The Olive Reader

But nothing like that has ever happened in the slow-moving world of books. The book business – both publishing and bookselling – has felt the cold winds of consolidation and globalisation blowing forcefully in the past few years. Earlier this week independent bookshops were left feeling very exposed when Ottakar’s, the second-largest book chain, finally fell to the largest, Waterstone’s, creating an even bigger and more powerful chain across the country. Added to this, the huge supermarket chains compete directly with the independent booksellers, and undercut them so heavily on price that the bookshops, with their high-street rents, cannot survive. Forty have closed in the past six months. In 2005 Tesco increased its book sales by 50 per cent, and earlier this year it was the top retailer for a number of bestsellers. In fact, the supermarkets now sell more books (with only a tiny choice of titles) than the whole independent sector put together.