26/09/2026
A prime example of why we usually try and avoid mainstream, mass published new titles. Just like the new Pan MacMillan romance advent calendar that Asda have been selling for £15 when the RRP is £40.
We absolutely know we cannot compete with billion pound companies but more than willing to offer discounts where possible. However the price on the book is mostly the price 🙃
Why we don't stock certain books... Of course, Five Leaves is a small bookshop so we have to be selective, but there are certain books that we would like to stock and don't. An example is this book, a major title. The retail price is £22.00 but you can buy
a copy in Tesco for £11. Other supermarkets too. We can't blame you for doing that. The price to us from the publisher would be £12.10 as they discriminate against small shops on discount. So if we wanted to stock the book it would be cheaper for us to buy it at Tesco. We have no idea what discount Tesco has been given. The other issue is that there is a date embargo on the book - if we sold it before publication date we would be in trouble with the publisher. Again and again the supermarkets ignore embargos. We get told if we break such embargos our continued supply of titles will be at risk. Supermarkets breaking embargos? Nothing happens. In the good old days there was retail price maintenance, rather than a race to the bottom on price - a system called the Net Book Agreement. Nowadays we know certain titles will be falsely priced at a high price because they will mostly then be sold at a discount. We're more specialist than mainstream so we are not hit as badly as general independents who would love to stock books like this in quantity, but can't. It's not fair. Of course capitalism isn't fair, but publishers could do more to ensure that independent bookshops are not priced out of the market.
