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Subbuteo books ceases trading (1 Viewer)

Andy Adcock

Worst person on Birdforum
Cyprus
I just got this e-mail.................


It is with a heavy heart that after almost 30 years, we have made the difficult decision to cease trading under the Subbuteo Natural History Books brand.

The book market has changed significantly during this time. RRPs are no longer protected within the UK, e-books have become more popular at the expense of print and there is heavy competition from global companies whose name and general trading volumes mean they can demand far higher margins than we can. All of these factors combine to make trading in books extremely difficult.

On the reverse side, our core business, CJ WildBird Foods Ltd (of which, Subbuteo Natural History Books is a trading division), is doing exceptionally well. Our bird foods and wildlife care products are available throughout Europe under the CJ Wildlife and Vivara brands and we also source, manufacture and distribute on behalf of a number of third party wildlife organisations. The success and growth of this side of the business has bought about many new and exciting opportunities and continues to grow and develop.

Both of these factors together have led us to the difficult but necessary choice to focus on the wildlife aspect of the business and reduce our focus on the specialist natural history book titles. The Subbuteo webshop therefore ceases to trade from this point onwards.

If you have a book on order please do not worry we will honour this and you can continue to call and email the service team for support.

We are definitely not ceasing to offer books altogether either, just offering them in a different way and ultimately in a more targeted subject area. The options are as follows:

We will continue to stock a wide range of European wildlife books on our CJ and Vivara webshops.

We will also continue to offer a range of books on the specialist shops that we manage:








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Similar thing has happened in Australia - Andrew Isles books is no longer going to carry new books, just secondhand / antiquarian ones.
 
Similar thing has happened in Australia - Andrew Isles books is no longer going to carry new books, just secondhand / antiquarian ones.

That's a shame, but probably inevitable with the new book prices as they were. I'll still visit the shop for 2nd hand.
 
A great shame about Subbuteo books, but perhaps somewhat inevitable, as they say, given how book trading is going. I remember the really helpful chap at Pendleside Books (his name eludes me at the moment) telling me he was ceasing trading based largely on the fact that Amazon was able to sell new books (in particular New Naturalists) at lower prices than Collins would supply him at. Which suggests a couple of things to me, one, that New Naturalists are massively overpriced (they are), and two, Collins wasn't interested in supporting the smaller outlets who had probably helped keep the NN brand going in the days when they weren't so popular and before Amazon existed.

RIP Subbuteo Books.
 
I closed my Amazon account and never buy from them. In the long run such mega-companies will prove bad for the consumer in all things, not just books. IMHO.
 
I went to the ButeoBooks.com website yesterday (located in Arlington, Virginia, USA) and they appear to be in business -- at least here in the U.S. I will give them a ring tomorrow to be sure.

I guess the Subbuteo Books mentioned in this thread is a different bookseller altogether. Sorry for any confusion.
 
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Subbuteo is pretty local for me and I have purchased quite a few books from them over the years
I am very sorry to see them go but, like many others I have been lured away by the internet and used books available
 
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