Cheap Books and Book Clubs

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 35, 11 February 1939, Page 10 (Supplement)

Cheap Books and Book Clubs

THE publication in England of books retailed at sixpence caused considerable discussion, just as the innovation of "book societies" had done a few years before. The effects of both innovations are the subject of "Books and the People," a timely pamphlet written by Margaret Cole and published by the Hogarth l'ress. Mrs. Cole considers that we are witnessing the opening stage of a real revolution in bookproduction. Up-to-date, she says, a Penguin "special" (i.e., a new book specially commissioned) seems able to command a sale of about 150,(KM) copies within a few months of issue. Penguin reprints, of which 140 had been issued

up to last .Tune, have had sales of from 5(1.000 to 150.000. For every two Penguins sold in England one is sold abroad. The significance of these figures can be appreciated by recalling Mr. Stanley

Urwin's statement, in "The Truth about Publishing," that the sale of a '"moderately successful first novel" is a little over one thousand copies. After surveying the effects of the : 'sixpennies" from the angles of authors, publishers and readers, Mrs. Cole reaches the conclusion that they are reaching a. new public, which is capable of very wide extension; that the production of other books continues increasing. despite "book clubs" and "sixpennies," and the fear that the vogue of cheap books will injure the sales of those books which cannot l>e cheaply produced is probably unwarranted. The new movements are "good in themselves, in that they are turning books and book-reading from the privilege of a class into the possession of all." But there are disadvantages, of which she thinks the most serious is that the political book clubs may reject a first-rate work in favour of a "second-rate orthodox." If they do, they will destroy their own market.