Saving the high street bookshop

The bell seems to be tolling for the high street bookshop. The HMV Group, which owns Waterstone’s, has issued its third straight profit warning. Waterstone’s is supposedly on target for this financial year, but 11 of its branches were forced to close across the UK and Ireland in February alone and the company has conceded that it can’t compete in the mass market. Therefore, managing director Dominic Myers has decided on a strategy that challenges readers to escape the ‘stifling homogeneity’ of Dan Brown and Katie Price. The latest campaign will push 11 exciting first time novels on a public that largely ignores new novelists.

Admirable though this plan may be, it is accompanied by the whiff of panic. It is the exact Granta-inspired business model that Tim Waterstone demolished in the early ’80s. But, given that the ruminations of a meerkat from an advert top the bestseller list, Waterstone’s has little choice but to gravitate towards quality.