Scope Of Paper-Back Market Outlined

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30271, 25 October 1963, Page 15

Scope Of Paper- Back Market Outlined

British publishing houses looked on the paper-back market as a good thing, not a dangerous rival, said Mr Graham C. Greene, a director of Jonathan Cape. Ltd., the firm which publishes lan Fleming s James Bond series, in Christchurch yesterday. Mr Greene, a nephew of the author Graham Greene, said: “I am not called after him. He wasn't famous when I was born " Mr Greene is in New Zealand to meet booksellers and to find promising authors. He has had two manuscripts submitted to him so far. but has not had time to read them.

Paper-backs were bought bv people who rarely, if ever, bought stiff-covered books, said Mr Greene. It was two years after a book’s first publication before his firm sub-leased it to a paperback house for publication on the basis that the outhor received 50 per cent of the resulting royalties with the original publishers getting the other 50 per cent. With an author like lan Fleming, paper-back publi•ation resulted in his market being widened. said Mr Greene "People don’t want to wait two years for a new tit’e to be published as a baper-hack, so they buy it on its first publication At the moment 100. Oto copies of each new James Bond book are prnted." he said. The future of the book trade was good, said Mr Gre»ne People wou'd alwavs -leed books for both education and relaxation. Once the

initial novelty of television wore off here, as it had in England, sales would increase. It was common for people to buy books to get more information on subjects which they had seen on television.

Increasing leisure hours should also mean a demand for more books, he said. One of the problems facing people was how to spend leisure profitably. More money was being spent on school libraries to introduce more children to the value of reading. Status Symbols

The problem facing the publishing industry was how to get it across to the hundreds of thousands of people who never bought books that they were not complete people if they did not read books, said Mr Greene. ‘‘l know this is the wrong motive, but other industries promote their goods as status symbols. Perhaps we should do the same with books. Even if the adults in the home did not read them their children probably would,'' said Mr Greene. In England people were afraid of going into bookshops. There was the idea, which had to be broken down, that they were for the elite This did not appear to be the situation in New Zealand. he said. Mr Greene added that he had been surprised to see that small towns, with a copulation of perhaps 500. had a bookshop. Similar English towns did not.