‘Footfall just died’: Free book scheme threatens dark days for schoolbook shops
Carmel O'Regan at Cobh School Books in Cobh: “Normally, April and May would be a little bit less stressful for me whereas this year I was snowed under with paperwork because of the tendering process.” Picture: Dan Linehan
Free schoolbooks for primary school children and, indeed, the planned expansion to junior cycle students in 2024 is a clear win for parents across the country but it seems to have marked a stark path for schoolbook sellers.
However, those on the ground who have dedicated their professional lives to schoolbooks are finding themselves majorly down on profits and worried about the future.
After all, Education Minister Norma Foley’s clear ambition is to have free schoolbooks for all, which would be a landmark moment in Irish education but it poses an uncertain future for schoolbook sellers.
East Cork native Carmel O’Regan initially opened Cobh School Books as a pop-up summer shop in 2013, the success of which led her to open a store on a full-time basis in 2020.
“My whole family has been involved in retail and where I’m based in Cobh, Top of the Hill, we’ve had generations going back to my great grandparents, so it’s in the blood,” she said.
Once the free book scheme for all primary school children hit the ground running this year, schools across the country scrambled to look for the best quotes as they were expected to adopt a cost-conscious approach.
Schools were tasked with getting quotes from three schoolbook sellers before choosing the cheapest option, resulting in stores being overwhelmed at the time, and sometimes offering guidance to schools on the minute details of the scheme and what they could do with the €96 per pupil.
“They didn’t understand it, they just didn’t have time because their days are full as it is and then this was put on top of them as well,” she said adding that it was a stressful time for sellers who put in a lot of work to just provide a quote.
“Normally, April and May would be a little bit less stressful for me whereas this year I was snowed under with paperwork because of the tendering process,” she said.
After the chaos came to a close, the reality of the bidding wars set in, with Ms O’Regan explaining that the maximum rate a shop can make on a school book is 20%. Publishers dictate the retail price before giving sellers a 20% discount, for example, a book costing €10 might mean €2 profit for the store.
“Luckily for me, I got all the local schools here and one school outside of Cobh but it took a lot of work and you had to cut your profits massively,” she said before adding: “We had to give a cut of 10% to all the schools.”
In addition to a 10% discount, some shops added in extra benefits such as free delivery, free book covering, and further discounts on dictionaries and stationery to make their bid more attractive to schools.
Ms O’Regan said some shops were able to offer “that little bit more” to secure a bid, squeezing out smaller sellers.
“If you have three shops in a town, and they’re offering something extra that the other two can’t offer then the other two shops are going to miss out, and shops close because of that, there have been a number of shops that have closed,” she said.
Once the store was successful in its bid and received an order from the school, packaging, and delivery in a short period meant an intense few days.
She said:
Aside from discounting, a huge decrease in footfall has been the biggest issue for Ms O’Regan.
“All the booksellers will tell you that — the footfall for stationery items — and when they buy those they get to see what else you sell in your shop. We lost a lot of that.
“There are people coming in in the last few weeks because their kids are starting to run out of stationery items and they’re saying: ‘God, we haven’t seen you since last year’."
Ms O’Regan believes the impact of the free book scheme on schoolbook sellers has been “100% underestimated” by the Department of Education.
“You knew that there was going to be money in the bank all summer long whereas this year there were times where I was right down to the wire,” she said.
“Shops that have been established for many, many years are getting to the point of bowing out because there’s no point. What they’re going to get in this summer isn’t going to be enough to keep them going for the winter,” she said adding that “it’s just not worth it.”
She said she is worried about the years ahead, given further expected expansions in the scheme, while schools retaining the books for subsequent students means far fewer books will be purchased as the years go on.
“I get a lot of fifth and sixth years in, I’d sell a lot of books for those and we do second-hand books and again the stationery for secondary school is huge so I’d be more worried about the secondary schools at this stage,” she said.
She said the scheme has added intense stress, saying that it was landed on schoolbook sellers with “virtually no warning”.
“I think there’s going to be more closures next year because of it, I think there was no thought for the shops whatsoever,” she said. “I’m delighted parents are getting free schoolbooks, I’ve raised three children myself but I just think it was done badly.”
June O’Flynn who runs Phillip’s Bookshop in Mallow believes a voucher system would make the scheme fairer after the free book scheme impacted her store’s earnings “massively”.
The shop was initially set up in 1989 by her father and has grown to become a one-stop shop for parents in the lead-up to September including books, bags and uniforms.
However, after the free book scheme was launched, she has since had to halve her staff, with employees, herself included, “twiddling their thumbs” at times due to a sharp drop in footfall.
“We’re lucky that we have the school uniforms that people were coming in to get that, but half of the staff, that’s a massive drop,” she said. Before the scheme was in place, Phillip’s Bookshop employed 16 but now has eight.
“It’s impacted us massively because footfall has been down. It was very hard last year. In some cases, you’re working for nothing because by the time we did the discount, got people in to pack it all up, and deliver it to the school, there was very, very little profit in the end,” she said.
She said:
“Some people were discounting heavily and it’s just a race to the bottom line,” she said.
She even wonders how some shops were able to discount so low to get tenders, questioning if some stores are “playing the long game to be the only ones left”.
In addition to that, some publishers were undercutting the discounts provided by the shops, going directly to the schools to supply them, something she and other sellers believe will be far more common once the scheme is expanded to secondary schools.
With a looming expansion of the scheme to junior cycle students, Ms O’Flynn is expecting a further significant drop in footfall this coming summer, a cohort that “kept the show on the road” last summer. “It’s extremely worrying,” she said.
Ms O’Flynn believes a voucher system should be introduced, one which would see schools receive funding for books before passing on a voucher to parents which they could then use in stores. “At least it would mean there would still be people coming in and out of the shop regularly,” she said.
“I think there's going to be an awful lot of schoolbook shops that aren’t going to continue after last year,” she said adding that many will stop selling schoolbooks and focus on expanding to other items.
For stores which focus primarily on schoolbooks, however, it will be “very tough”. “They’re just at the mercy of the Government and whatever scheme they decide to implement,” she said.
“They don’t seem to care about small businesses and how it’s affecting them, it’s very hard.”
The Department of Education said an evaluation of the first year of the scheme is currently underway with input from schools, sellers, and publishers.
“The objective of the evaluation is to assess the operational and financial aspects of the scheme in its first year to ensure that the scheme’s intention has been achieved,” a spokesperson said.
Speaking ahead of Christmas, Education Minister Norma Foley confirmed that a similar model will be in place for the expansion to junior cycle in 2024.
She said many schools have long-standing relationships with schoolbook sellers and providers, which has “served them very well”.
“There is no reason for that to change,” she said. “The opportunity remains with the schools on the ground to maintain their existing relationship with the local book providers, and booksellers,” she said.
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