'A massive displacement below the waterline'

A crucial change over the last year is that both sides are coming to understand that selling fewer books at greater discounts is not the way to go... We need to think more strategically, creatively and practically about offering a richer range, and promoting the product as much as the price of the product. A tighter bottleneck of retailers, whose competition reached new extremes, more sales of fewer titles and margins that, to put it mildly, were not spectacular - resulted in a massive displacement below the waterline.'

Anthony Forbes Watson, CEO of Penguin Group UK