Looking Outside the Bookselling Box

IN ADDITITION TO A FEW LARGE CHAINS, GERMANY has over 6,000 independent booksellers. Many people I spoke to here say the health of independent bookselling comes in part from the fact that fixed pricing still exists in Germany (by law). In other words, a book is sold for its price, not at 40 percent off as a way to lure people in to buy something else with bigger margins. So big booksellers cannot beat the smaller ones based on price. What seems to happen instead is stores compete by having better and more prestigious events. I had heard about how popular readings are in Germany, and how much the German public likes to be read to for hours at a time, but what I didn't realize is that booksellers often pay authors for their appearances. I met the director of a literary colloqium who said it's never been a better time to be a young German writer under 35. There are lots of grants for people this age, he said, and if they publish a book they can go on a reading tour every other year and live quite comfortably. Of course, there is a somewhat similar system in the U.S., with authors getting paid to make appearances outside of their normal tour schedule (in fact some U.S. publishers have set up their own speakers bureaus to help this along), but my impression is that authors who do this are often sent to colleges and universities rather than bookstores.