Home Truths About Books and Readers

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 497, 31 December 1948, Page 12

Home Truths About Books and Readers

THE TRUTH ABOUT PUBLISHING. By Sir Stanley Unwin. Allen and Unwin, London.

| (Reviewed by

Blackwood

Paul

most famous book on publishing, does not seem to have been altered extensively, but that is probably because there has been little need to make alterations. Sir Stanley’s observations have proved just and shrewd and he has had little cause to change them. It is an admirable survey and one that every aspiring author in particular would do well to study with care. bs new edition of this, the Sir Stanley rightly emphasises how much the price of books depends upon the relatively low public expenditure upon them, He quotes in a footnote a calculation that "whereas the average British individual of both sexes, including infants, expends more than 9/6 a week on drink and tobaccd combined, the same average individual expenditure on books is just about 2d per week." Sir Stanley will derive satisfaction from t fact that, according to figures published in the Economist this year, there

has been a considerable increase in the sale of books in Britain and it looks as if the average weekly expenditure on books in Britain is now about 342d. The New Zealand figures are about 5d per week, but this figure includes music, papets and magazines. My own view, based partly on observation of the ready habits of the people but with important statistical support, is that at least 50 per cent. of this total is accounted for by magazines, bringing our own figure down to 242d in our own currency for the period ending October, 1947, or ‘putting it into contemporary British money, only 2d as against 3%4d. It seems likely indeed that booksellers, tobacconists, and barmen have all been able to lure more shillings across the counter in Britain than in New Zealand. Whether this is true or not, it is an unpleasant fact that New Zealanders can no longer claim the distinction of being the biggest book buyers in the British Commonwealth. Not only does the Mother Country herself surpass New Zealand in book buying per head of population, but it is fairly clear from recent figures that South Africa, with a European population of only a little

over two million (for which English is the mother tongue of only half) buys from Britain two and a-half times as many British books as New Zealand. In the earlier editions of the Truth about Publishing, Sir Stanley Unwin speaks of "the fact that we in England do not spend on books-per head of the population-anything approaching the amount spent by the population of New Zealand." In the new edition the word "New Zealand" disappears and "Scandinavian countries" replaces it.

\/HEN one takes into consideration that a very considerable proportion of our own expenditure is secondary school text-books (at a guess say an eighth), the present situation of book buying in this country is far short of what it might be; and yet import restrictions are now tending to stabilise our book buying at a figure well below the British level. One way of interpreting these figures would be that the average secondary school child has spent on him annually for books during his period at school, say four times as much as he annually spends for himself in later life. Or perhaps one should rather believe that one in four of those who have had secondary education go on spending 3/6 a month on books while the rest never buy any at all. As booksellers and school teachers know, there is always ‘some grumbling from parents about the cost of school books. One explanation is that so many parents are not accustomed to buying books and therefore have few standards of comparison. There are reasons for sneering at those who complain that books ate expensive and Sir Stanley does this very effectively; yet the mystery of book prices, the problem of why the cheap paper edition is possible at a so much lower price level than cloth-bound ‘books, while within limits explicable, does baffle the ordinary book buyer and persuade him too often (to the detriment of the book trade) that he is the vic-

tim of an unpleasant "racket." Unfortunately, the author does not deal with this subject and explain as fully as he might how the cheap paper edition is satisfactory to the author mainly because the author has received his main reward from the cloth-bound ‘editions, It is and was, I think, generally true that the author of a novel which sold 5,000 copies, a fairly good sale, would probably make £290-£250. But of a paper edition, he must sell

50,000 copies before he made £50, at least before the war. The £50 was a useful supplement to his staple pay of £250, but authors generally would have suffered severely if the paper back book had shown signs of becoming the normal ware in the bookshop, leaving the cloth-bound edition) as a speciallymade affair for libraries. Sir Stanley does mention the various attempts to bring out new books in paper editions at 2/6 and 3/- with which various enterprising publishers burnt their fingers 20 years ago, but those attempts are now so remote that those who grumble about expensive books to-day (and point to Penguin Books, no longer as cheap as they were, but still remarkably cheap), have never hear@ of the ‘"Mundamus" series of new paper-back novels by Gollancz and the Benn two-and-six-pennies. They failed abjectly.

The experience of Penguin Bodks proves that there is an immense public for very cheap paper-back books; but apparently even that enormous public is sufficient to keep in print and constantly available only very few titles. If, as a result of cheap series, the reading public tend to spend less on clothbound books (the staple ware of the bookshop) it is likely that the main result will’ be to increase the price of cloth-bound books still further and to reduce the number of books published. The latter effect. might be no bad one, if the least’ deserving titles were the casualities,