323354408

Casalini

publishing house and current President of the Italian Publishers Association. He too argued strongly for the retention of rpm, but for somewhat different reasons than those of Mr Wossner. Iie pointed out rhar Itab ians are not great readers, and that for this reason the distribution channels have to be maximized. The many smali publishers in Italy would be at risk if fixed prices wcre abolished.

Mr Motta remarked that fixed pricing in Italy was regulated by agreements between publishers and booksellers, which do allow a certain degree of “competitive flex ibi 1 i ty in pricing”. The only sales channel to benefit from the elimination of rpm, Mr Motta pointed out, would be wholesalers, supermarkets and bookselling chains, which would offer brief exposure to high-selling ritles and thcn reduce prices. Book pricing should now be the suh-ject of legislation to safeguard futurę development.

* * * * *

The experience in the UK sińce the col-lapse of the NBA was descrihed by Nigel Newton, founder of the independent trade house Bloomsbury Publishing. Citing the retail giant W H Smith as one of the agents of the NBAs demise, he pointed out that in spite of, or perhaps because of, heavy price promotion by W H Smith in the two years following the end of the NBA, that company had ‘‘the most unsuccessful years of its history”. Large trade publishers such as Random House or Harper-Collins connived at the death of the NBA. Speak-ing for his own company and other smali publishers, he reiterated that the NBA had been in the eon-sumers interest. “Serious bookbuyers who comprise 70% of the UK book market (should not be] forced to subsidize the occasional purchases of bestsellers which alone would be the subject of discounting.” He did not agree with publishers in Europę who had seen the collapse of the NBA as a disaster, and reiterated John Clement s point that the number of titles discounted in the UK was very smali.

Mr Newton went on to cite a research finding by the Cranfield School of Management that sińce the ending of the NBA the prices of books had risen far morę than the ratę of inflation. Joining the onslaught on Dr Kaufmann, he said: “If 1 were a regulatory authority in Europę considering the lessons of the British experience, I would cer-tainly not fool myself that 1 was acting in the inter-ests of the consumers I was paid to protect if 1 abolished Resale Price Maintenance.”

Furthermore, while morę hooks had been sold following the end of the NBA, overall eon-sumer expenditure on books had declined. Authors, like publishers, booksellers and their customers, had suffered - from lower royalties, because of discounting. Although he admitted that it may be too early to judge the economic effects of the end of price maintenance in the UK, Mr Newton pointed out that the often expressed fear that large numbers of independent booksellers would go bankrupt bas proved unfounded, as have fears that the quality of literaturę would decline. In other words, the doom predictcd by Frank Wossner finds no confirmation in British experiencc so far.

To an audience consisting mainly of publishers, Mr Newton also delivered some bad news. Under deregulation “you are in danger of giving away extra margin to support a price promotion on a book which would have been a bestseller anyway.” British publishers under deregulation have inereased sales, but reduced their percentage of profit:

There seems to be a slight paradox in Mr Newton s position. He is explicitly in favour of price maintenance, yet without it “life goes on - we are still in business.” He even gave examples where particular titles have henefited. Under the NBA, his author Margaret Attwoods book The Rohher Bride sold 40,000 in hardhack and 150,000 in paperback. By giving extra discount to bookshop chains, the hardhack sales of Ms Attwoods Alias Grace totalled 86,000. He sees the price in such cir-cumstances as a positive weapon, particularly in converting paperback purchases to hardhack. So while resigned to deregulation, Mr Newton s advice to his colleagues in countries with fixed prices is “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Not exactly the ringing declaration that Mr Wossner would have liked, but sufficient to maintain the solid front of European publishers in the face of Brusscls dogma.

*****

The word from France was also less cate-gorical than that from Germany. Pierre Cohen-Tanugi, Managing Director of Editions Gallimard, said that the terminology of fixed pricing is

64 IAXK>S9/2©WHUKR PUnMSHF.RS IW8