NEW PUBLICATIONS

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 220, 13 June 1933, Page 11

NEW PUBLICATIONS

Call for Manuscripts

OVERSEAS CONTRIBUTORS

The idea that London publishers did not welcome manuscripts from New Zealand was erroneous, said Mr. George G. Harrap, head of the wellknown London publishing firm of Harrap, in an interview on board the liner Makura yesterday. “We have no interest in publishing books from any particular part or locality,” he said, ’•our only object being to find books of such a standard that if put on the market they will sell in sufficiently large quantities to make them pay.” Publishers, he said, were just as pleased to get a book from New Zealand as from any other part of the British Empire. His firm had published a number of books by Australian ■writers, and at the present time it was including four Australian books among its newer publications. Mr. Harrap mentioned that his firm was about to publish a new French dictionary which had been 14 years in preparation. The dictionary would be in two volumes, and when completed the total outlay would approach £50,000.

One of the autumn publications would be "The Life of the Duke of Marlborough,” by Mr. Winston Churchill, for which his firm was paying the author £lO,OOO for the English book rights. An American publishing flrm was also paying the author £lO,OOO for American book rights, and in addition the London “Daily Telegraph” was serialising some of the book at a similar figure.

One of the latest publications by his firm, said Mr. Harrap, was a new book by Dr. Hendrik van Loon, the author of "The Story of Mankind,” which had been translated into fourteen languages. The new book dealt with the entire world as a place in which man lived, and was entitled "The Home of Man.” While the Australian and New Zealand editions were being prepared over 200,000 copies were sold, in England. The book was dedicated: “To my severest critic, George G. Harrap.”