THE BOOKSTALL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15563, 21 March 1914, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE BOOKSTALL.

VARIATIONS IN TASTE. In an age that is changing and shifting continually, it is not surprising that the bookstall should be in a transition stage, says an English writer. "It is not long since people were bewailing the time wasted on magazines. Nowadays the cry is that people are too lazy or hurried to read magazines. A glance at a halfpenny paper and half an hour at a picture show stand for culture democratised.

"But I heard the other day from a suburban bookstall manager that in an ordinary week he had sold sixty-seven copies of a series of sevenpenny novels. He had not 6old a larger number of any individual magazine. When one remembers the nature of these novels this is a surprising victory for continuity as against scrappy reading. And it can be accounted for somewhat thus. When the picture magazine came in there were few miscellaneous periodicals of a popular kind. Also there weTe no picture-palaces. The crowd's only chance of seeing pictures and reading adventure, whether of fact or fiction, lay in the seduction of a papercovered magazine. The only serious opponent was the sixpenny paper-covered novel, without doubt the most unpleasant literary format yet devised. It was illprinted and far too big for comfort, and impossible for the shelf. "This general perusal of papers fired the public imagination. Adventurous spirits became tired of reading ten short stories one after another. And when the handy sevenpenny novel came in, its pleaBant print attracted the eye. And being in cloth one could keep it on the shelf. Quality, too, ha/ a better chance. A magazine editor in selecting short stories forgets the minority. The book publisher knows that he can sell over a longer period, and that the slower literary horse may win in the end. Better twenty years' steady saleß than a breakneck advertising ' boom' of about a year. One can remember no single case of ' boom ' having permanently established any author. Now with a magazine you have thirty days in which to extract money and fame from the public pocket and heart. The odds are all on the handy book. For there are thousands of readers who are tired of literary vaudeville, just as the ' variety show ' has become monotonous. And it is a curious thing that lovers of literature are anxious to hand on their finds to others. The serious obstacle is that so much is published that taste is hard to form. All of us know people who are entirely ignorant of modern books, yet by no means averse to extending their researches."