THE AUTHOR AND LIBRARIES.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 472, 9 July 1948, Page 5

THE AUTHOR AND LIBRARIES.

Sir,-I have listened to 1YA’s broadcast of the Lee-Fairburn-Musgrove-Dug. gan discussion, "Should the State Patronise Literature?" While I fully share Mr. Fairburn’s abhorrence, of the idea of State-aided authorship (and for much the’ same reasons) I cannot help but sympathise with Mr. Lee’s contention that the author has to live and is entjtled to a decent reward for supplying the public with entertainment and knowledge. Regretfully, Mr. Lee points out that, owing to the growth of the lending library system, every year more books are being read while, alas for the writer’s income, fewer are being sold. The author is understandably chagrined to find that for one of his novels, purchased for the pre-war price of 5/- and rented out for a fee approximately 200 times, he received a miserable 6d, four-and-sixpence was divided among publisher printer, wholesaler and retailer, all of whom have operational costs to meet before putting a penny profit in their pockets, but (supposing the book to have been lent out 50 times for 6d and 150 for 3d) there was £3/2/6 for the ownet of the library-not a bad

return on 5/-, even allowing for rent, wages and incidentals. Rather obvi‘ously the author-to say nothing of publisher and the rest who seem completely overlooked-is being exploited. But should the State have come to the rescue with a subsidy? Surely writers and publishers could organise themselves to collect a fair share of the profits when musicians, composers, dramatists and singers have already shown the way-not even an amateur company may stage the public performance of a play without paying the dramatist’s agent a royalty of at least a couple ‘of guineas, gramophone companies pay royalties to recording artists and in return receive them from broadcasting systems, why ther! shou!d the commercial lender of books’ (who after all is a purveyor of entertainment) alone escape such an obligation? The State has only three obligations to perform for literature — to aid research and the production of works of erudition (one of Mr. Fairburn’s points); to guarantee the imaginative writer freedom to gang his own creative gait with as little restriction as possible, and to see he gets a fair share of the profits derived from his labour.

CLARE MacALISTER WARD

(Whangarei)-