Burning the bookshops reprieved

Back in September I wrote Burning the bookshops which deplored the proposed takeover of Ottakars bookshops by Waterstones, the UK's largest book chain.

In my article I wrote: "the only hope of stopping the equivalent of burning 29 bookshops seems to be intervention by the Competition Enforcement Division at the UK Government's Office of Fair Trading. "

Only about one in ten proposed takeovers are referred to the Competition Commission, but the very good news is that the Waterstone's bid has been referred. Announcing the decision Office of Fair Trading chief John Fingleton said the chains: "compete closely on .... non-price factors such as range and variety of books".

Quite.

Burning books is not just a powerful analogy for a blogger to use. It is happening in 21st century China. Follow my image link to read about the Chinese authorities burning tens of thousand of books.

Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Image credit - Uyghur Human Rights Project
Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. If bandwidth is a problem with your permission I will host your image.
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Death of the library

Comments

Pliable said…
Another first-rate independent bookshop bites the dust.

Sportspages, the 20-year-old sports bookseller, is up for sale following the appointment of administrators at the Charing Cross Road (London) shop.

From The Bookseller.
1:22 pm
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