BOOK TOKENS SCHEME

Evening Star, Issue 21630, 27 January 1934, Page 19

BOOK TOKENS SCHEME

SOLVING THE PRESENT PROBLEM [By Sir Charles Grant Robertson, -,r in the ‘Observer.’] . As president ’of the National Book Council I am much interested in, and impressed by, the scheme of book tokens, because it seems to me to do , something which has never been previously attempted. Like all masterly inventions it is amazingly simple, and 1 wish 1 could claim even a small share in the invention; but 1 cannpt. The credit for it lies with Mr Harold .-Raymond (a partner in the firm of Chatto and Windus), .Mr Basil Blackwell -(a 'name well known - to- - all - Oxford: men), and ■ Mr Hubert -/Wilson; _by profession a bookseller, the ■ last two’ of whom worked out the busi- : aess technique of the fundamental idea. It has been taken up with intelligible enthusiasm by the National Book Council, and .1 am confident that when the .public has grasped the simple mechanism it will not only “go, but stay. . And two or three years nence we shall all be surprised if we are told that it is a very recent discovery. Many thousands of persons will be racking their brains to find an answer to'the question, “ I want to ’ give a book, but what book shall I ' give?” We go to our bookseller, we see'hundreds of books, or try to, if the crowd allows us; the more we see the more we are perplexed, the more we are haunted by two thoughts^-what if he or she has already got it? What if he or _ she feel that .that is_ just the hook I didn’t want or dislike intensely; if only I had been given so and so. : Our personal' experience dogs us at each step. A parcel arrives—obviously, - a book; how nice; the book‘comes out; how anything but nice; and now I must - write a mendacious letter thanking for • .something 1 didn’t like at all, or already have. How tiresome and hypocritical. BUYING A TOKEN. The Book Tokens dismiss these difficulties, as Henry IT., according to the medieval chronicles, dismissed Lis mercenaries “ like ghosts in the night.” You want to give someone a book; you go to your bookseller and buy a book token as you buy a postal order, for the amount you desire. You send this to whom you wish. He or she, when they wish, go to their bookseller and get what they want to the value of the token. With your hook token you also get a greeting card, with the appropriate words on it: “The gift is mine; the .choice is thine,” and you can add your . own messoge, which the “ casher of the token” can_ put into the book which ' you have given and he has selected. And he can then write you not a mendacious, but a veracious, letter of ' thanks. You should' remember that book tokens can be “cashed” into books at any bookseller’s in the British Isles who has come into the scheme, and there will be at least one of them 'in almost every tpwn throughout the country. If this scheme does not succeed we shall be either a very stupid or a very ungrateful people. As a writer, I should like the scheme to succeed, because there may be some persons to whom book tokens are sent who may 'he so wise or so_foolish as to get one of " my books with it. But as a purchaser of books who likes to give hooks to his friends I welcome it far more. It is going to solve all my difficulties.