"Goon Books PERSIST"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 547, 16 December 1949, Page 7

"Goon Books PERSIST"

British Publisher Discusses His Trade

N New Zealand we may no longer read more books per head than any other people in the Commonwealth, but what still endears us to the publishing trade is that we buy our books rather than borrow them. Michael Joseph, London publisher, and author of Cat’s Company and Charles, The Story of a Friendship, expects to know better at the end of his month in New Zealand why we have these habits. He believes we may owe them to our Scottish traditions, to the high general level of education, and to our sober, leisurely journalism. David Fullerton of the Oxford University Press, Sir . Stanley Unwin of Allen & Unwin, and several other publishers have paid post-war calls on their most remote customer, Mr. Joseph hopes besides this to see something of the country and to fish, He needs rest, too, and this may be more elusive than the trout in a land where every household has a truly remarkable cat or a budding author, probably both. Michael Joseph was manager of a firm of literary agents until he became a publisher in the Thirties. He began, as others have done, because he wanted to publish the books he liked himself and to persuade others to like them too. His yearly list is short, mainly fiction and biography and cats--no text-books and no books about subjects he does not understand himself. He has just written his own account of it all in The Adventure of Publishing (Wingate), a book for the general reader. Its brightest

chapter is the one on the. relationship of publisher to author, a delicate and explosive business of which we usually hear more of the ‘author’s side. Some publishers find they manage better if they do not see their authors, and use the literary agents as shock-absorbers. Mr. Joseph enjoys dealing personally with the writer’s temperament, and it is possible his earlier hobby has helped him, for he ends this chapter with a quotation from Oliver Wendell Holmes: "I never saw an author in my life, saving perhaps one, that did not purr audibly as a full-grown domestic cat on having his fur smoothed the Fight way by a skilful hand." Creative Publishers Last year (1948) was a fine year for the book trade. Paper restrictions were lifted enough for books to be made to look attractive again. But Mr. Joseph says that the recession he predicted then is beginning to show itself now, and publishers are weeding out the poor stuff. He believes they must do this in their own interests, because every indifferent book, every book that the purchaser considers.a bad bargain, is an enemy to reading in general. There is less money about now, and books have other new amusements to compete with. _ Publishers cannot afford nowadays to consider only the manuscripts submitted to them. Part of their fun and their success comes from commissioning books, mating authors with subjects, turning writers into a different channel, (continued on next page)

"GOOD BOOKS PERSIST" (continued from previous page) and even persuading into authorship some of the few people who do not believe they have latent talent. The outcome of one of these bright ideas is Monica Dickens, a young woman who had positively no idea of writing until a publisher talked her into it at a party. The result was One Pair of Hands, the story of her adventures as a housemaid, and two or three fruitful excursions into other walks followed (One Pair of Feet was the story of her war effort in hospital). She is now gathering material as an air hostess, "The publishing trade will solve its problems," says Mr. Joseph, "because it is an intelligent trade. In fact the whole book business jis intelligentbooksellers, libraries and readers: Good books have nearly always had success and recognition in their own day. In this way they are different from music and painting. I don’t know why, "And good books persist, perhaps because a father can introduce his son to his favourite authors more easily and naturally than he can to his favourite painters and composers. I believe that in 50 years’ time men will be giving their sons Arthur Ransome to read. Sherlock Holmes? Yes, indeed, he still flourishes. My own daughter began at the age of 10 to collect those issues of the Strand Magazine in which his stories first appeared." Mr. Joseph has been Kappy living at Paignton in a house formerly occupied by G. A. Henty whom he believes to a

be still a much-loved author, along with Marryat and Ballantyne. He considers fiction to be in a very healthy state, in spite of the number of people we know who think that kind of a book a waste of time. Of his own friends, the men perhaps lean towards books about facts. But the sales of novels are increasing. Before the war a book was a best seller at about 50,000 copies; now it would be from 100,000 to 200,000 copies. And a first novel or a book of doubtful success would have a minimum printing now of 5,000 copies, compared with about 1,500 previously. Inexpensive Pleasures Besides this there is an increased interest in the older, established novels, The demand for Jane Austen has been fabulous lately. Arnold Bennett and John Galsworthy are coming back into favour after something of a slump, though William de Morgan is not looking up yet, nor George Meredith. New Zealand reading taste does not differ. much from English, according to Mr. Joseph. We choose mainly the best of what is offered,‘ we can be pretty well relied on to distinguish between "bookstall rubbish" and good fiction, and our book reviewing is respected by the English trade. "If only people would realise it, books are among the less expensive pleasures, and they are among the few commodities that have not doubled in price in our time. If people learn the habit: of reading they will find the good books in the end. Personally, I have no quarrel with comics. If a boy spends sixpence on a story about supermen, he is spending sixpence on reading, and it’s probably better for him than an ice cream."

Dorothea

Turner