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Booksellers flourish amid demand

A nation of readers attracted by economical book prices

By Michael Heitmann
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
October 10th, 2007 issue

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST
According to a National Library survey, on average Czechs add almost seven new books to their personal collections each year.

 

Bookstores and publishers appear to be thriving, driven by a nation of insatiable readers who consume books at four times the rate of their American counterparts.

Czechs read an average of 16 books per year, according to a new study published by the National Library, while their American counterparts only finish about four books per year.
Part of the reason locals read so many books is because they can buy them for reasonable prices, according to book industry executives.
“Despite common perceptions to the contrary, compared to Western countries, books are cheap,” said Zdeněk Fekar, a spokesman for Kanzelsberger bookstore chain.
The average price of books sold at Kanzelsberger hovers around 300 Kč ($15) per book. That’s in the same ballpark as average retail prices recommended by Torst and Odeon publishers, at 250 and 237 Kč, respectively. At popular Levné knihy, or cheap book stores, the average price is 79 Kč.
In 2006, the local publishing business totaled an estimated 11.2 billion Kč ($573 million) in sales, according to the Association of Czech Bookstores and Publishers: About 52 million books were sold.
On average, Czech readers boast a collection of 274 books in their homes, and buy close to seven new books a year, according to a National Library survey. They spend an average of 1,303 Kc per year at local bookshops.
Some 83 percent of people thumbed through at least one book last year, according to the National Library, compared to 75 percent of Americans who read a book according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll.
Big bookstores have tried to take advantage of those numbers by integrating publishers, distributors and bookstores into single companies, according to Jiří Vedral, spokesman for the Bookstores and Publishers Association.
“We have seen small bookstores leave small towns, and book sales moving from the classic bookstore to the local paper or toy store,” Vedral said. “At the same time, strong-performing bookstore chains with a regional or nation wide quasi-monopoly are being created.”
Independent booksellers have to stay on their toes to compete, said Šimon Ryšavý, owner of a small bookstore in Brno, south Moravia, that mostly sells computer literature and foreign language books.
“Smaller bookstores will go under if they don’t get together and unite into larger entities, Ryšavý said.
Jindřich Jůzl, head of Odeon publishing house, which is now part of Euromedia, the Czech subsidiary of publishing giant Bertelsmann, disagreed. Independent bookstores and supermarket-style behemoth stores will co-exist for awhile, he said.
“Small publishers are doing fine, and are sometimes more flexible, make decisions faster and come up with interesting ideas,” Jůzl added.
“After 17 years, the market is already clearly consolidated. A number of large publishers and a few distributors wield control over the book market.”
With cheap prices encouraging people to buy books in the Czech Republic, those in the industry have no reason to introduce fixed prices, even though they have been used in neighboring countries.
“The recommended retail price is a compromise solution, and the most common model [in the European Union],” said Vedral. “The recommended price is printed on the cover. The bookseller would be ‘stupid’ to sell at a lower price. And the customers would be wondering why he sold it at a higher price, if he did.”
Price is so important, that in neighboring Slovakia, the government of Prime Minister Robert Fico recently presented a plan to reduce value-added tax on books from 19 percent to 10 percent.
“This step is taken to revitalize the book market, which stagnated after the introduction of the 19 percent VAT rate,” Fico told journalists.
In the Czech Republic, the lower VAT rate of 5 percent applicable to books will rise to 9 percent as of next year.
Prague bookstore owner Jan Jelínek isn’t too worried.
His bookstore Hledající, or Searching, located in PragueStřešovice, has carved out a market niche. For a small fee, buyers can get a partial refund if they return a book within a three-year period. The “rental fee” amounts to about 10 percent to 30 percent of the resale price, Jelínek said, and about a quarter of his customers use the resale option.
Instead of taking on the bookstore chains head-on, Hledající specializes in esoteric literature covering topics such as alchemy, yoga, reincarnation and karma.
No Chance Encounter — Meeting Yourself in Others, by Swedish film director Kay Pollack, currently tops the in-house best-seller list.

Michael Heitmann can be reached at mheitmann@praguepost.com


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