AMERICAN BOOKS FOR N.Z.

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26122, 26 May 1950, Page 8

AMERICAN BOOKS FOR N.Z.

DIFFICULTIES FACED BY PUBLISHERS

American publishers would like to sell more books in New Zealand and Australia, but they are handicapped—quite apart from dollar difficulties—by the policy of London publishers. This was explained to Mr Allen Curnow, the New Zealand poet, who has returned to Christchurch after a year of travel in Britain and the United States, by the chief editor of Random House, one of America’s leading publishing firms. “When I called on Robert Linscott at Random House, in New York, I was anxious to know whether more review copies of new American books could not. be supplied to periodicals in New Zealand.” Mr Curnow said yesterday. “He told me at once that American publishers were very interested in possible markets in Australia and New Zealand. “One difficulty was that English publishers, when arranging for English editions of American books, insisted on receiving rights over all Commonwealth countries. Naturally, an American publisher would not wish to barter away in advance his prospects of an English edition, in return for the comparatively small advantage of sales elsewhere in the Commonwealth.” The growth of two separate “empires” of publishing on either side of the Atlantic was evident at a glance over the shelves of New York booksellers, Mr Curnow said. There might be a time-lag of two or three years before a successful American or English novel or volume of criticism achieved publication on the opposite side. The more commercially successful books, crossing the Atlantic more readily, might be taken to form a common “English-speaking” literary scene. It remained true that American literature—fiction, poetry, or criticism —was forming and taking directions of its own. In the short run. these were very largely unnoticed or unaporeciated in Britain. “This is something to be noted, but not to be regretted,” Mr Curnow said. “Publishing is business, and the reading public absorbs what it will and can. If there were no frontiers in literature, there would be no discoveries.”

Meanwhile, it was gratifying to American publishers to find their English rivals coming to New York looking for the English rights over American books. Before the war. it was more common for Americans to visit London on such missions.