Publishers pay us well to put books in the window and falsely name them Book of the Month

Publishers pay us well to put books in the window, and falsely name them “Book of the Month”. We also receive incentives to display other books prominently, to name certain books as “Chosen by the Staff”, and so on. Now, Mr Standforth, you are manager of a large branch of Arbour Book Stores, are you not?Standforth: I am.Counsel: It is your job to encourage people to read, and buy books?Standforth: Well, to buy books, certainly.Counsel: But why else would people buy books except to read?Standforth: Oh, most books are bought to give away People generally buy books as presents. There are some best-selling authors who, it is reckoned, have never been read at all. well, perhaps it would be simpler just to bring you an extract from the case, from the moment when the accused bookshop manager took the stand. There is a most curious trial going on at the moment, in which a famous woman novelist is suing a bookshop for professional defamation She claims that…

How is it then that my client, the well-known author Bryony Tallboys, came into your shop one day last year and found her books in a pile marked “No Need To Read”?Standforth: I can easily explain that. Their books have merely changed hands.Counsel: Be that as it may, you are in the business of selling books. But we barristers seldom get to meet real people, and we must take advantage of these human exchanges of information when we can.Judge: Not in my court room, you don’t.Counsel: Very well, my Lord. It is a very common name in Latin Catholic countries.Judge: Excuse me, Mr Glancey, but has this got anything to do with the case?Counsel: No, my Lord. We dislike them for bad reasons as well as good, however; and before we laugh too heartily when they come a cropper, perhaps we ought to think that the scale of investment is not the same as exploitation, and that virtues may flow even from an organisation of a gigantic size
More from Philip Hensher.

All the same, many people will smile at the discomfiture of a major multi-national. Deep down, we hate them.The Coca-Cola company’s misfortunes in Sidcup are harder to defend, but all the same, is it not unfortunate that a major company, contributing in a substantial way to the local economy by establishing a plant, should be endangered not just by their own folly in failing to check legal bromate levels but by the gleeful ridicule of people like me who despise their products? After all, I don’t suppose anyone else had thought of selling water from the region; and selling an image like this is not so very different from the rest of the industry which, let’s face it, does not exclusively sell water freshly melted from Antarctic glaciers.No doubt about it, multi-nationals do have too much power. It is easier to agree with the commentator who said that the EU’s order constitutes “a corporate welfare programme for market losers”. Real competition, in this area, might well form a barrier to the dissemination of computers throughout world society.You can say whatever you like in favour of Microsoft; you can point out, too, that Bill Gates is a model of enlightened capitalism, and his welfare programmes and help for Aids foundations in Africa are doing a great deal to help in difficult situations. But is it entirely rational? Microsoft has, without a doubt, used its market dominance to crush rivals and to promote itself further. But, actually, one of the main reasons that computer systems have penetrated society to an extent nobody could have dreamt of 20 years ago, and done so with incredible speed, might be the simplicity which results from the dominance of a juggernaut like Microsoft.Of course, if Microsoft had exploited its dominance to keep prices artificially elevated, that would be a serious problem But I don’t think anyone is actually arguing that.