Age banding hysteria continues unabated

The hysteria over the proposed age banding system shows no sign of stopping yet. Indeed, quite the opposite - the hysteria continues, getting shriller every day. According to the Guardian, age banding will lead to a two tier system, where the more well known authors will be able to dictate to their publishers, while the less popular ones will have to accept what they're told. As a result this is going to make it easier for supermarkets to simply stock the work of the best selling authors, ignoring the others.

On the other hand, the shrill voice of another section of the anti banding group is insisting that this isn't about banding at all, it's about the Tescofication of books. Banding will apparently make it easier for them to stock and display books (although they're ignoring the point that Waterstones and Borders do this anyway, but maybe because they're bookshops it doesn't count), which would surely imply that any author who doesn't have an age banding is going to be ignored and not stocked, so maybe the two tier system is supposed to work the other way around. What they don't seem to get surely is that having banding is going to make it more work for the supermarkets to stack books and sell them. They want to get them on the shelves and out of the door as quickly as possible. We're told that they want to sell books as though they're baked beans and what amuses me is that this is said by a bookseller, who surely isn't in it for the money at all and has nothing but altruistic motives of course.

Age banding isn't going to force a bookseller into doing anything differently. They can stack and sell their books however they want to. Children are not going to be forced into reading or not reading specific books. What age banding is doing is providing more information, not less. 'Good' parents will already check out books, read reviews and work with their children to decide which titles to buy. It's not going to make any difference to them, but it may make a big difference to those people who want to make an informed by impulse buy for a child - and that difference may be between buying a book or not.