Ewan's Musings

Support Your Local Bookshop

The biggest book of all time (okay, ignoring the Holy Books, all the Religions and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence) goes on sale this weekend. Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix is going to be everywhere, with evry major store and supermarket offering the best price in town.

So I'm going to ask you all to do one thing. Please buy Harry Potter 5 from your local independent book shop (if you have one). Ever since the Net Book Agreement (which guaranteed a minimum price on a book) was scrapped, Supermarkets like Tesoc's and Sainsbury's have consistently stocked a few top titles at low prices so that people would buy the heavily marketed book and they would make the profit from the 15 bottles of Coke and 12 tubes of Pringles you'd need to buy while you were in there.

Meanwhile, the small independent is squeezed out of business, and the few books that could be guaranteed to keep them in profit are bought at loss by the Supermarkets. HP5 costs £8 from Tesco's and is £17 or so from an indepenedent. And it costs the independent £13 to buy the book! How fair on the small people is that?

Will you miss those massive bookshops that seel all manner of small run titles (and Michael Moore books!) Or do you want your book choices limited to the ten books Sainsbury's thinks will attract you to their shop? Do the right thing this wekend. Or Hagrid gets it...