Booksellers’ “Fine Art” Praised

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30918, 26 November 1965, Page 17

Booksellers’ “Fine Art” Praised

Tribute to the booksellers of New Zealand and confidence in the country’s book market was expressed in Christchurch by Mr D. N. Ascoli, sales director for Cassell and Company, publishers, of London. He said the ordering of books from as far away as the United Kingdom was a “fairly speculative” undertaking; but New Zealand booksellers had brought it to a fine art and he could see their market do nothing but grow.

Mr Ascoli is on a threeweek tour of New Zealand. He has already been to Auckland and will also visit Dunedin, Timaru and Wellington. Of the 400 or so clients of his company In New Zealand he hopes to have discussions with between 40 and 50, including representatives of hospital and education boards and university bookshops. Cassell and Company are publishers of general, educational, medical, reference and fiction. Mr Ascoli said they publish about 200 new titles each year, 40 per cent of which are educational and the remainder non-educa-tional.

Mr Ascoli said time and space was an increasing problem for the New Zealand book trade. Books for the Christmas sales had to be shipped no later than the end of September. Long before then the bookseller had to make up his mind what he wanted and how many without, in many cases, having seen the books.

“He runs two very different risks, overbuying or underbuying, but it is extraordinary how accurate his judgment is. It is a very difficult problem.” Confidence In N.Z. Mr Ascoli said it was a measure of his company’s confidence in Nevz Zealand that it had established its own resident representatives here. “It is a small market and some things cannot be done here which are possible in the United Kingdom, but for all that it is an excellent market for our goods. I cannot see it not growing with the

increasing population and more schools and bookshops.” He said his company was preparing now for the future expansion. It was no good arriving with an organisation after the market had grown. It had to be there before. In the field of educational books Cassell planned to develop within the next 10 years a sizeable list of New Zealand books by New Zealand authors specially for the local market.

Mr Ascoli described publishing as “an odd trade” but one which gave him an immense amount of satisfaction. Unlike the production of “silk stockings or tooth paste” there was always something new from the time work was started on a manuscript until it “zoomed off as a novel.” t