The Office of Fair Trading is due to look into the deal between WH Smith and Penguin following complaints about the bookseller's controversial plans to remove overseas travel guides from any other publisher from its shelves, with Michael Palin and Margaret Drabble adding their voices to the growing opposition. Speaking to the Guardian, Margaret Drabble branded the deal "ludicrous", and said that Penguin "should be ashamed", while Michael Palin called it an "unacceptable restriction of traveller's choice".
"No guide is ever perfect," Palin continued, "and the ideal situation is to pick and choose from all the alternatives available. If this is indeed their policy, I certainly wouldn't go to Smith's before my next journey."
"It's extremely worrying. It's very distressing for authors and for independent publishers. The monopolistic tendency is getting really out of hand," Drabble, who is chair of the Society of Authors, added. "I think Penguin should be ashamed of themselves. It's very distressing, we're all worried."
The Society of Authors has written to WH Smith expressing its concerns about the deal with Penguin, which will see 268 of the chain's 450 travel stores – including every bookseller at BAA airports following a deal earlier this year – stocking only Penguin travel guides, such as Rough Guides and Dorling Kindersley's Eyewitness guides. Other brands, including Lonely Planet, Frommer's and Bradt, will not be sold from the shops. Smith's said it took the decision because customers at its travel stores "are often pressed for time and want to have a straightforward range of travel guides to choose from".
Drabble disagrees. "The reason they have given at Smith's is ludicrous," she said. "It's so cynical and isn't true. Most people at airports have time to kill."
The British Guild of Travel Writers, which earlier this week called for a boycott of Penguin and Smith's over the deal, is now writing to the Office of Fair Trading about it. "The momentum is building," said chair Melissa Shales. "The issue has obviously touched a real nerve at a time when the public are all too aware of corporate greed and want a return to fairer and more ethical values."
The Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild yesterday announced that it had also written to the OFT about the deal, saying it was "manifestly anti-competitive" and that it would reduce choice for consumers. "This move will severely curtail customer options, and will be highly detrimental to the potential development of the guidebook industry as a whole," said guidebook author and editor Sue Viccars, a member of the OWPG.
Frommer's founder Arthur Frommer added his voice to the fray yesterday, writing on his blog that if the "unthinkable act of literary censorship and corporate greed" was not reversed, he would "never again shop in a WH Smith store, nor will I purchase any book published by Penguin".
Smith's said that only 268 of its travel stores carried overseas travel guides anyway – its motorway service station branches and its hospital branches don't stock them – and that both its 560 high street shops and its online sore would continue to stock the existing range of overseas guides. The company said in a statement that because of the limited space available in its travel stores, they were "not effectively meeting the needs of their customers, who are often pressed for time and want to have a straightforward range of travel guides to choose from".
"After extremely positive customer feedback, we have made changes to our range and display to make selecting a suitable guide easier. For example, we used to stock up to 20 guides to Paris and now we will offer eight with many more displayed face out," it added.
Penguin declined to comment.
