TRICKS OF THE BOOK TRADE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue LXVIII, 13 July 1912, Page 9

TRICKS OF THE BOOK TRADE.

The Manchester Guardian has been saying some rather unkind things about tlie novel writing fraternity lately, and has taken the trouble to '"'expose" the unobtrusive and gentle manner in which these gentlemen, or their publishers, take advantage of the sweet uses of advertisement. In America, we are told, it was long ago recognised that the best way of "looming" a writer was to supply the pv jlic with interesting little tit-bits of b'' ./graphical or autobiographical information concerning him. *This kind of advertising at first took the form of tasteful little pamphlets, issued bu the publishing firms themselves. Then the advertising matter began to creep insiduously into the literary reviews of .the magazines. Thus one who takes up a copy of the Forum finds, prefixed to the usual assortment of excellent articles, a page or two of summaries of the lives of the writers of them, furnished often by the writers themselves. The practice has latterly spread to some of the English magazines, and in Australia the Bulletin Publishing Company loses no opportunity of advertising the Reading contributors to its periodical publications. In a recent issue of the English Review we are informed that the writer of the short story "The Mask," which appeared in the January number, is a grandchild of that sister of Tennyson who was to have married Arthur Hallam; and this is a fair sample of the way in which it is sought to arouse public interest in certain writers. From the magazines to the newspapers is a short step, and in the American daily journals there is no lack of paragraphs that give trivial information about inconspicuous men of letters, paragraphs that tell us, for example, that "Mr So-and-So, the author of the famous 'Such-and-Such,' is on the eve of departure for California, where he will collect local color for his next work," or that "Mr This-and-That, the gifted author of 'The Other Thing,' having always had a fancy for the cultivation of carrots and beet-roots, has resolved to leave his city residence and pursue the simple life in a suburban villa." A writer in the New York Bookman tells us that most of the publishing houses keep a "bright young man" whose mission is to collect such information and distribute it amongst the newspapers. And literary litter which is vamped up in this way the people read as literature. Really, the peoplv should not be quite so gullable and ignorant.