Senator Sherry is the government’s Small Business Minister and his comments this week that “Bookshops in capital cities will be gone in five years thanks to the internet” has been savaged by the Australian Booksellers Association.
The Senator’s comments followed the closure of 42 Angus & Robertson stores. The ABA claim that the closures are due more to poor management by the RedGroup rather than a decline in “bricks & mortar stores” and they stress that book sales in the first quarter of 2011 were only down 2% over the previous year – hardly an industry-ending result.
Following criticism from book retailers and the opposition, Senator Sherry issued a statement saying the government was keenly aware of the growing shift to online purchases and urged small businesses to build their on-line capacity.