Browsing the Bookshelves

Before She Met Me by Julian Barnes

There’s no denying that Julian Barnes’s Before She Met Me is an absorbing, even compelling, account of one man’s descent from jealousy into obsession and ultimately to insanity.  Graham, happily and then unsatisfying married, falls for Ann, for whom he leaves his wife and daughter. With Ann, a sometime bit part actress seems to offer him the solace and companionship which Graham has just discovered that he’s been lacking all these years. By then, through the offices of his bitter ex-wife, he happens to see a film featuring, albeit briefly, Ann.  He becomes obsessed with her past, convulsively gathering evidence of her former liaisons and boyfriends and even passing acquaintances. But he can’t leave it there: and what he imagines his wife did before she met him becomes worse that what she actually did. Sad, funny and disturbing, Barnes’ prose is as always, well-measured and quite elegant. Yet there is something just a little unsatisfying about this novel. Never quite convinced that Graham’s descent is totally self-driven, the reader is left wondering about the machinations of his friends and his ex-wife particularly: the questions surrounding their role are never quite resolved and yet too closely drawn to remain provocatively ambiguous.  Barnes has done a lot better.

The Battle of Dorking by George Chesney

George Chesney’s startling account of an imagined invasion and conquest of Britain by the Germans in the 1870s was born in the shock reaction to the very real, very swift and unexpected German victories in the War of Surprises of 1870.   Filled with regret for a nation destroyed and embittered by the passiveness with which the nation ignored all the warning signed, failing to take what with hindsight seem like obvious measure of self-preservation, a unknown soldier reminisces for history grandchildren upon his experience of the Battle of Dorking.  At once level, this short story is just a shocking and gripping account of a fiction overthrow of the country. But Chesney’s tale rewards a deeper reading as well, revealing much about contemporary attitudes to empire and fears for the future.  The nameless soldier encapsulates, in his regret, concerns over the squandering of energy and enterprise swallowed in the maintenance and expansion of Empire which so dominated England in the later years of the 19^th century. And he exposes a perceived fragility in the security of the nation: that England falls so easily to the Germans is ascribed not only to a lack of preparedness but also to an arrogance born of a belief in the natural superiority of English civilisation and culture and, particularly, to the brittle basis on which British economic prosperity was based. It is in these arguments that the reader cannot fail to miss potential parallels with today’s circumstances: a national prosperity based not on manufacturing or labour but upon trade, credit, services and other business which could so easily be diverted elsewhere.

This short story, just short of 50 pages, is therefore not only a sad and foreboding tale of glories lost, but also a telling and disturbing assessment of a nation reaching the end of line of credit in stability and security.  It is certainly a quick and easy read but it is at the same time both thought-provoking and memorable.

Time was when Alibris was a sound selling venue for UK sellers. Yes, they marked up our stock above that of US competitors, and told buyers that it would take at least three weeks for the book to be sent out to them, let alone delivered. But with Alibris' strong marketing and its deep penetration of the US market, it was still a good venue for UK booksellers offering interesting and well-described books. Add to that the once a week consolidated shipping, paid for by Alibris and the fact that Alibris almost always absorbs returns, it site provided a stready flow of sales and the 20 per cent commission, although painful, could be justified. Even on the tiny inventory we had on line in 2003, some 5,000 books, we regularly shipping 20 to 25 books to Alibris each week.

All that changed during 2004 and the early part of 2005. First UK sellers were removed wholesale from the link up between Alibris and Barnes and Noble. That hurt. Our sales via Alibris halved over night and from conversations with colleagues I know others suffered even more.  Then came Alibris's abortive public offering which damaged their reputation and in turn resulted in another dive in sales. The change in fee structure earlier this year was another kick in the teeth, especially for UK sellers. By insisting on a monthly subscription as well as commission per sale, albeit at a slightly reduced rate, Alibris seemed to be sending a message that it really didn't welcome sellers with small stock and that it was setting itself up to be all about turnover and quantity. But in a passing gesture to those who swim the seas of the rare and antiquarian book trade, a low level scheme was introduced for those with an inventory of less than 1,000 which allowed them to opt out of the monthly subscription if they agreed to an additional per sale fee. We tinkered with this option for a month, but the tiny number of sales did not justify the enormous data management required to send just a small proportion of our inventory.  Some UK sellers stuck with this model, a few, like us, have kept their entire inventory at Alibris, but many left the scheme although.

And now Alibris have announced that even the low level scheme will come to an end in the new year without any similar replacement. I predict that for many UK and other European booksellers this will be final nail in the coffin of their relationship with Alibris.  Apparently, the scheme was too confusing. All those poor little booksellers out that - they just couldn't get their heads about a commission only agreement. What utter bosh! If you sell books on line, believe me, you understand commission and subscriptions in the same way that an bookmakers understand odds. It's in the blood. More likely that Alibris found that it was not worth their while to adminster a separate scheme for a small number of booksellers, especially when their sales are declining in the same way as snow melts in the sun. So Alibris delivers another kick in the teeth to booksellers operating outside North America while it positions itself as an  exclusively American site for Americans. This may keep the corporate accountants and city fund managers happy but it will not bring sales for Alibris. They have taken a major step to remove some of the most disintinctive, most interesting and, in the US, some the hardest to find inventory. 

I suppose the writing was on wall, if perhaps only in pencil, with the initial change in fee structure. This latest move puts in in ink. Alibris is no longer a truely international site for international trade. And with out I doubt it will last long as a site for book collectors in the ultra-competitive internet bookselling marketplace.  Unless there are some real and quick changes in their business model, that ink will be replaced with inedible marker pen.  Move over Alibris. Move on up Biblio.