Cheaper Books

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21816, 20 November 1940, Page 6

Cheaper Books

DETTTND the British Government’s financial policy is the deliberate design to contract rigorously the spending power of the people. This is being done by means of taxation and the issue of war loans to which every income-earner contributes savings. In these circumstances it is inevitable that signs of change should already be appearing in the trading life of the nation, and the quoting of one example may serve to show a present trend. Since the war began there has been remarkable growth in the sales of books still retailed to the English public at sixpence. Since this series of publications, consisting of current literature and topical pamphlets, went on the market the more conventional publishers hoped that the appetite for cheap books would pass, but the hope was vain, for there has been a spectacular increase rather than diminution in the public’s demands. Had it not been for the war it is unlikely that 'a large section of the publishing trade would have capitulated now as it lias done. Nine great publishing houses have decided to meet the “menace” of cheap books by issuing a large number of volumes at prices not exceeding 1/- in Great Britain. This is an attempt to restore the stability of an industry which has lately struck bad weather economically, and it is a recognition of the merits of centralised and rationalised methods, both in production and distribution. The basis of the scheme is co-operative effort. The method adopted is that the nine houses have formed what is to be known as the British Publishers’ Guild. As a leading trade journal says: “the main object of the Guild is to bring back the stream to the book trade’s own garden.” The complaint of ordinary publishers is that books which they launched in the first place have, after the reversion of the rights to the author—usually a period of three years—found their way into the hands of the largest publisher of cheap books, and there enjoyed a new term of prosperity. The pioneers in the cheap publication field have been able to carry the sales of their books to anything between 40,000 and 150,000 copies. What is more important, however, is that the pioneers have proved that it is possible to sell cheap books profitably. In commenting on the establishment of the British Publishers’ Guild the Economist, said: “Publishers seem to have recognised at last that they cannot swim against the stream; and that sixpennys are not merely a flash in the pan and economically unsound. They are a new and likely line of business. So, tentatively and with reservations, the publishers are going to adopt the principle which for so long they have fought against as being contrary to all good publishing traditions and trade ethics. The public should gain by more and cheaper books, the community as a whole by more readers and the book trade itself by new life after a long time in set ways and habits.” It is possible that other trades may have to adapt themselves to the changing economic conditions caused by the war, and once the change is made any turning back in the future may be too difficult even to attempt.