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Archiver > SOG-UK > 2003-02 > 1046443054


From: "Hugh Wilding" <>
Subject: Re: [SoG] The Society Bookshop and comparison with Amazon
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 14:37:34 -0000
References: <20030228122515.81602.qmail@web20903.mail.yahoo.com> <006b01c2df29$755a4aa0$0200a8c0@caroline>


Caroline Gurney wrote:

> Staff don't have to be employed only in the bookshop for their costs to
> exceed the profit. If the cost of whatever proportion of their time is
spent
> on those duties exceeds the profit, then the bookshop will run at a loss.
> Kevin Laurence has pointed out that the bookshop made only £7,454 in 2001
> before any staff costs or other administrative overheads directly related
to
> the bookshop were taken into account. That is, only half one person's time
> would have needed to be spent there before the bookshop was in the red.

Caroline, the position is actually worse than you think. Unless I am
mistaken, the significance of Kevin's figures are that in all three years
they appear in _brackets_ which is accountant's shorthand for a negative
figure i.e. (£7,454) represents a loss. This being the case, then one would
conclude that the writing has been rather plainly on the wall for some time.

However, I fully agree with your other sentiments and, like you, did not
join SoG because it ran a bookshop. Good news that the travelling bookstall
will continue on its peripatetic course - I assume that there is a
recruitment stream from this, if only modest.

Hugh Wilding
Berkshire, England
<>

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