TRADE OR PROFESSION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 657, 8 February 1952, Page 13

TRADE OR PROFESSION

T PRACTICE OF BOOKSELLING, by . Langdon-Davies; Phoenix House. En@lish price, 18/-. PERHAPS, with over one thousand new titles tumbling from the English presses each month, it ill becomes a bookseller to turn his hand to writing books instead of selling them, Yet books about bookselling are rare. J. G. Wilson’s The Business of Bookselling is over 20 years old. Ruth Park Brown’s Bookshops -- How to Run Them, was published in 1929, is American and for English taste over emphasises salesmanship. ("Sell two books to the customer who comes in for one.) So there is room beside Sir Stanley Unwin’s The Truth About Publishing for a companion volume on bookselling. Mr. LangdonDavies, at 75, boldly undertakes to fill the vacancy. He did not come to bookselling itself until he had reached an age at which many men are about to retire. He had had a wide experience of jobs and people and he has something worthwhile to say on the sort of person a bookseller is, or should try to be; and of the bookseller’s wan in the community. He takes what salah be called the professional view of bookselling. A bookseller is not a mere merchandiser of the most recent best-sellers, with his eyes glued to the cash register and the bal-ance-sheet. The good bookseller is an individualist who loves books, but who is not so completely in love as to forget that his livelihood depends on his ability to sell them. Trying to balance quality and sales ability is an impossible job, but it is one that the bookseller worth his salt tackles all the time. In describing the ideal bookseller Mr. Davies speaks from his wise age and wide experience. In dealing in detail with the practical day to day side of bookselling he is less adequate. He tells us less than he should, and what he does say is not beyond dispute. We are, in fact, still waiting for the standard book

on. bookselling.

R.

P.