And so it begins

Lynne Patrick

Credit crunch, recession, call it what you will: I don’t suppose any of us will emerge unscathed. But, with fingers firmly crossed and all propitiating gestures in place, I think maybe we won’t fare as badly as some, largely because we don’t borrow scary sums of money from banks which no longer have it to lend; and also because we don’t deal in big numbers, and may be able to duck under the darkest of the clouds. I realise I’m tempting fate just by thinking this, but, well, I try to be positive.

 

But other bits of the book trade aren’t in quite such good shape, and we have to consider how their problems will affect us.

 

I’m not a great follower of the financial markets – I’m a words person, and numbers don’t come easy to me. But even I can see when share prices go down, and down, and even further down. We don’t have share prices of our own, not in that way, but it’s interesting to see how other publishers are faring. Mostly it looks as if the bigger they are, the bigger the fall. We’re small. So a point in our favour, I think.

 

Bookshops, at the sharp end of retailing, should be catching the worst of it. But my local Waterstone’s had a long queue at the till when I called in the other day; and though their parent company, HMV, are showing a fall in share prices they seem to be doing OK. My theory about people buying themselves small treats (a bar of chocolate or a book) instead of a large one (a new dress or a weekend break) seems to be holding.

 

Maybe the biggest black cloud so far is that one of the UK’s two big book wholesalers is catching the backlash as its parent company, Woolworths, struggles for air. Ironically, the wholesaler is probably the healthiest part of the vast organisation it belongs to, but when there’s trouble at root level it can’t help but filter into the branches, even the smaller ones which are still producing fruit.

 

The problem is that they are main suppliers to a lot of bookshops, including the chains. They’re not the only source of supply, of course; the shops have at least two other options. But shops, especially chains,have procedures laid down. If a situation arises which means a bookseller can’t simply make one phone call to order a book, it’s possible that this close to Christmas they won’t take the trouble to look elsewhere.

 

Fortunately we don’t rely on big Christmas sales the way many of our larger competitors do, so if we do lose a few sales, it will only be a few. Another point in our favour. And looking further ahead: if that wholesaler really is the healthiest part of an ailing conglomerate, it will survive in one form or another.

 

OK, so I’m an incurable optimist. But maybe I have cause. Unlike the big financial institutions whose strange attitude to the issue of debt has to be at the root of all the problems (I’m at a loss to understand how you can lend more than you actually have); and unlike a whole lot of ordinary people for whom spending to the limit of a dozen credit cards is a way of life, I’ve always tried to live within my means – to earn a pound and spend ninety-nine pence, in a paraphrase of the Micawber principle. And I’m really not being smug or sanctimonious.

 

It’s just that living any other way is so unutterably scary that I wouldn’t dare.