Sir, – I am somewhat dumbfounded that there has been little or no public outcry regarding the recently announced takeover of Argosy Libraries by Eason and Son (“Competition Authority moves after Eason’s acquires rival”, Business+Commercial Property, September 5th).
This move will remove any domestic competition for Easons in wholesale bookselling in Ireland. This in turn will put extra pressure on independent bookshops in that a lot of them will only have one source of supply for their books. In short, they will be at the mercy of an organisation that has their own retail division that constantly undercuts the very same independent bookshops they are selling to! Irish publishers, particularly the smaller ones, will suffer because of this move.
Indeed many of them will just die.
I would have thought that your own literary editors would have had something to say about this, but so far I have seen nothing. – Yours, etc,