THE TIDE OF BOOKS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 927, 21 March 1930, Page 16

THE TIDE OF BOOKS

Mass Production A nd Its Consequences The following article 9 written by B. Jfor Tuans, was published in “ The Sew Statesmanlt describes the relationship existing between the presentday author and the public. NOWHERE could the principles of Maltlius be applied with such beneficial effect as in the world r>f books. In no other sphere do we suffer so much from the discomfort of over-population. Publishers and authors conspire to produce books the majority of which are unwanted fourdling3 within six months of their publication. In England alone over twelve thousand books come to light every year; according to Sir Ernest

Benn, two-thirds of them are, financially, failures. In fiction, conditions are still worse. Some 3500 novels are issued annually. and nine out of every 10 of them fail to produce a profit for those who have undertaken their publication. The publishers, the most

sidventurous of modern producers, continue to issue books, trusting to the large profits of a rare popular success pnd confident that the libraries, which apparently purchase some per cent, of the books sold in this country, will protect them from absolute bankruptcy. These conditions have become more emphatically apparent to anyone who has watched the orgy of book production during the last few months. The publishers for some reason which has never been fully explained concentrate their main activ iiy on. the autumn months, more particularly in late October anc the early weeks of November. In those who have the dubious privilege of seeing the whole production of such a season i here arises a feeling of awe that anyone could have the courage to publish fco much, and a sense of bewilderment that so many men and women consider that they have a vocation for the profession of letters. To those whose duty it is to attempt to comment on the output a modern autumn Publishing season is like a long night mare. The offices of literary editors present a scene of massed confusion, jWhile nimble but harassed reviewers pttempt to assess within the few essential weeks th© varied product of what is presumably the creation of Pionths of concentrated effort. Meanwhile, what does the public do? On a [begins to wonder whether the public 5s aware that anything has happened Ip t aij. That books are read one can admit; fhe prosjxirity of the circulating libraries and the statistics issued bj' the municipal circulating libraries are proof enough of that. But the cultured public in England, while ready enough to borrow books, refuses to buy them. In dealing with the author we are a most immoral nation. A library buys 50 copies of a book and 500 people pcad it; we are not in the least perturbed that we have paid the author o:aly a tenth of the price that he has bargained to receive. Each time one visits a theatre one makes a direct contribution to the author of the play, "hut those who pay half a guinea for a Bsat in the theatre, and a few hours* fewift amusement, will hesitate before they pay seven and six for a book which may give them pleasure for >ears. They prefer to enter into a Conspiracy with other readers to borrow the book and read it with the finger-marks of the last conspirator *till fresh upon it and its covers stained and worn. The publishers acquiesce passively, for the libraries joffer them a minimum guaranteed sale. The bookseller ts a mute sufferer, and pt. is pathetic to recall that while in ?tbe eighteenth century the book shop was a social centre for men of good taste, it is to-day an honest calling potably on the decline. The answer which comes readily to those who are satisfied with things as they are is that books are too numerous to buy and that libraries are the sole access to books that the poor possess. books are too numerous is true, but the economic condition of the book trade is largely responsible for the congestion. If the publisher had to settle the problem whether a given book was one that the public would buy, he would reject half the volumes that now appear in his lists. All he has to decide is whether a book is one that the public will borrow. The libraries are his insurance against absolute loss, and moderate sales on a vast number of books serve him as -well as an enduring sale on a limited number of volumes. His tendency, too, is to force up the price tea high as the libraries will allow’ and almost to ignore the possible private purchaser. If the publisher relied on an extensive book-buying public, he would reduce the number of books that, he published and also the price bf the individual volume. The reader who pleads poverty pleads indifference. We can all. except the very poor, get what we want most in life. Tt. may be true that many can afford only one book a year and many only a dozen, but if the public would only buy the books that it can afford the ■whole problem of the production of books in England would bear a different aspect.

My plea is not that of a disgruntled author. I hav e no grievance against publisher or library, and I am not a bookseller, but I am satisfied that the libraries are inducing a slave mentality in the English reading public. A public that bought books would read far less fiction than English readers consume to-day, and it is high time that the creative writer was liberated from the tyranny of this most pedestrian of forms. Meredith and Hardy •wished to be poets, and the English book-borrowing public drove them into prose fiction. No man in England today can make a living by writing poetry; the libraries do not favour it. Nor has a book-borrowing public any of adventure; it never discovers books for itself as it might do if the publishers presented more limited lists of more worthy volumes. The *ianger_ le> that the bopk societies will

end what the libraries have begun, and we shall have our books chosen for us as they were in our schooldays when we suffered the censorship of' a pedagogue. It would be a healthy thing if all the libraries in England were closed for six months or a year. A bewildered public would be forced to visit that most honest of all middlemen. the bookseller, and might discover with the years that the possession of books is an Investment as well as a pleasure. The writers who must write will continue to do so, and the many who produce books because mere book production is a facile form of raental employment would turn to other and more useful work.