"A CHRONICLE OF KINGSHIP"
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I must take a little exception to a line in the review of A Chronicle of Kingship. In it your reviewer says of the book that we have produced it in an elegant format "at a ridiculous price." I can only suppose that the writer has the sketchiest knowledge of the economics of book production.
Both Professor Mowat and Mr. Griffith Davies are people of considerable standing and not cheap hack-writers. Over and above the cost of production a very considerable sum of money is required if they are to write rather more than 250,000 words between them. Obviously a book of this size and scope, with thirty-nine plates and twelve genealogical tables in it is going to cost a considerable amount of money to produce, and the only way in which the price could have been reduced would have been by printing a number at any rate in excess of to,000. Unfortunately there are not zo,000 purchasers of this book readily to be seen, even by the most clairvoyant of publishers, at any price greater than 5s.
All in all, the book is three times as long, three times the size, probably three times as expensive in authors' fees and, in addition, carries plates and genealogical tables, as the ordinary novel, with an expectation of sale rather lower.
These are the economics of the thing, and I feel it would have been fairer to have thought this out before throwing off the phrase "at a ridiculous price."—I am, Sir, &c., Aannnt -BARKER.
21 Garrick Street, Covent Garden, London, W.C. 2.
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