Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Are standards slipping at John Adams?...

Oh Dear, it seems that John Adams, or should I say My Back Pages, has had the dreaded Trading Standards officers round beating on their door. That is if TonbridgeBlog is to believe a recent comment from Alisteir Crowley (which by the way is a sinister name borrowed from an old writer who specialised in weirdly dark, supernatural tales) on this blog (scroll down to recent posting) I can only imagine that it must be true otherwise how would the commenter have any information about this matter. From my own point of view they don't effect my trade very much at all, at least not when they only sold new books; although now they seem to be selling off old stock. Obviously, with them being in a prime location, next to the Post Office and car parks, they'll always have the upper hand over Mr. Books in terms of what we retailers like to refer to as footfall. It's true though that when they have a, so called, "closing down sale," when they aren't actually closing down, it does effect my trade noticeably (although not cripplingly) I'm all for fair competition, monopolies just lead to laziness which in the long run is crap for the consumer and ultimately bad for the business. If trading standards have been on to them about overuse of closing down sales then fair enough I'd say. I'd actually quite like to see them be able to stay open, which would indicate that there is still money to be made from new books and that WH. Smiths, Asda and Amazon can't have it all their own way. Trade fairly or close down would seem to be fair comment....
PS. As a footnote to that, and I'm not being bitchy (well maybe a little) I happen to know that John Adams himself insisted after the last "closing down sale" that My Back Pages take down his name from over the shop, which had been there for over 30 years, because he no longer wanted to be associated with the business in any way. I wonder why?!

1 comment:

alesteir crowley said...

Nothing to do with me guv!!1 Doesn't really affect me...... Im only the editor of the Tonbrische Beobachter.... rabble-rouser, me? .... who will rid me of this toublesome paddy priest-fodder? ah the narcisism of small difference.....is that the Great Beast himself coming to crush the King of the Mistermen? is there anyone out there?