Book marks
Sorry news for Futura, the British Printing Corporation's paperback subsidiary which has just been celebrating its move to opulent new premises in Camberwell. I hear that the firm's ace sales director — velvet-voiced Henry Kitchen — has decided that two years working with Futura's boss Tony Cheetham is enough: last week he informed his sales force, his managing director and his chairman (in that order) that he intends to leave the happy family. Mr Kitchen is no fool: before resigning he lined himself up for the managing directorship of W. H. Allen's paperback yearling Star Books. But I am sure that W. H. Allen will honour the pledge they made when they bought that other paperback firm Tandem four months ago — that "the editorial staffs and policies of Tandem and Star will continue to operate independently."
Not so novel
It is distressing to learn that Britain's only pure fiction publisher, Milton House, has discovered that fiction does not pay — at least under present conditions. Spectator readers may remember how, in April 1973, the Aylesbury printers Hunt Barnard took the enterprising step of moving into publishing, partly in the belief that printers sold their birthright years ago when they let publishers get in on the act, and that dignity needed restoring. Now, because of economic circumstances, they are to stop contracting for new novels — of which Milton House has published an impressive total of eighty-five in the past two years — and Will be confining themselves to a few potentially big sellers plus a number of medical and technical titles under a subsidiary imprint HM & M.
I hesitate to say this, but if a printer can't find a way of producing novels economically,. can anyone?
It hurts here, doc
By a fine irony, the American publishers Bantam have just paid a record $1,850,000 for the paperback rights in E. L. Doctorow's new novel Ragtime, published to rave reviews in New York last month. British readers will have to wait until after Christmas. Macmillan are publishing here in January.
Phoney Biggs
I was stunned to receive an invitation to join the directors of Granada Publishing at a London press conference "with Ronald Biggs" to celebrate the appearance of Colin Mackenzie's book Ronald Biggs: The Most Wanted Man. New Scotland Yard can relax: it appears that the gaol-dodging thief will not be present in person. But Granada are considerately arranging for Biggs to be on the end of a telephone line to Rio so that journlalsts can tell him what they think of him.
No Eccles cake
Forgive the commercial, but our prediction on July 5 that the British Library Board would stage a climb-down over the siting of the Great Building seems to have come true. Instead of knocking down Bloomsbury to accommodate the library the Government and the Libarary Board together have agreed to build it on the derelict site next to St Pancras station. Not exactly what the Board's chairman, Lord Eccles, wanted — St Pancras does have a rather common ring to it, after all. But amost everyone else will be delighted.
,-Bookbuyer
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