Borders is shit: scruffy, unhappy staff, bad stock. Ot course it's failing. Good riddance. Waterstones is dead on its feet because of awful management decisions all dpwn the line, some of the worst made in the last year and a half. Ask any senior book buyers for WS and they'll tell you a gruesome story. A few contemporaries of mine at the Gower Street branch - until last year some of the only independant senior book buyers left in the chain - were made to reapply for their own jobs, and told their buying would now be centrally controlled. Now, they had a problem with budgets and dead stock (just look at their philosophy section!) but they were still pumping out good stuff for the captive Uni of London market. And those buyers had been doing their job with skill for years. They were pretty vexed.
The real sad event has been the death of Charing Cross Road, the epicentre of the Uk book trade, with some beautiful independant shops closing because of rent hikes. When Shipley's closed last Christmas Eve, with sherry and the roaring log fire a final farewell, the last nail hit the coffin.
Having said that, Foyles is going strong right now, despite the devastating loss of me. The only way for bookshops to survive is to nurture and pay well experienced and skilled book buyers and sellers: to import and order titles tailored to the people who come and buy stuff, ask for stuff. In Foyles, we'd build up stock by following our own interests and listening to what people asked for. If somebody asked me for a book once, and I thought it looked good and would sell (and that could even be a £50 monograph on occasion, but we were lucky like that) I'd order one for the customer and one for the shelf. If it sold, get another. If that sold, get 2, etc. You could build up obscure, site-specific bestsellers that way. Then word of mouth kicks in. Do that over the whole range, and you start turning profits. The frontline of bookselling is as important as CEO strategy or marketing depts, although enlightened high management can play a crucial role too.
The only strategy for big bookshops is decentralise, like Foyles. When I started there, the shop was close to meltdown. Now, after 50 years it's finally making profits for its loyal and long-suffering shareholders.
