By numbers
Sir: Mr Paul Johnson's 'Quantity not quality' (24 January) is informative because it passes Hume's test (which appears to be becoming yours also, I am glad to see) and avoids the flames to which writings containing nothing of numbers should be consigned.
However, Mr Johnson's first number is incredible. Either there are 10,000 publishing firms in Britain, in which case (assuming a mean size of around 100) about 5 per cent of the UK workforce is employed in reading manuscripts and deciding whether they should be printed in the USA or Hong Kong, or the gremlins, electronic or otherwise, have interfered with Mr Johnson's copy-. I think we should be told. P.E. Roe 16 Kingsbury Avenue, St Albans, Hertfordshire The figure , of over 10,000 publishers names' is recorded in British Books in Print and was published in The Bookseller earlier this month.
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