On 25^th November 2024, BA President Fleur Sinclair gave the keynote address at the Futurebook Conference about the Value of Bookselling and Bookshops. We are delighted to share the script of Fleur’s speech with members below. 

Hello Everyone
 
I’m delighted to join you at this FutureBook event; Voicing our Value.
 
I’m in here to speak about the extraordinary value of bookshops. As current President of the Booksellers Association, I’m here representing all high street bookshops – from the tiny one person-run shops to the largest chains – we speak not only for indies but for our whole high street sector.
 
Firstly, I need to acknowledge that I’m here speaking at a point where we’re all facing a colossal impact from the most recent budget.

And the bookshops most in the firing line, ironically, are the larger indies – those with bigger workforces, and bigger premises, who have thrived in recent years, despite the hard work and long hours.
Retail is still the most taxed sector in Britain, and margins are already tiny. Increases in wage bills and rates bills are highly likely to compromise viability for some bookshops. 
A sobering thought.
All of which makes it urgently important that I’m speaking to you today, about the huge cultural, social and commercial VALUE of bookshops.
And why the whole trade needs to advocate for them.
 
Planning what I was going to say today, there’s just too much – so many different things that make bookshops amazing, too many ideas for the whole books trade to work better together –
So I’m going to focus on the main thing I believe best sums up the value of bookshops, and that’s People.
 
People who write and create books, people to deliver them, sell them, read them and share them. Authors, publishers, sales reps, printers, warehouse workers, delivery drivers and booksellers - all working on one side of the counter – book-buyers and readers on the other.
Together we are a community, bound by books.
Each and every person as irreplaceable as the other, and all crucial to delivering the level of customer service necessary to run a successful bookshop.
 
Let’s start with Booksellers.
 
Bookselling is an art. A bookseller holds knowledge that is vast and deep – an incredible mind-library, with knowledge athletically crouched in the back, poised in readiness for when a customer asks for advice or recommendations. Literary match-makers, watching the body language, taking on board the prompts, the answers to questions; all to make sure a reader is well-matched with a book.
And we know readers as well as we know books.
 
People are investing TIME when they read books. We all live busy lives, and time is one of our most precious commodities.
Despite the relative value that books represent in entertainment terms, if a reader hates a book, that’s going to be resented time they’ll never get back again.
An author dismissed.
A shop they might never return to.
 
The wide-ranging books and consumer knowledge, the vast experience booksellers have, is of such immense value.
If more opportunities were created for booksellers to work with publishers at every stage of a book’s journey it would serve us all. We’re all looking for quality – both the physical product, the reading experience.
And success will come from having the right books, at the right price, at the right time, in the right format.
Mores sales. Happy readers. More sales. And on we go!
 
Make time, make space, work with us. We’ll all benefit.
 
I said at the start that is bookselling is all about people, and it is. But before I go any further, I feel it’s important to acknowledge the spectre of AI.
AI is rightly discussed all the time at the moment – it’s uses, potential impacts –
we know it’s a big issue for publishers – we support you and your authors in the search for fair use of content, the protection of copyright and the value of the human endeavour.  Everything I’m saying today, describing the business of bookselling, I hope compounds just how much we bookshops also value human endeavour.
 
Ok
So strolling round to the other side of the counter, we have the Readers
 
A shop is nothing without customers, and in the epic stories of our bookshops, booksellers are the spirit guides, and the readers and customers are the heroes. Their support is everything to us, and we earn that support through our careful curation of stock, creating welcoming and inclusive spaces staffed with knowledgeable professionals, staging events we think they’ll love, working to give them memory-making access to authors.
We do everything we can to enhance their reading experiences.
 
We exist to serve readers, so how do we serve them so well?
 
Through good customer service –
 
To go into a shop and have someone take the time to listen to your wants and needs and give you a thoughtful response – suggestions and recommendations that make you feel seen and heard, and ultimately, valued.
That’s what bookshops offer:
Real-life human interactions that can briefly make the world feel like a better place to exist in.
 
We need people representative of all ages and backgrounds commissioning and writing books,
And people representative of all ages and backgrounds behind the counter and on the shopfloor selling books.
It’s on us all to do the work to make this a reality.
 
The current group of much-loved big brand authors will not be around forever, so I’m interested in the work of readership-building, and investment in career progression, to create a new, and more inclusive, big brand author cohort of the future.
As well as being dazzled by precocious youth, readers of all ages need wisdom and experience reflected on the page.
 
Operating in a landscape of heavy discounting, bookshops really do care about having products with added value for their customers to treasure and gift.
Signed books and exclusive editions - I know they’re expensive and logistically complicated. But they really can make a difference, particularly for bookshop customers paying the full RRP for a book.
 
As with everything, some will sell better than others. And this is another area where working with bookshops to find out what customers are really looking for will help to streamline and enhance things in the future.
 
What else do my customers want?
Here’s the start of a very long list!
Quality and attention to detail with finished products – clear, purposely formatted and sensibly-sized text in paperbacks. More first format paperbacks. Particularly around the Summer holidays.
Artfully designed covers that look nice around your house, beside your bed, and when pulled out of your bag – call me shallow, but it’s true! We’re all magpies for beautiful objects.
 
Wide ranging topics of conversation, well edited by experts in their fields, offering something different to what’s already available in newspapers and on news channels - conversational, inclusive, unpatronizing, inspirational, uplifting, mind-blowing, reassuring, enlightening, seismically-heart-moving, delighting ENTERTAINTMENT!!
Not much to ask!
 
Very few bookshops create their own products so we’re at the mercy of publishers to create the books people want to read and buy. As I said already, publishers who don’t use booksellers to learn more about consumers are missing out on valuable insights.
And it is often the publishers who have the strongest rep forces whose books fill the shelves and sell the most in high street bookshops.
 
Publishers... PLEASE value your reps and use your reps as a conduit for all the crucially important consumer research we get every single day. They are key to growing the presence and success of your books in high street bookshops.
 
In a recent conversation with one of my sales reps - an old and trusted friend, as many of my reps are – he said that he’s hoping his publisher will increase their rep workforce, and mentioned several shops that he doesn’t have the capacity to see. But with an extra sales rep, he’s calculated that with just a small spend from each of the shops he has in mind, the cost of the additional rep will be easily more than covered, as well as increasing the reach and shelf space of their books – doing that seemingly elusive magic thing publishers are always talking about – finding new readers.
 
I know that running a rep force is an expensive investment for publishers, but the best reps enhance our ecosystem, and are like tree roots linking between bookshops, authors, towns and reading communities, feeding all that valuable information back to the publishers at head office.
 
I don’t know if any sales reps have ever spoken at FutureBook in the past, but they need to be listened to. They have valuable insights!
 
Going back to what else I know my customers want:
Events!
And I can’t emphasise enough just how important events are to bookshops.
 
For a long time, it’s been increasingly impossible for bookshops to make ends meet solely from passively waiting for people to come through our doors and shop with us.
We have to actively do more, and offer more, in order earn enough money to keep our doors open.
Author events have long been a way for us to do this.
A way that is aligned with, and complimentary to everything else we do – they build community, add value, make memories for our customers – all creating loyalty for our bookshops. Essential for us.
 
(The BA’s recent cultural impact report, commissioned by the Arts Council was hailed by The Bookseller’s Philip Jones it as “a landmark document (which) underlines that high-street bookshops are cultural enablers in local communities”)
 
Publishers, Agents, Authors – please consider the balance and needs of the whole books’ community when planning author tours and make sure that bookshops are included.
I don’t say this because we want benevolent hand-outs. I say it in this forum because I believe wholeheartedly that it’s in your, interest to do this.
 
In immediate financials, the book sales to bums on seats ratios prove this time and again. You want to sell books, we want to sell books – and bookshops understand how to sell many, many books at events. By definition, bookshop customers are book-buyers.
 
Then there’s long term audience reach and growth, and the halo effect of continuing sales around the area where an event was held, for months after an event took place.
 
The BA is working to help upskill all bookshops in running events, sharing best practice through training, mentoring and support. Bookshops are an existing network covering the whole of the UK and Ireland - use them to find new audiences for authors. This is a way publishers can see and realise growth.
Speak to your reps. Which booksellers, which shops, in which areas are most excited and asking for tools and opportunities to champion books.
Work with them! Take your authors to them!
 
I’m looking forward to hearing the panel conversation later on the Events Ecosystem and with my fellow bookseller, Nic Bottomley, Lucy Bond from Fane and Jenny Niven from the Edinburgh Festival. It should be a fascinating session.
 
Bookselling for Everyone
I said at the start that bookselling is all about people. But it has to be for, and about, everyone.
I’m going to say it again:
We need people representative of all ages and backgrounds behind the counter and on shopfloors selling books.
The BA are working with Creative Access to pro-actively improve the diversity of our workforce and I’m excited to see the launch of our 2025 projects after Christmas.
 
This work with Creative Access is in pursuit of one of my main aims during my tenure as BA president, to work towards making our bookselling workforce better representative of the reading population, creating space for and welcoming new booksellers from all backgrounds.
 
To do this work in good faith, I also need to work to make sure that our trade is as secure as it can be in today’s climate. Speaking up and doing all I can to make sure that bookselling careers offer a viable living.
 
The Work
As I said earlier, the recent budget has diminished bookshop’s slim margins even further, and – uniquely amongst retailers - with the price of books set, and printed on the back, we have no room to increase prices to offset our increase in costs.
 
In this room we are all aligned in many of our aims and visions, but there is a question of scale that needs to be addressed. We’re all facing the challenges the new budget has thrown at us. But where publishers’ turnovers and profits are often in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, bookshops profits are not. They’re really, really, really not!
 
We saw through the pandemic what the high street looked like with closed bookshops and no customers – without bookshops’ platforms to help introduce new writers and books, that lack of visibility was detrimentally impactful.
 
The industry applauded the increase in the number of bookshops at the end of the pandemic and rightly so. We all understood just how important bookshops are, both for thriving high streets and the wider economy –
Bookshops contribute an incredible 1.9 billion to the economy every year!
 
But now is crunch time. If you truly believe (and I think you should) that more bookshops is a good thing, then the whole industry needs to step into that.
Especially the larger corporate publishers.
Making small changes in terms, increasing discounts offered to the indie sector in particular could make a significant difference. Being supportive and imaginative with opening stock terms for new entrants will make it far more likely that those shops will survive and in time, thrive.
I’d like to thank the publishers who are already doing this, and say to everyone else - being creative and generous in the regular assessment of discounts and terms is a very doable way for you to provide security for bookshops, and show that you really do value our necessary input in the sales and marketing of your books.
 
Investing in your rep force will bring you better relationships with booksellers, a better result for your authors, and an unarguable uptick in sales in the titles intelligently sold by well-informed, intuitive and commercially creative reps.
 
We talk a lot about privilege. And the need to acknowledge our privilege, in whichever forms we have it. But I’d like to talk about power.
And for everyone in this room to acknowledge the power they have to shape the future of our trade, and to help shape the future of our wider society.
 
It’s in your power to provide the best visibility for your books, and opportunity for more readers to discover them. To work with and showcase your books in spaces all over the UK that support people, grow local economies, and ultimately earn more for you and your authors.
It’s in your power to support high street bookshops.
 
We know bookshops aren’t your only route to market. But I’m going to state as a fact, that working to perpetuate an online monopoly is detrimental to trade.
It reduces the visibility and reach of your books.
(Dehumanises all of our endeavours.)
In your online spaces make sure that you and your authors always link to the websites of high street bookshops and Bookshop.org.
Protect the spaces that bring people together and are places of discovery and community.
Value and protect bookshops.
 
I want to share a message we received from a customer, Helen – someone I only know through interactions at the bookshop.
And whilst I’m not generally great at taking praise, it’s important to share because I know it’s typical of messages received by booksellers all over the country.
People talk all the time about reach – this is what it looks like! From a person who’s been ‘reached’!
 
Dearest Fleur, I just wanted to reach out to you to thank you for the most wonderful collection of authors who are coming to Sevenoaks via the Bookshop to talk about their recent work. In the past few weeks I have been to hear Jacqueline Wilson and Liane Moriaty... amazing authors, such a privilege to hear their own voice, so many thanks for all that you and your team are doing. I used to live in London and so moving away from the city, the Bookshop has become a very important part of my transition, from the online bookclubs to the book evenings and the store itself. I think we so often forget to say thank you..... so from me a humble thank you to you Fleur and your colleagues. It is truly amazing and very much appreciated. Warmest wishes…
 
(Pause)
Booksellers in bookshops everywhere, deserve praise like this and more for all the work they do.
 
Bookshops are cornerstones of our high streets, lovingly created, curated and welcoming spaces. With shop windows displaying all the fruits of your labour, book covers winking at passers-by, enticing readers – these ‘dreams built of wood and paper’, ‘lighthouses,’ society’s ‘lamp-bearers’ – romantic ideals that take imaginative, special people to create, and immense graft and sacrifice to maintain. If you value them, show up for them. And you can!
Value our human endeavours!
Value our people!
 
In conclusion
 
No one is an island, no one area of our trade can function alone.
It takes a village to raise a book, whole communities to elevate an author.
A nation of readers to shape and care for our whole society.
Working together, considering the impact of our actions, respecting and valuing each other.
That is the way to secure a future for us all.
 
Thank you.