Authors join battle against supermarket strategies
A group of nearly 40 authors - including Beryl Bainbridge, JK Rowling, Philip Pullman and Vikram Seth - is going into battle against moves within publishing to abolish the cover price printed inside the dust jacket of a book, known as the recommended retail price (RRP). This deceptively small stroke of a publisher's pen could usher in an age where "supermarket disciplines" are imposed on the book industry, according to the president of the Society of Authors, Antony Beevor, author of the bestseller Stalingrad.
The writers' fear is that with no cover price authors such as John Grisham would fly off the shelves, so he would be piled high, but literary works take time to sell and earn less per bookshelf inch.
The Whitbread prize-winning children's author Mr Pullman, writing in the Guardian today to mark World Book Day, argues that abandoning the RRP will be a disaster for middle of-the-range authors, such as writers of successful but not bestselling first books or detective stories.
"Both of these writers are necessary to the rich and varied literary life we are lucky enough to enjoy now. Neither of them will survive under the proposed regime. Their books, though very different, are exactly the sort that will have to be priced out of reach of the general reader so that the latest celebrity ghostwritten bestseller can dominate the market place."
Leading authors, most of them prize winners, who have joined the Society of Authors' campaign include Monica Ali, Julian Barnes, William Boyd, Linda Grant, Mark Haddon and Michael Holroyd.
It is understood that one big publisher is already trying to steal a march on its rivals by tempting its bestselling writers to accept new forms of payment. These are called net receipt deals or dealer pricing. Publishers would charge booksellers a net price for their books which would remain secret to the public.
Authors would lose the royalty system, now calculated on the RRPs of their books, and would expect to be poorer.
A recent Society of Authors' survey found that three-quarters of published writers are living on incomes of less than
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