CENTRE POINT
There's only one capitalist the hacks approve of — the publisher
SIMON JENKINS
Publishing is one branch of capitalism that basks in intellectual favour. The BBC has (or had) an admirable rule that pro- grammes should not hawk commercial products. There should be no taint of favouritism or risk of bribery. 'A certain well-known brand' might sound pi, but it bespoke a noble journalistic ethic. The rule never applies to books. Books are so blessed that not only are titles plugged (especially if published by the BBC) but presenters are ordered to mention author, publisher and price at the end of inter- views.
The Corporation, like Fleet Street, believes that publishing is not really com- merce. Publishers are the only businessmen with whom most journalists have social intercourse. They meet each other at lunch, use the same clubs, go to the same villas in Tuscany. Above all, publishers produce journalists' books. They give them advances and ordain the budgets for their launch parties. The publishing tycoon is hero, from Weidenfeld to Waterstone, from Hamlyn to Maxwell (in his day). Thus are publish- ers' profits virtuous. Their price-fixing is benign. Their monopolistic practices are de rigueur. As for readers, they are mostly plebs, whose infuriating appetite for more popular writers should be stifled by over- pricing, or at least surcharged to cross-sub- sidise 'proper' books. Nowhere outside pol- itics do well-padded backs seek such comforting mutual scratch marks.
As an occasional writer of books I sup- pose I am party to this conspiracy. I do not regard a book as wholly a commercial product, any more than I do a newspaper. There is still a trace about both of the poet's 'precious lifeblood of a master spir- it', of the pearl without price. But since even pearls must be sold and what is sold needs must have a price, I cannot see why the open market cannot be left to fix that price. That is what markets are for.
When the Net Book Agreement entered its tedious death throes earlier this year, most newspapers sided for keeping it. They sought to preserve this last remnant of wartime restriction, whereby no shop could sell a book for less than the price printed on its dustjacket. The NBA was like Spam and Anderson shelters and Myra Hess con- certs. It was capitalist corporatism graoed by socialist heritage. (Just to show what publishers think of the intelligence of their readers, every book price still ends in 99p.) The scions were all in line, from the Pub- lishers' Association, the Bookseller and the Arts Council to Viking-Penguin, Random House, Macmillan and W.H. Smith. A monopolistic practice excoriated among banks, car-makers or soap companies was lauded as virtuous among publishers. Price- fixing protected the small firm. It guarded scholarship. Monopoly was the custodian of quality. When Terry Maher, then of Dillons bookshops, said he would cut prices to boost sales, publishers threatened to sue him. Even the Tory government accepted that resale price-fixing was 'fair' and refused to repeal the relevant statute.
I have a weakness for the art form known as economics. One of its more serviceable observations is that when price falls demand rises. It was long assumed that newspaper prices were inelastic, that peo- ple would pay anything for their favourite paper and not change to another because it became cheaper. We now know better. When Sir Allen Lane launched his first ten Penguins in 1935 he was chastised by fellow publishers for vulgarity. Proper books were hardbacked: how dare he produce Heming- way's Farewell to Arms for just sixpence, not to mention Agatha Christie and Dorothy L.
`Bet my MP earns more than your MP.' Sayers? He was behaving like a business- man. Dreadful.
Lane's innovation liberated literature to millions who could not afford hardbacks. Soon others followed suit and praised Lane's imagination. Penguin recently honoured the Lane tradition with its brilliant 60p series. This proved, if proof were needed, that the public will buy and read serious material even Marcus Aurelius and Camus — if it can be made short and cheap. Four million 60p Penguins were sold within two months of publication last July and delivered a coup de grace to the NBA. Archer and Collins were pushed off the best-seller list. Other publish- ers were at first outraged and even demand- ed that Penguins be dropped from the best- seller lists as 'pamphlets'. Most are now planning imitations.
Prices of popular hardbacks are falling as bookshops are released from price bondage and allowed to decide for themselves how best to persuade the public to buy more books. This week's Booker prize will herald probably the biggest boom in hardback fic- tion since the war. Thousands more people will read millions more novels. It is possible that this will cut the profits of some in the industry. That is business. It is possible that some writers may not get such big advances as a result, and that others, who write books for which there is no market, will get no advances at all. I expect the chief casualties will not be new writers, whom publishers have always treated as investment stock, but less successful established writers and marginal non-fiction. Publishers will drop mediocre works which they produced only because the NBA assured them of a small margin.
The one certainty is that more people will buy more books. The one outrage is that those who purport to believe in the dissemination of the printed word should regard this as a bad thing. The late Lord Mancroft said of monopolies that they are like babies: we are generally opposed to them until we have one of our own. Resale price control in the book industry was a blatant example of industry featherbedding. I imagine the Guardian would have treated Allen Lane as a disgraceful populariser offering paperback bread to the masses. Let them have hardback cake, the Guardian would have said. Lane offered them a choice.
Simon Jenkins writes for the Times.
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