1937-12-18 — Page 38

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THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1937.

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How would you like to read

FI And it difcult to get to sleep these nights, I don't count "sheep jumping over fences. I count books tumbling over pub- lishers' counters. .

New books in gay-coloured Jackets one after the other, they stream down like a miniature Niagara, flashing hypnotically in their fall. "One, twa three! four, 'five... Alty ... Ove hundred a thousand.

"Dut,

long before "eleven thousand" (the round total of new books inued in year), I am dozing off-lo dream di fully, perhaps, about a publisher.

Any morning for the past few weeks I have found ten or twelve or twenty volumes piled on my desk, nwolting my Considered Critical Opinion. And so will continue, for this is the peak period of publishing. Longer nights, choirs by the fireside, presents for Christmas-- all that means more books.

That is the publisher's dream.

Of that eleven thousand, about one half are novels. Eight hundred come under "Biography and Memoira" And nix hundred are polllleal. But, remem- ber, more than five thousand novela...

Now, it is not only physically im possible for me to read all these books. I cannot read even half of those that look worth while.

They float away, fost in the flood of indifferent and bad. books that awirla along. Victims of the Indiscriminate tneties of so much publishing to-day, they point the moral of my argument here that publishers do not out- clently realise their duty towards the people who keep them in being by buying their books.

For publishing is no ordinary busi- ness. I should úko to see written over every publisher's door; "The gooda we handle here can be social stimulus or social dope."

#

I know publishers who choose their authors with discretion and a definite sense of their responsibility to the reading public. Firms with the high standard that goes with

social conscience.

Despite which, na that spate of liter- ary flotsam and jetsam so clearly proves certain aspects of publishing are giving the profession an increasing air of irresponsibility.

Remember that the publisher is

28

11,000 BOOKS you can't take it

EVERY YEAR?

naturally in the business-and it is essentially a chancy, hazardous busi- ness for a proat, although the eco. nomics of publishing-apd, still more,. of authorship are among the highe mysteries. A sale of five hundred copies of a novel has been described to me by a publisher as "a good sale for n financial failure." On a sale of two thousand the author stands to earn about £76 and the publisher £50.

Above that gure income And profits increase proportionately, A novel selling ten thousand is in' the best-selling class. In the extremely rare case of a novel whose males have reached a hundred thousand, the author should make from £8,000 to £10,000 and the publisher rather more. Non-fiction? Well blography

selling a thousand copies at 155, might make £150 for its author and rather more for its publaber. But the close packed ranks of that cleven thousand. novels and general Iterature, are thinned by hundreds of dend-loss casunities.

Which goes to show why the pub- her's day-to-day philosophy 19. "Let the successful books pay for the failures." He is, therefore, always hoping that at least one goose out of his crowding seasonal flocks will turn out to be a shining, best-selling swan.

Such successes aro few and far between, but the publisher goes on hoping and publlahing. This in atili a free country for publishers. Anyone, with the time and money, can launch a book, regardless of whether it is really needed or not, regardless of the aminous fact that the great bulk of contemporary fletion is, sooner rather

inn later, aunk without trace.

That, I am sure, is one of the main reasons why we are overwhelmed with books, choked and suffocated by them -and, more often than not, I fear, bemused and doped. For indiscriminato

Asks Roger

Pippett

publishing leads to indiscriminate rending. Some experts say it is the other way round. Anyway, there they both are, swinging along in their vicious circle.

No, what Douglas Jerrold (himself A publisher) has just called the New Dupensation in publishing has a lot to answer for.

Books are "alunted" too much and too often. Dook after book is boosted clean out of ita cinas--to the occasional demoralination of the author and the neglect of other, and often worthler, books that come out at the same time.

And, long before that author fu ready to write it, the publisher-and th author's public-is demanding an other book from him. Very few novelists-I would almost any no novelists in sight-hava it in them to turn out really good stuff every year for year after year. And so we get a stumbling procession of tired, under- written tales from over-driven pens.

What with the invasion of the "sixpennies," the rise of the book clubs and the mushroom aprend at the twopeany libraries. the immediate future of the world of publishing is supremely unpredictable.

Of one thing I am certain-the more the publisher realles his responal. bility to the public, the more lie discriminates between the good and bad, the original and the hackneyed, the stimulating and the merely enter taining, the better it will be für ell of us-readers, reviewers and publishers, too.

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