N.Z. AUTHORS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 575, 5 July 1933, Page 7

N.Z. AUTHORS

MANUSCRIPT STILL • WELCOMED BY LONDON PUBLISHERS. The ide>a that London publishers did not weleome • manuscripts from New Zealand was erroneous, said Mr. George G. Harrap, head of the wellknown London publishing firm of Harrap, in an interview on board the liner Makura recently. "We have no interest in publishing books from any particula.r part or locality," he said, "our only object being to find. books of such a standard that if put on the market they will sell in sufficiently large quantities toi make1 them pay." Publishers, he said, were just as pleased to get a book from New Zealand as from ,a.ny other part of the British Empire. His firm had publis'hed a number of books by Austra- : lian writers, and at the present time it was including f'our Australian books among its newer publications. Mr. Harrap mentioned that his firm was 'about to publish a new French dictionary which h'ad (been 14 years in preparation. The dictionary would be in -two volumes, and when completed the total outlay would approach £50,000. One of the autumn publications would be "The Life of ihe Duke of Marlborough," by Mr. Winston Churchill, for which his firm was paying the author £10,000 for the English hook rights. An American publishing firm was also paying the author £10,000 for American book rights, and in addition the London Daily Telegraph was serialising some of th'e •book at a S'imilar figure. One of the latest publications by his firm, s'aid Mr. Harrap, was a new book by Dr. Hendrick van Loon, the author of "The Story of Mankind," which had been translated into fourteen languages. The new book dealt with the entire world as a place in which man lived, and was entitled "The Home of Man." While the Australi'an and New Zealand ;editions were being prepared : over 200,000 copiesi were spld dn Efigland. The book was dedicated: "To , my .severest critic, George G. Harrap."