Station bookshop
A train station bookstore is a special form of assortment book trade that is specially tailored to the needs of travelers and is located at train stations or airports .
In contrast to other press sales outlets, the station bookstore may purchase newspapers and magazines directly from the publishers. He does not have to be supplied by the local press wholesaler . The discount that usually accrues to the wholesaler therefore benefits the station bookseller. Various performance-related criteria must be met for a direct delivery of press products. These include extended opening hours of at least 90 hours per week, a particularly wide range of at least 1,000, but actually often 6,000, titles, main sales with press products, a recognized remission processing method, higher shop rents, etc. These criteria were agreed between the Association of German Magazine Publishers (VDZ) and agreed with the Association of German Train Station Booksellers, last amended in 2006 and deposited with the Federal Cartel Office .
Every tenth newspaper or magazine in Germany is sold through the station book trade, especially special interest titles (such as popular science , hobby , etc.). The station book trade is by far the most important source of sales for foreign press products. In addition to magazines and newspapers, the range in the station book trade is dominated by paperbacks . The station book trade made the paperback book “bookable” in the 1950s.
In Germany, the Valora Group, with its brands Press & Books and k presse + buch, achieved a market share of 36% in train station bookshops in 2009. This was followed by Karl Schmitt & Co. KG and Schmitt & Hahn , Lagardère Travel Retail Deutschland GmbH, formerly HDS Retail Deutschland GmbH and LS travel retail Deutschland GmbH , which belongs to the Lagardère Group , and the Dr. Eckert .
History of the station bookshop
The world's first train station bookshop was opened in 1848 by WH Smith at Euston Station in London. Smith offered a lending system for a fee, whereby travelers could return the borrowed book at the destination station. Smith followed Louis Hachette in France in 1852 with his Paris train station bookshop .
The fact that a train journey could not only be used for reading, but that there was a real need for one, was noticed quite quickly after the first passenger transport connections were set up. There are several reasons for this need. One reason is the so-called panoramatisation of the trip. Due to the many times higher speed of the trains compared to the previous travel options on foot, on horseback or by carriage, the traveler can only perceive what is further away, but no longer the foreground of the space traveled through. This is accompanied by a loss of experience of reality, which leads to an escape into the imaginary world of literature. In contrast to the historical forms of travel, other reasons given are an increase in anonymity between travelers and, at the same time, a loss of communication between them. These two factors caused a withdrawal into the activity of reading, also in order not to feel exposed to constant eye contact with fellow travelers.
It is noteworthy that in the 19th century these factors only applied to first and second class passengers traveling in closed , unconnected compartments. This group of travelers consisted of members of the educated middle class or the nobility. The offer of the early train station book trade was thematically addressed to them. The less educated sections of the population traveling in the third or fourth class not only lacked the means to purchase travel books, but also did not observe the effect of anonymization and lack of communication by contemporaries in these car classes.
However, there was soon a change in the type of travel literature acquired. While books initially predominated, sales made with magazines, for example at the Hachette company in France, were almost twice as high as with books as early as 1866.
In the 19th century there was a dispute in medicine about whether reading while traveling by train was harmful to health. There was fear of damage to the eyes, as the eyes (and ultimately also the travelers' brains) would have to follow the restless letter image during a train journey. In 1863, the question “Does reading on trains lead to mental illness?” Was even raised in the bulletin of the Paris Society of Medicine. Despite such fears, the popularity of reading during a train journey remained unbroken and even the medical profession noticed as early as the 1860s that reading was an advantageous activity during a train journey.
Germany
In Germany , newsagents are guaranteed for the year 1846 for the Breslau train station without a shop . In 1854, the university bookseller Carl Schmitt opened a shop for "travel literary" in Heidelberg Central Station . In 1871 there were already 12 station bookshops in the German Empire. Around 1900, 50 companies were already operating train station bookshops at 200 train stations, although not all of them had their own shops (sales cars or fold-out stands).
The upswing of the station bookshops ended in the 1970s due to a lack of investment by the Deutsche Bundesbahn in its stations. The bookstores reacted to this by increasing the range of magazines at the expense of literature. In 1985 there were 120 booksellers with 1,000 sales outlets. The railway station renovations carried out by Deutsche Bahn AG in the 1990s let the station bookshops grow and offer more literature again. As a result of the liberalization of shop opening times, higher rent demands due to renovations and the decline in rail customers, sales fell between 2001 and 2003 and led to a market shakeout .
Cultural significance in Germany
Right from the start, station bookshops offered “light literature”, travel guides, newspapers and magazines. Its cultural significance, however, was to support an (educational) bourgeois atmosphere in the station. The station bookstores experienced a cultural upswing with the appearance of paperback series , starting with the rororo ribbons. At the moment, at least 70 percent of the sales area of the station bookstores is reserved for newspapers and magazines.
Association of German Train Station Booksellers
In 1905 the Association of German Train Station Booksellers was founded in Leipzig . In 1938, 125 booksellers with 900 sales outlets were registered with the association. The companies, like the one formerly run by Georg Stilke , were Aryanized .
In 1947 the Association of German Train Station Booksellers was re-established and Georg Stilke took over as chairman after he returned to his company. The Cologne entrepreneur Gerhard Ludwig was an important representative of this branch of the company with a total of 14 bookstores, as well as the first paperback bookshop and his advertising method with the Cologne Wednesday Talks .
In April 2009, the Association of German Train Station Bookstores only had 37 company members in 495 sales outlets at 366 locations. In 2008 they achieved sales of 350 million euros (5 million more than in the previous year). At the end of 2015, the association had only 20 company members, but the number of sales outlets and locations remained more or less the same. According to their own statements, 90% of all train station and airport bookshops are members of this association.
literature
- Klaus-Wilhelm Bramann, Joachim Merzbach, Roger Münch: Product range and publishing customer . Munich, New Providence, London, Paris 1995. ISBN 3-598-20065-X
- Peter Brummund: Station bookstore . From the supply of travel literature to the premium trade for newspapers and magazines. (Dortmund contributions to newspaper research 61) Munich, New Providence, London, Paris 1995. ISBN 3-598-21327-1
- Christine Haug : Traveling and Reading in the Age of Industrialization. The history of the train station and traffic book trade in Germany from its beginnings around 1850 to the end of the Weimar Republic . Wiesbaden 2007. ISBN 978-3-447-05401-0
- Reinhard Wittman: History of the German book trade . 2nd edition, Munich 1999. ISBN 3-406-42104-0
swell
- ^ Association of German Train Station Booksellers elects Mathias Gehle as Deputy Chairman . DNV online. April 30, 2009. Retrieved June 3, 2011.
- ^ Association of German Train Station Booksellers e. V. , vdbb.de: Karl Schmitt & Co. KG / Schmitt & Hahn station bookstores
- ↑ schmitt-hahn.de
- ↑ ls-travelretail.de
- ↑ cf. Börsenblatt online, June 13, 2006
- ↑ Wolfgang Schivelbusch: History of the railway journey. On the industrialization of space and time in the 19th century . 5th edition, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 978-3-596-14828-8 , p. 51 ff.
- ↑ cf. Bbl. printed edition, 17 (2009), p. 18; and station book trade: stable development despite difficult framework conditions . boersenblatt.net. April 27, 2009. Retrieved June 3, 2011.
- ^ Association of German Train Station Booksellers: The members (accessed December 19, 2015)
Web links
- Association of German Train Station Booksellers
- Definition from the VDZ sales dictionary , website of DPV Deutscher Pressevertrieb GmbH