dynamic charts based on all manner of variables. In English this means their results are not stuck in bestseller land unless you want them to be. They’ll pick out things that raw sales data cannot find and create new sales from them, as explained the opening paragraphs of the original Long Tail article. Booksellers used to do this when the had the books to do it. How can they when all they have are bestsellers?
Amazon is open. All their data is out there, from recommendations to reviews to sales. In fact if you’re technically minded you can even hook into the raw data using their web services. I don’t expect Waterstone’s to have this kind of technical oomph but will those questions sent to booksellers be published on the site so others can use them? Doesn’t look like it. Looks like a glorified email system to me. High street retail is all about secrets. The web is all about openness.
In short, Amazon is an internet company that understands the internet. Waterstone’s is a high street retailer that understands the high street. While price has a lot to do with it, the reason online shopping works is because it does things high street shopping cannot. Similarly the high street does things online cannot, like letting you see the thing you’re buying first. Waterstones.com, like their glossy magazine, will act as a nice online directory to their stores and give something extra to those customers who want to buy into the Waterstone’s myth, but it’s not going to take anything away from Amazon. That, frankly, is nonsense.
Comparing Waterstone’s to Amazon is like comparing apples and oranges. They’re both fruits but they’re very different. I keep being drawn back to the history of the company (or companies) in that this sort of bookselling is relatively young. Maybe it doesn’t deserve to survive this upheaval? Do we really need these huge temples to literature in every city? In my experience the shops that made the best profit margins were the small ones located where people worked. They were convenient, friendly and reliable because their customers were predictable. The superstores were always struggling to find their niche, like battleships negotiating a winding river, weighed down by outrageous rent and utility bills. Perhaps their time has come.
Oh, and just for the record, Tim Waterstone can fuck right off with his “I wanna buy back my shop from the evil people” bullshit. Bloke never made a profit in the first place and is living in some kind of fantasy land. The only thing he gave the chain of any worth was the Big Myth and that’s running out of credibility. Though not, it seems, with journalists.
Until this new website Waterstones.com used to go to directly to Amazon.co.uk with a sort of (“we’re partners stuff’), I haven’t had a good look around the new site but I think this is a kind of amazon/watersontes virtual cart.
let me explain, Waterstones builds the interface (the shop front, the “humans rock bs”) it’s name might even be on the printed invoice but the actual books still come from Amazon, The virtual cart APIs exist for this sort of thing, it also makes great sense since since a) amazon is selling more books, b) nobody is competing (Amazon is still on the web, Waterstone is still in the highstreet) c) Waterstones does bugger all (Waterstones could have event paid amazon to build the shop front? ) so yea, I think that’s what’s going on I of course I could be wrong and waterstones could have started to sell their own books on the web, a cutting edge idea in 2006
I don’t know who’s doing the order fulfillment stuff but I don’t think it’s amazon anymore, at least not judging by that Guardian article. They may have their own warehouse (possibly a floor of one of their massive flagship stores?) or they may be using a third party wholesaler but I’d be very surprised if it’s Amazon.
Okay, I’ll cite a source. Someone I know in the company told me a few months ago they were “going for Amazon”.
And they are competing, or at least they think they’re competing. There’s a real perception that Amazon is eating their market share and perception is worth a lot in retail.
I was going to write a whole section about the history of the Waterstone’s website but to be honest this piece is long enough as it is. Suffice to say they used to have one with order fulfillment coming from a trade wholesaler (Gardners IIRC) but it was kinda bungled so they moved it to Amazon and magically removed all mention of the website from the marketing materials. Given this high profile launch I really doubt it’s still a partnership (which, from what I hear, basically works on the same lines as an affiliate scheme with very low margins).
The Long Tail is what will give Amazon the edge as you rightly point out. So it’s interesting to see ‘book stores’ like Borders expanding to cover more of the ‘literary’ extremities with magazines, stationary, music and more.. all available to peruse with your Starbucks skinny latte of course.
The experience of being in Borders is much better than any Waterstone, I’m much more inclined to head there for a wander than into Waterstone.
Mind you, I don’t read many blockbusters so that might account for the book store preference.
Christ, I’d forgotten about Borders and Books Etc! I wonder how they’re doing?
Fascinating post, Pete – thanks for that.
Pete, do you remember the Book Stop in an old cinema in Houston? It is threatened with closure now it is a subsidiary of Barnes & Noble and not half a mile from a huge Borders.
When I first went to live in Houston the selection of bookstores was awful with shelves dedicated to new age science and nothing on real science. Over the years things did get a whole lot better with B&N, Bookstop and Borders all competing with coffee bars, comfy sofas, expanded range of books, etc. Now it would appear to be sliding backwards again.
Meanwhile, our local privately run bookshop in the Cotswolds often suggests we buy direct from Amazon as they cannot guarantee getting an order in!
Superb post, Pete. To be honest, what’s happening with books is much the same as what is happening with music shops – supermarkets and the internet are impacting heavily on the major high-street retailers. My hope is that the small independent music and book shops manage to survive because they retain that very personal aspect to their service. Nothing better than perusing the shelves of that sort of place in person – not an experience that browsing online can touch.
One other thing: you didn’t mention eBay. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was eating into Waterstones etc share of the “Long Tail” too. That’s where I generally head these days if I want a specific book and don’t mind if it’s not brand new. Browsing shops is fun, but sometimes you just want something immediately, and there’s almost bound to be someone out there with a copy for sale on eBay – Waterstones can’t hope to have that range of books in stock, and if a book isn’t in stock that means keeping the customer waiting while it’s ordered in. And, of course, eBay is ideal for out-of-print books too.
Anyway, great article. I’ll pass it on to my friend who worked for Waterstones for a number of years – it’ll be interesting to see what she makes of it (and I suspect that from what she’s said in the past, she’ll agree with you).
I think this sort of thing is more or less a self-fulfilling prophecy, though – Supermarkets/Amazon (although I’m not keen on the latter myself) provide you with cheap stuff, your friendly local independant shop gives you the interesting stuff (and personal touch, if that’s what you’re looking for) while your Waterstones (or HMV/Virgin, in Ben’s analogy) provide the worst of both worlds and can thus go and whistle for it.
Having said that, I think I possibly have always fallen for the Waterstones Big Myth, at least a little bit. In contrast to Gordon, I’ve always found branches of Waterstones (and Ottakers, which I now find are part of Waterstones) nicer to browse around than any of the other chain bookshops – especially the sterile-feeling Borders. I think it’s the touch of effort put in to make them look nicer. It seems to work for me on a subconcious level, now that I think about it.
Somebody mentioned ebay up above – if we’re going to discuss secondhand books, then we should probably mention abebooks as well.
I was disappointed a couple of weeks ago, when I went into the local Ottakars and saw that they now all have the Waterstones in-store signage, the 3 for 2 signs, all the same.
15 years ago in Nor, we had a big local bookstore called Fagins, and a huge books / video store called Volume One / James Thin. The first of those is a Lloyds No1 Bar, the second of those is Waterstones.
Driving home from work though, I notice that there seems like is going to be a big branch of Borders opening soon in MK, but out-of-town. Not sure if thats where the book trade is going to go – out of town superstores that can have the wider stock, but the cheaper rents ?
Yes. And as a non-bestselling novelist it scares the shit out of me – because how can anyone ever discover, or buy, my books if they’re not available for browsing in book shops?
According to publications such as The Author, mid-list authors are already feeling the squeeze as a result of supermarkets stocking only bestsellers and demanding massive discounts from publishers (which then gets passed onto the author in royalty cheques – the end of the net book agreement means that writers now get a percentage of sale price, not cover price), and chains stocking less backlist and fewer mid-list authors. Smaller advances, lower royalties, harder to get published, harder to get marketed, harder to get onto bookshop shelves.
Oh well, back to working in IT then.
Incidentally, my partner and three of our closest friends all left Waterstone’s at about the same time as you, and for the same reasons. They ran an independent book shop instead. It went bust.
Not that I’m saying they should have stayed at Waterstone’s, just that it’s very hard to make money selling books anywhere other than the internet or a supermarket these days.
Yeah, I agree on pretty much every point. I did 12 months of time under Robert Topping in the Deansgate branch and even then , the company felt like a sinking ship. It was a strange strange time.
In truth, I love wandering around bookstores. Especially borders here in the States. But I’m just window shopping and using it as a refined librray. I read magazines for free and compile booklists “I’ll order this book from the library later, or failing that, Amazon”.
Amazon cannot be beaten for hard-to-find books (excepts rarely by abebooks.com). Waterstones out of print book search, remember that? Was USELESS.
Waterstones cannot offer people careers anymore. I jumped ship to the library service and never regretted it.
I also jumped ship, and i was only a part timer. In the mere 3 years i was with the company, i became gradually more repulsed by what was going on. They will gradually loose all their experts ( their booksellers) who, frankly, just about set them apart from other highstreet retailers. They treat these people like shit and expect too much in return. I will be very happy to see pride take a fall, i only hope that the people i love who are still stuck inside the abominable beast have manage to escape to a happier career by that point.
The thing that annoys me the most about W is that they still pretend that they care about the ‘backlist’ customers. What i mean is, at least Borders is honest and up front about being this big lolloping chain- W still like to delude themselves that they are some kind of specialist! ( i’m talking about highranking attitudes on the inside here-not sure if they would be that obvious to people who’ve never had to sit through a staff meeting.)
Interesting points about the rise and fall of a particular style of bookselling.
Count me in as another Abebooks user, and as having made my last two book purchases at 2nd hand shops: Rare & Racy in Sheffield, and
Duncan Allsop in Warwick.
The Times: Waterstone’s set to relaunch website. It says online orders will be delivered from the wholesalers Bertram Books.
Waterstones did a darn good job of handing the book selling market to Aamzon on a plate. Going in to Waterstones and ordering a book has always been (in my experience) a hellish experience. Why go through that when, with a few clicks of the mouse, the books come right to my door in about a week.
I have discovered a few gems using Amazon. Looking at the reviews, following links to ‘other people also purchased…’ etc. I love browsing book shops, especially second hand book shops, but Amazon really has got the online market stitched up. Having looked at the Waterstones site, it doesn’t tempt me away from Aamzon. Maybe if they offered free delivery on ALL orders rather than the same £15 threshold that Amazon has.
It does seem a bit as if Waterstones are shutting the gate when not only has the horse buggered off but also the stable’s crumbling too. Overextended metaphors aside, maybe I’m naive but I think a lot of Waterstones’ current woes essentially stem from the devaluing of the book as an object. Post Net Book Agreement, the chain has increasingly been run by folk who see no difference between a book and a bag of frozen peas – they’re both just commodities to retail. The problem is that now the public think the same way. And so, crucially, do the companies that previously sold frozen peas but not books.
Whether or not Waterstones could have survived in the short term without the demise of the NBA and the rise of discounting we’ll never know, but long term it’s fucking them up good and proper. God knows where they go from here. Amazon beat them for backlist and if they compete with Tesco for price on bestsellers then it’s not as if they’ll actually be making any appreciable profit from those titles (and the authors will make precious little too). That pretty much leaves them with customers who don’t shop online who want a bookshop with a cafe in it and object on principle to the Starbucks in Borders.
“Robert Topping in the Deansgate branch”
Yup. All our friends ran away from Mr Topping, too. Although in his favour they will say that he resisted central ordering and wanted to maintain the distinctive and local flavour that Deansgate had.
Incidentally, now that all ordering is done centrally, I’ve found it impossible to interest two of my local Waterstone’s branches in stocking my books, despite the fact that 20 of my colleagues had a definite interest in buying my book from the store next to our office. They did indeed buy it in the end, but from the friendly independent store down the road, because Waterstone refused to stock it (and I promise I was very nice about it all – I don’t do arsey). It may just be that my book was too niche, but I suspect they simply won’t feature local-interest stuff any more unless it’s being covered nationwide.
Well, I still work for Waterstone’s so I’m not going to really comment even though I enjoyed the post. But it is true that retail is changing, and bookselling is changing even moreso. Whenever I read people’s thoughts about Waterstone’s lately I do tend to bristle a little as not only do people (not neccessarily Pete) often miss the mark.
As for Abe, I know someone who sold through them and hated it as they made so little money after Abe’s charges that they had to get a pretty full part time job, the changes to post charges didn’t help.
Im suprised to find that Waterstones are indeed selling books themselfs, I wonder how much money they would have make being a branded reseller vs selling books themselfs, clearly someone with a pie chart has convinced them that it’s a lot more but I’m not sure.
Ben makes an interesting point about eBay, Amazon does this with the whole Marketplace thing. Clearly Waterstones should strike a deal with eBay and build a join venture, oh an while were talking about things Waterstones will never do, I suggest they sponsoring Bookcrossing and give away free books.
I don’t think Watersones get it, and you know I’ve only been in one Borders (in the bullring) but it was pretty obvious that they do. It’s a little bit more expensive but it’s an awfully nicer experience, plus they have all those rare magazines that you can’t find anywhere.
So what’s that much nicer about Borders, then (since two people have said they find it thus)?
Like Tom I’ve only ever been in the Bullring branch, but compared to any Waterstones branch that’s definitely the one that really feels like a chain shop to me.
In the context of this discussion, the email I received this morning from the Society of Authors is interesting:
“the Managing Director of Waterstone’s, Gerry Johnson, has kindly agreed that members of the Society will be entitled to a 10% discount on all book purchases”
Nice follow on post at Salesmonkey
Fair points…but you failed to mention that ALL retail apart from the giant multichannel supermarkets are flailing because of online sales (including music, clothes, electrical goods, toys, the whole lot).
So their losses are in line with the average, and yeah, they’ve gone after the bestseller market. Can you blame them? In today’s media-dominated Britain, everyone sees books advertised on Richard & Judy, and Heat…so it would be stupid for them to throw away the easy sales.
If you’ve worked for Waterstones, as I once did, then you know that range is due to two things…budget – if they don’t make much money, they can’t increase their range much and take a chance on new things; section buyers – if there’s noone buying for computer books, they are all ordered automatically according to sales or scale outs or by the reps. So, it’s really about passion for books, and knowledge that sets them apart. Have you BEEN to a Borders…they have nowhere near the number of knowledgeable staff as W. People who work in a bookshop usually do have a love of books…it’s unusual for them not to. It’s not like Argos, or John Lewis…if you don’t like books, you’re unlikely to apply for a job there. Walk into any W, and ask a bookseller to reccomend something off the top of their head, and be amazed when they don’t just reel off a bestsellers list. After all, word of mouth reccomendations are how quality authors get sales of their books. I’m sick to death of crap authors thinking they’re losing out…why should someone else do all the work for you in promoting ANOTHER Tolkienesque fantasy book?
I still think W has the staff and passion to turn it around, and it looks like they’re doing it. They are not a faceless conglomerate, they are a business AND a bookshop.
I went to waterstones here in Lancaster once and asked for a book by Wladislaw Szpilman. I was enorously impressed when she wrote the full name down correctly. In any other bookshop round here, they can’t cope with anything more obscure than Being Jordan.
I dont go there any more since they started asking you to pay for your book in advance. If it’s coming from America that can take weeks and weeks.
And over the past year or so I’ve found that real bookshops seems to require more and more information before they “can find it on the system”. Now, I’ve learned to go armed with Author, title, ISBN number, publisher, publishing date, where reviewed and my inside leg measurement.
Bringing plenty info is not just helpful but really important if you want to make sure you get the correct book. Many booksellers really do mentally retain an awful lot of titles (thanks for the recognition ‘no name who is probably a bookseller’) but it seems a bit much to expect them to know something very specific just because you want them too. I’ve lost count of the amount of times customers have given me incorrect details or ridiculously vague ones.
Sorry to hear that you don’t shop at Waterstone’s anymore Looby and hope you come back, but if it’s due to paying in advance I hope you’ll understand that it’s something all the branches had to do due to customers not buying books they ordered. I used to work at Ottakar’s and they had much the same problem.
Sorry for sort of hijacking the blog!
I agree one should try to get as much information as posible, but Sometimes I don’t have all that information though – I mean, yesterday I got the title of a book off a man in a pub, and I think author and title should be enough.
I know that in Lancaster public library they just check for book details on Amazon,because it’s easier to use than their own catalogue!
What I really wanted to draw everyone’s attention to though was a fablous quote in the Guardian yesterday.
Someone (like may of us I suppose, who are realising rather guiltily that we’ve not read any Orhun Pamuk) went in and got a copy of Snow from Border.
“I suppose you’re selling a lot of this at the moment”, he said.
Sales assistant: “Er, no, not really. Why?”
I *hope* that wouldn’t happen in Waterstones.
Well, you’ll have to go back in to find out:)
Books recommendations from men in pubs? Sound like the Gregson or the John O’Gaunt.
Very interesting reading, has anybody got anything on Backwells? or are they not in the race anymore? it was always a case of OXFORD is theirs but when i left they had decided to go the till jockey way for new staff!!! shame, some really good members of staff with lots of information about books are not going tobe around for ever!!!
Blackwells expanded a bit a few years back in that they bought up the (extremely well-established and with links to the university) Heffers stores here in Cambridge. I don’t know how that’s working out for them but I’d assume they must have been in a position of some strength to buy them up in the first place. I can’t speak for the quality of staff as I seldom shop there myself but I would imagine that they’re as awash with post-graduates as they ever were. Actually, way back, when I was working for Dillons ,there was a time when Cambridge had Heffers, Dillons and Waterstones all with huge stores in town. Rumour had it that you couldn’t get a job at Heffers unless you had a degree. Then when you met a member of Heffers staff and they found you worked at Dillons they’d say “Oh really? Is it true you have to have a degree to work there?” And other people had heard the same about Waterstones. All bullshit, obviously, but there really were some brilliant minds (and some characters so flawed they should never have been let near the public) knocking about in all three stores.
I buy quite a lot of books, and I’m getting more and more fed up with Waterstones.
I buy regularly at Border’s, and occasionally get a discount voucher on my till receipt for a future purchase. In addition, I am on a Borders mailing list and get regular voucher offers by e-mail. All of these offers are valid for any book.
The Waterstone’s Christmas voucher book is very poor. Virtually all the offers are for specific books, the sort that I wouldn’t want anyway.
Yesterday I found my local Waterstone’s had stickered an out-of-date edition of a book I wanted with “£4 off”. I asked if the discount could be transferred to the latest edition and was told flatly “no”. I suppose the idea is that customers will buy up the out of date books, and will probably not even realise that a newer edition is available further along on the same shelf.
So you wouldn’t suggest working for Waterstones then? :P
I’ve just printed off an application form. I’m in my last year of University and I’m looking for a job to get me by until i decide what my next step is going to be!
What i was wondering was, is what they pay you pay the hour for working there. I’ve been on the site and also on the net and tried to research it but I can’t seem to find the hourly rate of pay anywhere. Could you let me know by any chance?
Get back to me, because then i’ll know whether I should bother applying or whether i should just screw up the application right now!
Emma.
If you’re looking for a good stop-gap job where you’ll be working with interesting people then you can’t go wrong with Waterstone’s. If, however, you want to be a career bookseller in the old school sense then that’s another matter.
Basic pay will be minimum wage, possibly a few pence over. Don’t expect to get rich!