An eBook mystery

80,000 Londoners work in publishing and the city has 900 bookshops - twice as many as New York. Parts of London are synonymous with the book trade, so the digitisation of the industry - the rise of eBooks and Amazon - will do more than put a few shops out of business. It will change the shape of the city.

Hatchards in Piccadilly (above) is the UK’s oldest surviving bookshop. Other neighbourhoods and areas are synonymous with the book trade, whether the second-hand bookshops clustered on and around Charing Cross Road, or Bloomsbury’s association with book publishing.

 

eBooks on the rise

In the US at least, digitised books now sell more than physical books. IKEA, the furniture company, is introducing a new, deeper version of its most popular bookcases. The firm reckons customers will increasingly use them for ornaments, rather than books.

This growing digitisation might not be bad news for publishers. e-Books currently have high profit margins and are free from many of the drawbacks of print. One of the biggest challenges facing small publishers is managing their inventories. Print too many books and lots of them will be returned by stores. Print too few and publishers will forgo sales while they order reprints (at higher prices). This isn’t a problem with digital.

But we can be confident that digitization will be bad for bookshops. Amazon is estimated to sell about a quarter of physical books, but about 90% of the UK’s e-Books. As more people read books on e-readers, like Kindles, fewer will visit their local store. The future (as we’ve said before) is likely to be in niche books and passion about the subject. It’s unlikely to be very profitable.

 

But a mysterious conclusion

This leaves London’s big book shop areas in trouble. Charing Cross Road, for instance, is so synonymous with bookshops a film was made about the relationship (84 Charing Cross Road). It's lost some bookshops recently, and if many more are forced out it won't have the critical mass to attract visitors. It could become just another boring London street, full of Starbucks and Nando's.

 

For now, though, the bookshops there are hanging on - and with niche specialities, the pleasure of browsing and esoteric collections on their side, their defeat is far from certain.

 

So while publishers look set for a romance with the e-book and bookshops look set for a horror, what will happen to London remains a mystery.