GAMBLING IN BOOKS

Evening Star, Issue 21636, 3 February 1934, Page 22

GAMBLING IN BOOKS

11l the ‘ Manchester Guardian ’ Mr Ivor Brown talks about the gambling spirit in the book trade. No reader and no reviewer can keep pace with the outflow of books from the publishers. The reason for this over-production is that publishers have become gamblers. They are willing to incur the risk of small losses on producing books that don’t sell, because there are big profits to be made out of the few books that sell in tens of thousands. “In these days the production of books and plays closely resembles the activities of a casino,” writes Mr Brown. “ There is vast over-production in both spheres, because so many people are ready to incur a loss with the hope of winning a big ‘ coup.’ When a successful novel is dramatised and filmed, not because it is naturally adaptable to the uses of the theatre and cinema, but simply because it is talked about and has a name, the rewards may be very large indeed. So the over-pro-duction goes on, and many small losses are incurred in the expectation of a sudden victory ‘en plein.’ This you may say is the gambler’s business. Ilut nobody’s business is wholly his own, and the effect of wild over-production is to make it more and more difficult lor the reader or the playgoer to select from the mass that is thrust before him. The literary editor can only hope to review one in five or six of the boohs that pour on to his table; strive as he does to make intelligent selection, good work, even superlative work, by unknown people may bo passed over. . . . People have talked lately of a book quota, of book control, suggesting that each publisher should be limited in his output, like each, pro-

ducer of bacon. It is difficult to imagine how any restriction could be enforced ; publishers are even less cooperative than farmers, and poverty has not yet schooled them to put up with a * collective regimen. The scramble and the gamble will go on. The best we can hope for is its mitigation. The vast majority of novel readers are sheepish people, who chiefly want to read what everybody else is reading and discussing at the tea table —in short, the- * star turn.’ Why encourage them?”