Merchants of Culture. John B. Thompson

      5 ⁵ ‘Frontlist’ refers to new and recently published books. A title is commonly treated as frontlist for up to 12 months, after which it becomes a backlist title.

      6 ⁶ See Stephen Horvath, ‘The Rise of the Book Chain Superstore’, Logos, vol. 7, no. 1 (1996), p. 43.

      7 ⁷ Stephanie Oda and Glenn Sanislo, The Subtext 2007–2008 Perspective on Book Publishing: Numbers, Issues and Trends (Darien, Conn.: Open Book, 2007), p. 67.

      8 ⁸ Ibid., p. 64.

      9 ⁹ Whiteside, The Blockbuster Complex, p. 41.

      10 ¹⁰ See Ted Striphas, The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), p. 56. Striphas points out that in 1997 the ABA estimated that there were around 12,000 independent retail bookstores in business in the US; ABA members would have accounted for less than a third of these.

      11 ¹¹ Oda and Sanislo, The Subtext 2007–2008 Perspective, p. 64.

      12 ¹² For a full account of the legal challenges, see the excellent discussion in Miller, Reluctant Capitalists, ch. 7.

      13 ¹³ Ibid., pp. 179–80.

      14 ¹⁴ Ibid., p. 180.

      15 ¹⁵ Co-op advertising is a cost-sharing arrangement between the publisher and the retailer in which the publisher pays for part of the retailer’s promotion costs. This is discussed in more detail in ch. 7.

      16 ¹⁶ Epstein, Book Business, p. 103.

      17 ¹⁷ See Epstein, Book Business, ch. 2.

      18 ¹⁸ Robert Spector, Amazon.com: Get Big Fast (London: Random House, 2000), p. 216.

      19 ¹⁹ Oda and Sanislo, The Subtext 2007–2008 Perspective, p. 64.

      20 ²⁰ Used-Book Sales: A Study of the Behavior, Structure, Size, and Growth of the US Used-Book Market (New York: Book Industry Study Group, 2006), p. 9.

      21 ²¹ Charles Fishman, The Wal-Mart Effect: How an Out-of-Town Superstore Became a Superpower (London: Penguin, 2006), p. 6.

      22 ²² Ibid., pp. 5–6.

      23 ²³ The retail book market represents only part of total book sales. US sales for all books, including tests for the educational market, were $38.08 billion in 2006, an increase of 3.1 per cent from 2005. Unit sales for all books (excluding tests) were flat in 2006 – 3.1 billion units, an increase of 0.5 per cent from 2005. See Oda and Sanislo, The Subtext 2007–2008 Perspective, p. 1.

      24 ²⁴ See John Feather, A History of British Publishing, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 100–2.

      25 ²⁵ Ibid., p. 202.

      26 ²⁶ Terry Maher, in Sue Bradley (ed.), The British Book Trade: An Oral History (London: British Library, 2008), p. 228. For a full account of Maher’s campaign against the Net Book Agreement, see Terry Maher, Against My Better Judgement: Adventures in the City and in the Book Trade (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994), ch. 4.

      27 ²⁷ Feather, A History of British Publishing, p. 94.

      28 ²⁸ Tim Waterstone had spent some time in New York when he was working for WH Smith in the late 1970s and was familiar with Barnes & Noble, but at that time Barnes & Noble was known primarily for its large discount store on Fifth Avenue and had not begun to roll out its book superstores. ‘I wasn’t looking at Barnes & Noble and Borders in the 1980s, not at all,’ he recalled. ‘I was just obsessed with what I was doing here, frankly.’