Famous Dublin bookshops set to close.
national |
arts and media |
news report 
Thursday January 08, 2004 11:05
by Joesph Murtagh
Several Dublin bookshops are set to close over the next few years. Owners have complained that they are no longer able to afford the rent increases and high rates.
Several Dublin bookshops are set to close over the next few years. Owners have complained that they are no longer able to afford the rent increases and high rates.
"I'm getting out of it and most of my friends are getting out of it" said one owner of a landmark bookshop who wishes to remain annonymous. "Unless you own your own building the combination of rent and rates is a killer. Its sad, people are going to be really shocked when they see some really famous bookshops close"
Rates and rent are unaffordable to nearly all but the big chain stores.
A decline in bookreading is not as big a factor in the death of dublin bookshops as either rent or rates increases although owners have noticed that people seem to have less time to browse. Even online book dealing hasn't been a major issue as not only can bookshops trade themselves online but many people will always prefer to browse and collect on the day.
A special rates dispensation for bookshops seems necessary if authorities wish to preserve these educational and cultural building blocks. Dublin authorities have no plans to this at the moment.
Perversely Dublin city authorities continue to promote Irish writing while forcing the bookshops to pay crippling rates. "If they taxed us on profits rather than hitting us with rates we might stand a chance." another owner adds. "Once a bookshop is lost, its gone for ever."
Comments (17 of 17)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17Uh-huh. This could really have benefitted as an article with examples.....or attributable quotes......or figures for that matter. I'm not disputing the truth of it at all, merely that the argument you make about a special dispensation would need such things to back it up.
On a vaguely related front, was in Connolly Books for Christmas shopping last month. Maybe it's my imagination but was the level of stock in it way down on normal? There were acres of empty shelf space and not a huge pile of new, or even recent books. Maybe I arrived after the place had been looted for Xmas presents but still.
Whats the point of this story if you have no name of the shop? Whats the point of the shopkeeper remaining anonymous?
I could just as easily write a story about a bank closing down because of the global economic downturn but state that the managing director or CEO wished to remain anonymous. What's the difference between my story and this?
May I suggest this gets deleted...
Leading American and European capitalists have admitted the capitalist system is a fraud and expect it to collapse any day now.
While they failed to provide any figures or statistical evidence, and preferred not to go on the record, this group of capitalists, which may or my not include the CEOs of major international corporations were adamant that the collapse was imminent.
The group, possibly containing leading free market theorists and Thatcherite ideologues, but possibly not, might have implied that a front page editorial in the Socialist Worker, could have shaken the capitalist economic system to its foundations.
While no further details, or indeed any details at all, are forthcoming at this time, this publication is absolutely confident that the downfall of capitalism, long heralded, is nigh, proving that Ted Grant was right all along.
they say they can't afford rents. another excuse not to pay your workers a proper wage you scrooge bastards. you can afford to pay the rents and your workers better pay. but you don't want to because it would eat into your handsome profits.
everyone knows that the books industry is a complete rip-off and that they make massive profits on books.
The government should help the smaller shops. These small shops are slowly going out of business , as the larger shops become huge. Pretty soon we'll have a small few shops controlling the entire book selling in the country. This leaves them free to get together and fix prices to what they want. And you can be damn sure it wont be to the benefit of the consumer. More like to the benefit of their profits!! Have a read of FAST FOOD NATION by ERIC SCHLOSSER and see how this was done by the meat industry in the good ol US of A. A select few controlling the whole system. Similar to the way communism was run by bureacrats in Moscow who hadnt a clue about the business or the customers needs. This is one reason why the communist system failed. And its being adopted by Western businesses to enrich the profits of the owners. When this fails who has all the money and resources???? Large numbers of smaller businesses is to the benfit of the consumer not a small no. of larger businesses.
I think its perfectly obvious why they should wish to remain annonymous. Any leaking of names would lead to their suppliers withholding stock and credit being restricted and so hastening their decline.
Most Dublin bookbrowsers will have noticed that there are an increasingly unnatural number of empty shelves in a number of Dublin bookstores.
p.s.
And isnt it a bit hypocritical for people using annonymous tags to demand names....
Until about ten years ago, book prices in the UK were fixed by the publishers, under the Net Book Agreement. This generally carried over to Ireland too.
These days, discounting is in, and the bigger bookshops (HF, Waterstones, Easons) wouldn't be able to successfully fix prices, because for the high turnover items they're competing with supermarkets.
From the point of view of a consumer (or even a producer) there are advantages and disadvantages to having a few big retailers rather than a lot of small retailers. Surprise, surprise - small retailers are capitalists too. Given that the original article doesn't contain any actual figures, or attributable quotes, or anything even resembling hard information its impossible to tell what impact, if any, this trend, if it exists, will have on the average bookbuyer.
(As for the massive profits available in the book industry, there's an old joke that goes "How do you create a small publishing company?" "Start with a large one.")
as a former book industry worker i agree that there are many bookstores making massive profits and paying their staff pittance, but, smaller bookstores are at a disadvantage because the bigger shops buy bulk. a smaller shop has a mark up of 33 and a third % whilst bulk buyers would have 50%. The major book chain in Ireland also has a wholesale division and their mark up would be greater again. I suppose it's a bit like the corner shop versus the supermarket.....
Have you not read my Das Kapital Vol. 1 Chapter 32, entitled "The Historical Tendency of Capitalist Acumulation" ?
"One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the co-operative form of the labor-process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labor into instruments of labor only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialized labor, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world-market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it.
Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. "
Why do you lament and struggle against the inevitable ?
I don't know much about the either the profits of big chains or tiny little bookshops but I do think that many books put on the shelfs now are without a lot of merit. Not only could big chains have monopolies on the profit but also on the choice of books keeping those books trying to uncover the inadequacies of our present political structures and institutions off shelves. I can find plenty of Beckham books and Keano diaries but politics among others are given little corners and little space. I want to be able to get che and freire's opinions and views as well as what happened behind the scenes in the Irish camp at the World Cup.
It's also at the stage that even if you do find a good book it will cost you a pretty penny. We are being punished for wanting to learn and read.
It's called dumbing down as part of the process of establishing the coming ochlarchy .....
I'm sure you mean 'oligarchy'.
You seem to be right about the "dumbing down" though!
No I didn't !
I consciously used the word ochlarchy - it means the rule of the "ochlos" or "the mob" ... (look it up if you don't believe me ...)
i.e. where all taste is determined by the lowest common denominator and all who try to protest or struggle against it are shouted down by the dumbed-down "mob" ....
Of course you are partially right in the sense that the ochlarchy coexists with an "oligarchy" behind the scenes who drive the process of dumbing-down so that they can more easily control the "mob" .....
After all if the mass of the people (the "ochlos") are happy to gawk and stare at the antics of the Beckhams and Keanes (installed by the oligarchs), then there is little danger of any significant political unrest ...
The "mob" or "ochlos" acts as a buffer between the oligarchs and is used to choke any burgeoning dissent among the "common people" .... hence we have a state of "mob rule" or ochlarchy .......
I believe that the ancient Romans called it "bread and circuses" .....
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I beg your pardon. Your terminology is unfamiliar to me.
What is your point ?
(If indeed you have one which is questionable.)
bing liberty, bong justice.....
I take it that oik is a corruption of ochloc.
someone else recently left this on another thread, :
http://www.anarchy.no/ija133.html
meanwhile, bread and circus, which is the common term, was only used for a brief period of Roman Imperial history. It is one of the "clichés" of imperial memory.
And you obviously don't know what it meant, beyond "the plebs got free bread and circus entrance", nor do you appear to have any inkling of how such popular entertainment developed, and it's importance in socio-economic relations between officer and non officer classes of the Roman legions from 200ad-400ad. (There was no more land to be granted). And in any case for many contemporary writers and historians and myself bread and circus was preferable to the tyranny of Nero and his immediate followers.
If you did know about all this , "Doh!" you would be closer to what you aspire to be...
"a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,
drink deep if not of the periean spring,
for there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking deep brings us back again".
Alexander Pope. (correct me if i am wrong oh do).
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