The price is right: Buying a bestseller

There's been much noise made in the media over the last couple of weeks about the 'revelation' that the bookshop chains have been taking money from publishers in order to promote their books more vigorously. Payola comes to the genteel world of bookselling.

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Q. Payola

A. A term fist used in the 1930s meaning an undercover or indirect payment for a commercial favour, it is most usually associated with the record industry, in which record companies do 'favours' for disc jockeys and promoters in return for their plugging their records. (Famously, Alan Freed, the man credited with popularising - if not actually inventing - the term 'rock and roll', was brought down by his enemies in the US establishment after having been convicted of 'commercial bribery'.)

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However, the book business, too, has long been one in which the wheels of 'special promotions' are oiled by a few quid here and there.

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Q. So it was ever thus

A. Up to a point. What is different today is the scale of the charges and the ubiquity of the system throughout the major bookshop chains in the UK. It's a system that originated in the USA - not surprisingly - and as the balance of power has shifted from publisher to chain bookseller in the last 20 years, the latter are in a position in which they can make or break a book to a degree that would have been unthinkable in the 1970s.

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However, the publishers - and it should be stressed that only the medium to large publishers are implicated here, smaller outfits can't afford it - are complicit in that they have allowed the system to get out of hand.

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Q. Isn't it illegal

A. No. These cash contributions are not bribes, they are marketing costs. It's all above board, but it queers the pitch for fair competition, in that literary merit goes out the window and only money talks. Big publishers can buy space in the shops or on recommended reading lists - if not with cash, then with corporate hospitality - while smaller publishers have to rely on good will and the hope that book buyers - if they actually manage to circumnavigate the displays of the latest celebrity biography - will stumble upon the single copy on the shelves.

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Q. What does it cost

A. According to figures published in the Sunday Times (28/10/2001), WH Smith charge �10,000 to make a book 'read of the week'; Waterstone's charge �2,500 to designate a book 'read of the month'; Blackwell's charge 'hundreds of pounds' for 'book of the month' status; Books Etc. have a showcase scheme which involves a rolling payment system; and amazon.com charge �6,000 to make you 'author of the month'.

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Q. Which authors and publishers have benefited from this system

A. Any authors that the big boys deem worth pushing, whether already big or upcoming. So, Jamie Oliver and Victoria Beckham -�neither of whom you would have thought needed any help in terms of exposure -�are names whose books have been pushed into the shops with the assistance of tens of thousands of pounds of marketing spend. The shops have publishers over a barrel: they don't have to push your book.

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Q. What do the chains say about it

A. All the chains say pretty much the same thing, that the price is reasonable remuneration for the time and effort they put in. A spokeswoman for Ottakar's said that their policy is to take recommendations from staff in their branches - not, she stressed, Head Office - as to what is worth plugging. The bookseller then approaches the publisher to see if they are willing to contribute to marketing costs. (What happens if the publisher can't afford it ) Their bestseller charts are based purely on sales through the chain as a whole, and it is not possible for a publisher to buy their way into the chart.

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Q. And the publishers

A. Those who can afford to go down this route say they have no option, even with established authors. Amounts of up to �50,000 will be earmarked for this purpose for big books, and they may still be required to give up to 60% discount to the bookseller. Those who can't don't have a prayer.

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A spokesman for the independent literary house Peter Owen said: 'People like us have to fight just get our books into the shops at all much of the time. And then to find that you haven't a snowball's chance of table space or any display, which means that your books will be spine outwards on the shelves, meaning sales are less likely and returns the inevitable consequence, it just gets a bit depressing. Some of the marketing spends by the bigger companies for ONE book would be a pretty good annual turnover for the little houses.'

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Q. And the upshot of all this

A. More books are being sold, but the range is getting narrower. It is getting increasingly hard to break new authors and this can only, ultimately, be bad news for the nation's cultural health.

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By Simon Smith