Bookseller in Leipzig: Suddenly the existence is in question

The city of Leipzig is damaging local booksellers with a new budget allocation procedure for its libraries. Because they hardly have a chance to sell anything in the future.

Peter Hinke, who runs the Connewitzer Verlagsbuchhandlung and the Wortsee bookshop in Leipzig, needed a few hours to plow through the tender documents, which have been digitally accessible since April 22 - appropriately the day before UNESCO World Book Day.

The two dozen files in dry official German are really bad news for the almost thirty bookstores in Leipzig, most of which are owner-managed: The Leipzig municipal libraries, formally subordinate to the cultural office, are writing their budgets for the years 2023 to 2026 throughout Europe.

For what reason?

There is fixed prices in bookstores.

The purchase of price-controlled books - for which public libraries, legally fixed, receive a discount of ten percent - is linked in the tender to "library-specific services" such as foiling or the attachment of barcodes and theft protection;

quite obviously these are the award criteria and outsourcing is intended to save costs.

With the submission of the offer, two edited “model books” and the “Russia declaration” that is now required must be submitted. The application deadline is May 23, so you only had one month.

The package of requirements is obviously designed in such a way that it can only be fulfilled by large players such as Schweitzer, EKZ- Bibliothekservice or Hugendubel, who have the appropriate software, machines and know-how.

The pattern is by no means new: in 2018, for example, Hugendubel Fachinformationen took over the delivery of the Berlin Central and State Library (ZLB), the largest public library in Germany.

As a result, the local book trade was permanently left behind.

For some, the libraries secure their livelihood

In Leipzig, the municipal libraries have so far allocated their budgets privately, split into smaller tranches and given primarily to the local book trade.

Larger and smaller ranges participate, the order volume accounts for between ten and thirty percent of annual sales, a size that secures the livelihood of many booksellers.

The model has proven itself: fast service, short distances.

It takes two minutes by cargo bike from Hinkes Wortersee to the headquarters of the city library.

It was also Hinke who publicized the process in his bookshop's newsletter, the "Connewitzer Literaturkurier", and since then has hardly been able to sell books due to the correspondence and telephone calls with the cultural office, the Leipzig municipal libraries, the stock exchange association and his local colleagues.

"We stumbled completely unprepared into a problem that could have been tackled long before if we worked together," the bookseller complains.

Monika Osberghaus, publisher of Klett children's books, has now sent an open letter to Leipzig's Mayor Burkhard Jung.

In view of the surging emotions, the city entrenched itself behind the paragraphs of procurement law.

Hinke's accusation of a lack of communication is countered with reference to earlier award procedures - for example for the non-book inventory (CD, DVD, games) of the municipal libraries with a volume of almost 200,000 euros.

After this first step in the gradual implementation of public procurement law, the current tender for books should not surprise anyone.

"I see the problem and I am completely with the booksellers," Leipzig's cultural mayor Skadi Jennicke, who has also been chairwoman of the culture committee of the German Association of Cities since 2019, told this newspaper.

“Actually, public procurement law is intended to secure competition;

however, we are experiencing how it slows down the competition because in the end it only strengthens the big players.

This is a political problem that needs to be solved at European level.” In this specific case, Jennicke sees himself in the executive function, free from discretionary decisions.

"Where there was leeway in procurement law, we used it."

The booksellers concerned, who have in the meantime consulted with the stock exchange association, have serious doubts about this - not least in view of the creative award solutions in other German cities that involve local trade.

They believe that there is no obligation to conclude framework agreements over several years - even if they were awarded annually, the order values would be significantly lower.

If the municipality were to make its own procurement budgets available to the city library and the fifteen branches, the annual procurement orders of the individual libraries would certainly be below the current threshold of 215,000 euros, which makes Europe-wide allocation mandatory.

After all, the procurement of price-controlled media does not necessarily have to be linked to the commissioning of commercial services.

Christian Sprang, legal advisor to the stock exchange association, sees the potential risk of illegal cross-subsidisation.

From a formal point of view, there are probably no objections to the tender.

However, Sprang expects that it will be difficult to "get a clean award of the contract" - and refers to the ZLB Berlin, whose current tender was put on hold by the public procurement chamber.