{"id":146987,"date":"2025-09-19T07:51:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T07:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/146987\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T07:51:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T07:51:07","slug":"niche-titles-at-risk-if-bookshops-squeezed-by-short-payment-terms-ba-warns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/146987\/","title":{"rendered":"Niche titles at risk if bookshops squeezed by short payment terms, BA warns"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Changes around late payments\u00a0\u201care causing the most concern for UK members\u201d of the Booksellers Association (BA), Laura McCormack<\/a>, head of policy and public affairs at the organisation, told The Bookseller, and could have \u201cwidespread ramifications across the trade\u201d, such as reducing booksellers\u2019 ability to take a risk on niche, indie titles and debut authors. <\/p>\n

As part of the small business plan launched in July 2025, the government has proposed legislative measures to address late, long and disputed business-to-business (B2B) payments including a move to introduce maximum payment terms of 60 days, reducing to 45 days, \u201cgiving firms certainty they\u2019ll be paid on time\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a UK perspective,\u201d McCormack says, late payments are the \u201cnumber one priority\u201d and she warns of \u201cwidespread ramifications\u201d across the book trade: \u201cWith margins and the trade being so low, bookshops just don\u2019t have the cash flow to work on short payment terms.\u201d<\/p>\n

She explained that \u201cthe reason people go into bookshops is to see a wide and diverse range of titles that they wouldn\u2019t stumble across elsewhere\u201d, with a lot of the more \u201cniche titles or titles by debut authors\u201d taking longer to sell. But if payment terms are limited to 60 or 45 days, \u201cbookshops will be far less likely to be able to take a punt on those titles\u201d.<\/p>\n

McCormack adds: \u201cWe\u2019ve surveyed our members and they\u2019ve said that they would, if this was introduced, be far more conservative in their ordering and be far less likely to take titles by debut authors. The long-term ramifications for that would be huge across the entire trade, from authors trying to get published to some of the more niche publishers who are only putting out a few titles a year that take a while to sell through.\u201d<\/p>\n

She points to the example of bookshops in Scotland, who are concerned about Scots language and Gaelic titles: \u201cThey tend to get longer terms on them just again, because the publishers recognise that they\u2019re not flying off the shelves on publication day, so they will get an extended period of time to sell them before they have to pay their invoice. What the longer term ramifications would be for Scots language publishing is something that we\u2019re really concerned with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, McCormack says, \u201cthe government policy is coming from a good place\u201d and \u201ceveryone recognises there are issues with late payments across many industries, and the situation for freelancers can be really difficult. But the problem is, no one within the book trade has asked for this change. What happens in the book industry isn\u2019t late payments, it\u2019s extended payments, and it\u2019s what the industry has been built on for decades, if not centuries\u201d.<\/p>\n

She continues: \u201cIt\u2019s just how things have always operated, with the recognition that books are slow-moving goods. The stock turn in bookshops is far slower than, say, in a supermarket, for example. A book can sit on shelves for months before the perfect reader comes along for it, or it could take a bit of time for a bit of a buzz to build up around [it]. There\u2019s many reasons why books take longer to sell, but I think forcing bookshops to have to basically pay up front before they sell them would just be unworkable for so many bookshops.\u201d<\/p>\n

Continues\u2026<\/p>\n

Emma Corfield-Walters<\/a>, owner of Book-ish in Crickhowell, agrees that while the policy \u201cmight sound like a sensible idea on paper\u201d the proposal \u201cmisses the mark\u201d. Longer terms \u201clet us take a chance on new titles, keep a wide range on our shelves, and continue carrying slower-selling backlist books that are just as valuable to customers as the latest big release.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that flexibility disappears, indies will be pushed towards playing it safe, ordering only what they know will sell quickly. That\u2019s bad news not just for bookshops, but also for authors, publishers and readers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the number-one priority for the BA in Ireland is incoming EU deforestation regulation (EUDR), which Tom\u00e1s Kenny<\/a> from Kennys in Galway describes as \u201cterrifying\u201d and something which has the potential to \u201cclose every bookshop in Ireland\u201d.<\/p>\n

The EUDR, which was meant to come into effect in December 2024 and was pushed back to December 2025, will require that seven commodities \u2013 cocoa, coffee, soy, palm oil, wood, rubber and cattle, and their derivatives \u2013 are deforestation- or land degradation-free before they can be imported into or exported from the EU.<\/p>\n

For books, this means tracing the paper and board used in manufacture back to the geolocation where the trees grew and the species of those trees, plus creating due diligence statements that attest that the products have been verified as deforestation-free.<\/p>\n

McCormack says: \u201cBetween 80 and 90% of books sold in Ireland come from Britain. Irish bookshops are heavily reliant on UK-based publishers in order to receive their stock. And this regulation, again, it\u2019s the same as the late payment \u2013 proposals are coming from a good place. We recognise the problem with deforestation and the Amazon, but I don\u2019t think books are the cause of that, and they seem to have accidentally been caught up in what is a very complicated regulation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The BA has been working with Book Industry Communication (BIC) across the UK and Ireland to \u201ctry and make sure publishers are ready, and that all the metadata that sits behind the book is ready for the regulation coming into force at the end of the year\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s outrageous,\u201d Kenny says, \u201cto bring in a law so far reaching with so little understanding of what people are supposed to do. I don\u2019t think this will close every bookshop in Ireland, but it has the potential to do so. And for that to be even remotely on the table \u2013 but at the same time to not have the information as to how you\u2019re supposed to deal with it is \u2013 as I said, is outrageous. We can\u2019t change reality. Unfortunately, we\u2019re going to have to do it as best we can.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re spending more and more of our time trying to figure out how to deal with these problems, as opposed to how to be a better bookseller, or, you know, to improve sales, or to whatever it might be, but we\u2019re not concentrating on improving the business as much as firefighting all the time. I would think that it\u2019s going to cause problems that we don\u2019t know what they are yet, and that\u2019s my worry. We can all try to be prepared, as prepared\u00a0as possible, but we don\u2019t know what we\u2019re preparing for.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Changes around late payments\u00a0\u201care causing the most concern for UK members\u201d of the Booksellers Association (BA), Laura McCormack,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146988,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[457,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-146987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-books","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}