Skip to Content

'Book buyers who see books as very cheap'

1 December 2003

'We are creating a whole new generation of book buyers who see books as very cheap. We do the reverse of so many industries: when we have a valuable brand, we tend to discount it more; elsewhere, they put up the price. What we're facing is retailers fighting for market share and using discounting as a way to do that, and we publishers have to protect our authors' position and our own position. The US board, on which I sit, is staggered at our level of discounts - in the States the average is well below 50% and the 60%-plus discounts that have recently been demanded here by some supermarkets are unheard of.'

Victoria Barnsley, CEO of HarperCollins UK in an interview with Liz Thomson in Publishing News