JUGOSLAV BOOK IMPORTS

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27094, 18 July 1953, Page 2

JUGOSLAV BOOK IMPORTS

BRITAIN LOSING MARKET

EFFECT OF CURRENCY RESTRICTIONS (From a Reuter Correspondent) BELGRADE.

Difficulties over payment are causing the British book trade to lose a growing Jugoslav market to books printed in the United States. In recent years, English has replaced Russian as No.l foreign language in Jugoslavia. Among ordinary citizens, there has been increased interest in the British way of life since President Tito’s visit to London this spring. There is also a big demand for all kinds of technical books in English, particularly about engineering, mining, medicine and agriculture. But a tour of Belgrade bookshops has revealed that for every Englishlanguage book published in Britain, 10 are offered for sale from the United States. Moreover, while American books are on sale at prices comparable to the dollar-dinar exchange rate, the prices of British books are much higher than their published price in Britain.

The Jugoslav student of English is now virtually dependent on American publishing houses for his texts of Shakespeare. Dean Swift or the Brontes, as well as for modern writers like Virginia Woolf or Somerset Maugham.

During the Coronation celebrations, a few Jugoslav bookshops displayed coloured photographs of Queen Elizabeth in their windows. These came not from Britain, but from the front cover of a recent issue of an American magazine. The same difficulties apply to a certain extent to periodicals. Limited numbers of leading American periodicals can be bought in Belgrade bookshops, but not British weeklies or monthlies. In 1952, Jugoslavia still imported a fair number of British books and periodicals—lo tons compared with 26 tons from the United States.

A British diplomat here, stating that it is realised in official quarters in London, that Britain is “losing out" to the Americans, explained that the difficulty was about payment. The United States has made provisions in its current aid agreement with Jugoslavia to enable Jugoslav booksellers to order from American publishers, paying in dinars, and the United States Government undertakes to reimburse the publishers in dollars. There is no such arrangement with Britain. A British publisher is not able, under existing regulations, to accept dinars. Sales of Exchange Jugoslav firms engaged in foreign trade are allowed to buy and sell part of their foreign exchange earnings among themselves. So little foreign exchange is available, however, that on this closed “bourse.” a foreign currency will sell for anything from five to ten times its normal value. If. therefore, a Jugoslav bookseller buys sterling in this way to purchase British books, the retail price of the book in his shop will be several times higher than its published price in Britain. It is understood that plans are being considered in London to overcome these payments difficulties and increase the flow of British books to Jugoslavia.

British officials here realise that the effort expended on “putting across the British way of life” is bound to lose much of its effectiveness if Jugoslavs are virtually unable to buy British books. The British Council has active offices whose activities include running libraries and English language courses, in Belgrade and Zagreb. The British Embassy runs a reading room and issues an English language summary of world news’ which is distributed free in. Belgrade hotels and clubs. But neither the British Council nor the reading room can penetrafe to such a wide public throughout the country, as could books freely available for purchase in shops. In addition to making books available. the Americans have succeeded in reaching the country population in ways in which the British have not. They distribute documentary films with Serbo-Croat sub-titles on request from local Jugoslav authorities and organisations. They send out 6000 to 8000 copies of a fortnightly agricultural bulletin in Serbo-Croat to private subscribers in all parts of the country.

The agricultural bulletiri is considered to have a particularly good "impact.” It reaches men on collective farms and individual peasants, and each copy is often passed from hand to hand and read many times.