Bookstores- Competing with online giants

Another way to promote the reading of translated titles across Europe is by encouraging a greater number of reviews and professional evaluations of book from countries with lesser-used languages. At the moment, in some countries, the attention of literary reviews and the cultural press is mostly given to foreign best sellers or local authors, while even very important examples of European literature go unnoticed and are not reviewed.

Bookstores- Competing with online giants

IN AN ENVIRONMENT THAT IS INCREASINGLY DOMINATED BY ONLINE STORES, THE SPECIAL ROLE OF BRICK-AND-MORTAR BOOKSHOPS IN PROMOTING DIVERSITY SHOULD BE PRESERVED

The recent closure of bookshops during the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how essential bookshops are to our societies. Bookshops are very often the only cultural hub in a community. They are indispensable in promoting reading and guiding readers to ‘less obvious’ books, such as books from emerging authors or countries. They are a good place to hold author visits in cooperation with publishers. Member States have put various financial support systems in place, especially since the onset of the pandemic, to help booksellers recover after many difficult months. However, the special role of bookshops should be valued, and their activities should be supported in the long term, even after the pandemic. Beyond grants and loans, regulatory and fiscal measures such as fixed book prices and lower value added tax rates for books (since they are cultural products) have proven to be an effective way to preserve a diverse network of small and medium-size booksellers, both within and outside large urban areas.

A major challenge for the book sector and bookshops in particular is to adapt their ‘format’ and operations to an online environment to compete with online giants such as Amazon. Online stores can be seen as offering an easy way to distribute content (whether paper books or e-books), but they are also a threat to the diversity of content.

It is therefore important to accompany the evolution of the sector through training or financial support for innovation, in order to preserve the diversity of players in the book chain. For instance, new legislation was recently passed in France to set a minimum price for book deliveries, in order to stop what the government calls ‘distorted competition’ from digital giants who sell books for as little as EUR 0.01, to the detriment of independent bookshops.

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A major challenge for the book sector and bookshops in particular is to adapt their ‘format’ and operations to an online environment to compete with online giants such as Amazon.

Two projects supported by Creative Europe illustrate how European cooperation can accompany the digital transition of the sector.

Eudicom project(96)

The European Digital Comics (Eudicom) programme aims to support publishers of comic books in Europe in getting ready for the distribution of digital comics. The consortium partners, led by Izneo, the leading European digital comics platform, will research and exchange their experiences to offer an efficient capacity-building programme primarily to publishers in Spain, Italy and Poland, and promote the benefits to other EU countries via the Federation of European Publishers. The project will make sure that comic book publishers in European countries are on the same page regarding technology formats, distribution models and marketing opportunities in order to reach new audiences and make the most of revenues on the growing digital platforms in Europe and worldwide.

RISE project by the European and International Booksellers Federation

The European and International Booksellers Federation (EIBF)(97) is a European and international organisation serving as the focal point of a wide network of booksellers across Europe and beyond. The EIBF has been selected for its Resilience, Innovation and Sustainability for the Enhancement of bookselling (RISE) project. Through this project, the EIBF seeks to upscale, reinforce and maximise the capacity and resilience of the European bookselling sector, by helping bookshops innovate and stay up to date with modern technologies while ensuring their long-term sustainability. RISE will provide booksellers with sector-specific training, facilitate cross-border networking and exchange of best practices and enable advocacy and research across a set of priority areas: unlocking the green potential of the bookselling sector, building a more diverse and inclusive bookshop community and reinforcing cross-border bookselling and European value.