Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Over 50 Years.] FRIDAY, 22nd FEBRUARY, 1935. THE PUBLISHER TELLS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 22 February 1935, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Over 50 Years.] FRIDAY, 22nd FEBRUARY, 1935. THE PUBLISHER TELLS.

Some very interesting and important points in regard to book publishing were raised by Mr Jonathan Cape, the well-known English publisher, in a recent address. Nor are these points academic, for the publisher is both the middleman of literature and

the entrepreneur of the book trade. And, as another English publisher, Mr Geoffrey Faber, well observes in his latest book, entitled “A Publisher Speaking,” “Without books, science, history, philosophy, the drama, the novel, could not exist at all; even poetry could never have got beyond the stage of minstrels’ lays; while religion and law would be the mysterious property of privileged

castes of priests and lawyers.' 1 Upon the publishing of books depends the growth of knowledge and the free activity of thought. Yet the majority of people accept unthinkingly this phenomenon of books, and never ponder to ask how and why books are born, what is the part of the publisher in deciding what authors the general public are to read, or whether

there are too many books. The multiplication of entertainment books without any permanent value, productions upon which we suspect Charles Lamb for one would hardly have conferred the honourable title of “book,” is due to the publisher acting on the

policy of giving the public “what it wants.” The publisher, to make a profit, must suit the public taste. And, after all, the book-reading public, whether in England or in New Zealand, is only a small one. The book-keeping public is microscopic compared to the total population of both countries. Thus serious literature suffers through the craving for meaningless de-

tective, mystery and crime stories, which demand no intelligence from the reader, and are . only crossword puzzles in the guise of books. A comparatively recent phenomenon also is the amazing and unhealthy popularity of the “best seller.” For some reason or another, often meretricious, a book “catches on.” It sells_ in hundreds of thousands and drives a legitimate public away from other books which may often be far superior. This tendency is increased by another new growth, the instituting of book clubs and societies with their “hook of the month,” which have a thoroughly pernicious effect in putting certain hooks out of proper proportion

and standardising public taste. These societies are doing serious damage by robbing readers of individual judgment and turning the great art of reading into massmechanised function.