Victoria Barnsley

HarperCollins UK has seen a 66% drop in profits for the year ending 30th June 2013, according to results filed with Companies House. Pre-tax profits at the publisher dropped from £8.3m in 2012 to £2.8m in 2013, a decline of 66%. Profit after tax stood at £1.07m, falling  80% from £5.3m. HarperCollins has attributed the decline in profits to costs incurred by a change in its distribution system.

Victoria Barnsley, Chief Executive and Publisher at HarperCollins UK since 2000, announced her unexpected exit earlier this week. According to the report in the UK’s The Bookseller, expanded on the circumstances and on her own view of her profession in a valedictory speech at the annual HarperCollins author party, held this year in the Orangery [...]

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TeleRead posted earlier about an idea that was floated by Victoria Barnsley, a HarperCollins CEO, during a recent NPR interview: the idea of charging people for the privilege of browsing in bookstores. The idea was that they’d pay to browse, and then go home and order online from the vendor of their choosing. The analogy [...]

The post Pay to Browse: Why it will never work for bookstores appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.

Would you pay to browse a bookstore’s shelves? Victoria Barnsley, CEO of HarperCollins UK & International, discussed that concept during a recent interview on BBC’s The Bottom Line with Evan Davis. “In America, certain shoe shops are charging to try on shoes. These people just go in, try them on and go and order them online,” [...]

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Chapter 1: You stumble upon an interesting book at your neighborhood bookstore.

Chapter 2: You go home and order it from Amazon for half as much.

Chapter 9: Your favorite bookstore is bankrupt.

Booksellers call it “showrooming,” and it drives them crazy — and out of business. Barnes & Noble believes that 40 percent of its customers use the store as a place to discover and examine titles, but then buy the books online.

How might “real” bookstores fight back against their Amazonian nemesis?

I was somewhat surprised to learn, through our annual reader survey, that almost 50 percent of Book Business readers do not currently offer e-books. And, of those who do publish e-books, most offer e-books of 30 percent or less of their titles.