COLONIAL EDITIONS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7021, 8 January 1910, Page 8

COLONIAL EDITIONS

GRAIN OR CHAFF ? FROM -OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT. LONDON, November 2(>. . "How is it,” asked a writer in tho “New Zealand Times” recently, “that no ‘Colonial Library* editions are published of many excellent novels whlcn rut»KG quite a bit in the . Old Country, but which wo never seem to see in New Zealand. English publishers . . • exclude the good ' grain while dumping out huge isackfj of the veriest chaff upon New Zealand shores/* ■ . , These comments have pained and shocked the London “Publishers* Circular,** the organ of tho publishing trade. It denies the charge of “dumping s—“Colonial editions,** it says, ‘are done of practically every lx>ok likely to seU in tho colonies. It is not worth while for a publisher to send on sale a work by an. unknown writer, and certainly the wholesale houses which export the greater portion of these colonial editions will not touch an unknown book, merely because it has received a good notice or. two in our papers. W© have over and ♦over again seen orders from colonial booksellers to their London agents, in which they are strictly requested to send out colonial editions. only of. books by authors with a reputation; so that the charge made against our publishers that they keep the good sellers at home and dump what the Americans call tho ‘plugs* in the colonies is quit© uufoim“it would obviously be a foolish thing to spoil the colonial market # by finch short-sighted policy, and it is obvious also that out of the hundreds of new novels published here, something more than good notices in our papers is required to ensure a sale in the colonies, or, what conies to tho same thing m a wav, to inspire exporters hero and booksellers in the colonies with faith sufficient to invest • money in them.” one through whose hands some hundreds of colonial editions have passed in the last few years. X should like to offer my opinion in the coniiict x>r evidence disclosed above. My experience leads mo to believe that the New Zealand Times” writer is correct, ami the “Publisher’s Circular” wrong. The hundreds of backs that have come .into tins London office in t)>e form of colonial editions contain a vast amount ot rubbish, and the inclusion of a really front rank is a phenomenon so rare that 11 I found one to-morrow in a colonial edition 1 should have to look twice—after getting over tho shock of my astonishment—to make sure my eyes did not deceive me. Possibly reallv good writers do find their way to the colonial editions. I am not going to deny it, for I do not prentend to see and read every book issued in that form. But I do say that as regards the hundreds of colonial editions which have come within my survey in the last few rears there is a significant dearth of good grain and an overwhelming abundance of chaff.