Publishers say ‘Yes’ unless they get more Govt backing

Press, 16 July 1980, Page 18

Publishers say ‘Yes’ unless they get more Govt backing

Publishers are worried people; .Everyone is J wor- . tied .'about spmething^but ; publishers’ worries v -are about- a matter that concents everyone — the, continued production- of new books, and especially, the printing of these iii New Zealand. . <:. , ■ - The production .costs of t all ’ businesses seem to be : rising, faster than the rate of inflation, and this leads . to cash-flow . problems which, for some - - industries, have only : been resolved in a most unwelcome way.. Book publishing (which is the taking of the risk of marketing .a book) is linked .with, book printing as. one of the costs of marketing, but these two activities need be no more intimate than that: in fact, they are usually separate, .'4, Whitcoulls ds.. a prominent, example of a' company . funtypically both publishing-, and., printing (and, indeed; ; retailing the product as well). And, to go on with the complexity, of (the matter, Whitcoulls rhay, ’ print for another -publisher, or have some, of; its--own - printing done elsewhere — perhaps overseiais;'---'''/d'-

New Zealand publishers do not prefer to have their books printed over- • seas — Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and : Korea' are the principal of these outworkers : arid the. New Zealand printers , like the practice even less for. obvious reasons, but the publishers have no option but - to " continue in this wav for at least some of the’ir books if it is going to mean a lower selling price in the Shops, A couple of years ago there was a book production inquiry, and the upshot was that the Government urgbd the publishers and printers, in New Zealand to . get together to work out a means to keep more work at home.. . This infuriates the trade, which believes that■ the only answer is Government assistance of the kind offered to book printers in Australia, Canada, and the United States. Australia has a “bounty” scheme under which the Government pays ;-a proportion of a publisher’s printing costs subject tb certain conditions. Other official means suggested in New Zealand towards relief of the bookpublishing industry are customs rebates -on import duty charged on bookprinting and binding machinery,- and', on, book papers not manufactured by New Zealand mills. . In the meantime, on the recent. figures of 1979, a total ■of 1,755,011 books were printed in New Zealand that year and 939,657 printed outside. .The proportion works out about . 2:1, "and it is not' consistent year bji year; in. the previous year it . was-8:3, but there is a rough accord which illustrates the position well enough. •Individual , publishers vary in their resort to overseas opportunities for. printing, but it can be said that there are a number of rnajor New Zealand publishers who have most of their books printed away.- . • iWhen the inquiry into the book production industry reported, an educational publisher contested the inquiry’s assertion that book manufacture should develop within the IramPwnrk of DrintillE

industry,'and that any further -.claims for special assistance should be considered :only if there were 'a case , for assistance for the printing industry as. a whole. “The fact is,” the publisher commented, “the rest of the printing industry is already assisted very strongly by restrict tion on the import of leaflets, 1 brochures, record covers; and . all. sorts of promotional items and stationery. The book printers have been singled out as the one part of 'the print-

ing industry who are. not assisted in any way.” Another New Zealand publisher commented that the reason why a country should be able to manufacture books published within, the country is “the all important one of advancing its own culture.” He added: “With many books, price is of paramount' 5 importance and unless . the situation changes most of these are likely tdi be printed elsewhere. It is frustrating. to think how simply the Government could make it possible for the business to be retained in New Zealand.”.. Pointing to the need to protect jobs, the New Zealand’ Printing Trades Union has wholeheartedly 'joined the, publishers in calling on. the Government to ; recognise the “special position” in which book printing is placed. . The cry that has gone up from -the trade is summarised • in the ..statement: Is book manufacturing in New Zealand another endangered species?? '. Publishers declare that because of the.-.special nature of books, the answer

to pricing New Zealandmade books off the New Zealand market did not He in restricting imports into New Zealand from overseas. The spokesman said: “We must have books, of all types, from all sources, if we are to continue our technological and cultural progress. “But we must also have books-created here in our own country — the sort of books which will probably never be born if we do not have an indigenous book manufacturing industry.” This is the point, of the matter — to what extent the sometimes avoidably high price of a book drives off buyers and causes publishers to think twice before taking on a worthy book with a doubtful economic potential. The difficulty is the unit cost, of production. A book which can sell at $2O and still represent a favourable • business proposition for all concerned is said to have a “more accessible” retail price than one offered at $25. In other words, someone browsing in a bookshop is less likely to walk past it on the ground that it is too pricey. There are a lot of settingup costs • for the printing of a book which are more or less the same whatever the size of the print run. The way to . reduce ■ the unit cost, and therefore the selling price,, is to have a large print run. This is where the New Zealand publishers/, strike their , peculiar problem '•— a small country 7 , a small - population, and therefore not an enormous number of book buyers in total.

Buyers do get frightened off by the numerical size of a high book price, even though it might be possible to prove that it has stayed within inflation and the buyer has relatively the same amount of money in his pocket for it! A publisher will say that when costs were lower he could afford to have a print run of only 2000, but now he has to be / able to see sales of 4000 to 5000. This fact of publishing life can be, and undoubtedly has been, the death knell of some nicely written manuscripts without clear sales prospects. The trend will also see the end of some poor

By

DOUGLAS McKENZIE

books which might have appeared in earlier. times but will not do so now — so there are some advantages; However, the tightening will not mean that some rubbish will not continue to be published. The general effect is to cut down the number of titles published. This is noticed also in countries where population is not a factor; therefore all publishers are complaining at present.: ' - ■ - ■ In the United Kingdom, where about 30,000 hew titles a year are published, these are down by about 10 per cent. Costs,, up 20. per cent last year, are due to rise again by 20 per cent. Booksellers are destocking, and educational budget cutbacks have hit the

sales of school and library books. Total British sales are down by 5 per cent this year, and exports down by 10 per cent. Exports of hardback fiction, literature, and classics are down by 63 per cent and children’s books by about 25 per cent. On a population basis New Zealand could be expected to publish about one-seventeenth of the number of the United Kingdom titles — or about 1750 a year. Actually it is about one-sixth of this again (355 in 1978; 244 in 1979). The effect of population on publishing is made even more noticeable by a

comparison with the United States, where 215 M compare with 3M — a ratio of 70:1. A best seller in the United States is a book which sells 100,000:' and, incidentally, giving a huge return for everyone. The author, at the standard 10 per cent' of the selling price of a standard $2O book, will, get $200,000. But in' New Zealand, on a population basis, It would sell fewer than 1450 and is miles- away from being even accepted by a publisher. ; A book ranks as a best seller in New Zealand at 10,000 sales;- the. equivalent in the United States would be a mouth-water-ing 700,000. The figure, is so immense that it is hard to escape the feeling there is

a missing factor somewhere; and a .factor may reside in the often-re-peated view that New Zelanders are ■ considerably “bigger” readers than people in many other places. It is. also to be noted that more books from the United States are coming into New Zealand. This is a result of currency exchange rates; American books can now be bought from America at par. What is also noticeable for the booksellers is an increased flow of remainder books (those which have missed the first flush of sales and are sitting as dead stock). Publishers here say that this indicates a tendency towards over-publishing overseas.

. Some in United . Kingdom book-publishing are concerned about the scale of printing occurring overseas there, too. They have found it especially ironic that something as . traditionally British as a r o b i n-breasted Christmas card may come from the Soviet Union where it has been printed at onethird of the British price. One of the biggest British best-sellers, "The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady” (1,800,000 copies so far), is printed in Milan, as is’ "James H e r r i o t ’ s Yorkshire” (300,000). Of the array of paperbacks that dominate travellers’ bookstalls, one in 10 — or 15M copies out of 150 M annually — is printed in North America now, against one in 20 last year. A British Publishers’

Association survey showed that two. years ago about 16 per cent of book production work went abroad. This year it will be 20 to 25 per cent, amounting to about 6000 titles, or S6OM worth of business — and increasing. Neither New Zealand publishers'nor the Government are sitting by idly while export business may be in the doldrums. On the contrary, there is encouragement by the Trade and Industry 'Department towards export of New Zealand books and rights, and publishers themselves are making overseas promotional trips. Last v month New Zealand was represented at the American Booksellers’ Association’s annual convention, which this year was in Chicago. New Zealand had a display stand of 100 books, together with catalogues,, paid for by the department. This range of publications . ran from science to hobbies, fiction to commentaries, and ‘ touched all manner of subjects in between, including- Antarctica. The convention, was attended-by the director of the New Zealand Book Publishers’ ' Association and representatives of three New Zealand publishers. ' It was a big show. . One hundred British publishers were among publishing firms from all parts of. the world who manned display stands. The convention was not open. to.the. general public; the American trade had 2 0,000 representatives there.