Friday is The day of the bookstores and the shelves of books are claimed with the theme: “The libraries we touch”, with the intention of strengthen ties with their clients and avoid buying on online platforms for the multinationals.
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Instructions for getting up against Amazon the resurgence of independent bookstores in the U.S.
While from the Spanish Confederation of Guilds and Associations of Libraries (CEGAL) it calls for a State pact for reading and for the “equality of competition” and tax, this same organization puts in place a new initiative. CEGAL is designing a shield in front of the giant Amazon and aims to convert the web Todostuslibros.com in a space not just of search but of sale to the end of 2024, thanks to the literary fund of more than 700 independent bookstores from all over Spain.
Todostuslibros.com it has worked until now as a search platform that allows you to locate copies in the libraries closest to the user’s location. It receives two million hits a month, double the level in 2018. CEGAL will present in march the project of the collective of booksellers and will show the advantages of having a background of more than 1.2 million titles live available to any customer. With the implementation of this electronic channel of sales outside of Amazon, the profit margins will increase for traders.
The price of a book in a store allows the trader to get a profit of 30 % for each copy, but with Amazon this percentage decrease to the half. “The whole margin is not at a minimum of 25 % is not viable to keep a bookstore open. This is why many establishments are giving low Amazon, because it is not cost-effective,” says the technical director of CEGAL, Javier Lopez Yanez.
The new project is an initiative of character guild, a group that meets to try to stem the bleeding of sales. “It could be the requirement of exclusivity to work with Todostuslibros.com but for the moment we are waiting for the launch. The only thing we want is to offer greater benefit to the libraries. It will be a platform to defend ourselves,” adds Lopez.
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The union of all these businesses would create a virtual library with the largest repository of books in Spain. For its part Amazon, along with the deposit of the stores attached to its service, with a store that has books of high turnover, what’s new. The platform locates the specimen in any of the more than 700 libraries that have subscribed to its services, handles and flies up to the point of order. The benefit with the new platform will be split between the two libraries that participate in the sale, stresses López Yáñez, who insists that the great asset of the libraries is the capacity to recommend it. Against the algorithm, the recommendation of the bookseller of confidence.
Todostuslibros.com it has worked until now as a search platform that allows you to locate copies in the bookstores closest to you
The client Todostuslibros.com you can buy it from your home or at the store and allowing themselves to be advise. The libraries have accepted that they must face the competition with their same tools, that is to say, through electronic sell-through, in addition to the physical. “It will be an alternative , but not lose sight that our real strength are the libraries. Our obsession is to defend the physical space and communication,” says the director of CEGAL. In the Yearbook of Cultural Statistics, of 2018 reveals a cut of 0.9% in the number of companies registered as retail of books, but it is a figure confirmed by the studies of the own guild.
For the first time the guild has been studied for its workers, and has discovered that almost 60 % are women. The libraries kept alive the business and the human contact with a customer base that is female in its majority, 73.1 % of the women are recognised as readers in front of the 51.8% of men, according to the Barometer of book reading and buying books published by the Ministry of Culture. The authority of the libraries has never been questioned, readers have always responded to the sector and the authors try to conquer a place that does not have had.
even in these moments in which the trade data does not accompany it. The figures of 2018 were not good, according to the latest report of the Observatory of the library (Ministry of Culture), which points to a fall of 3.3% in annual billing. This data confirms the diversion of the positive inertia which had remained unchanged between 2013 and 2016. From CEGAL announce that 2019 will not correct the puncture. The concentration of sales in major electronic platforms and the changing cultural habits of the population, —which has moved to the home cinema— delves into the crisis and the abandonment of reading little by little.
