BACK-DATE MAGAZINES

Taranaki Daily News, 17 September 1934, Page 7

BACK-DATE MAGAZINES

TOTAL OF OVER 500,000 A YEAR. BRITAIN HAS DUMPING DUTY. The recent action of the British Government in imposing a prohibitive dumping duty on back-date magazines imported from America has aroused much interest among booksellers, and not a little concern. The natural inference is that finding the British market impossible, the big back-date selling organisations of America will turn their attention in a stronger way to Australia and New Zealand. The dumping duty recently imposed in England is Is a lb for all back-date magazines. This naturally makes it impossible to sell at a profit in the British market. Because there is an open field for these purveyors of back-date magazines in Australia and New Zealand, the American, houses have found both countries a very profitable field over the last several years. The figures, as far as New Zealand is concerned, are amazing. In spite of the depression, the importation of back-date magazines into New Zealand has actually grown. From information gathered from reliable sources, the number of such publications now being imported into this country totals well over 500,000 per annum. This type of magazine is for the most part of a very low standard. Sensation and sex are the main theme of most of the stories. Tire literary quality is poor. Also, unfortunately, that objectionable type of American slang so familiar through the talkies is even more prominent in these; magazines.

Some idea of the nature of the contents may be gathered from a list of titles secured from one of the wholesale lists of one of the biggest American distributing houses. It needs no imagination to hazard a guess at the nature of the contents of the following publications: “Thrilling Detective,” “Underworld,” “Underworld Novelettes,” “Sexology,” “French Nite Life Stories,” “Artists and Models,” “French Art Studies,” “Snappy,” “Gay Parisienne,” “Thrilling Love," “Pep,” “Spicy.”’ The opponents of this back-date invasion assert that it incorporates three big evils, a devastating effect on the legitimate magazine trade and the booksellers concerned, a lowering of the literary standard of the readers in both countries, the moral aspect as affected by supersex and supersensational reading. It is claimed that New Zealand writers also suffer. It is only natural that where the public can secure cheap reading they will ignore the better-class, but higher-priced local article. The result is that few magazines are able to endure in this country, and the free lance literary market is therefore a very restricted on?.