Bookbuyer s
Bookend
"This is bookbuying 'seventies style" says the latest advertisement from World Books, the reprint club semi-owned by W. H. Smith. Its new recruitment drive includes an "any four for 25p . each" offer for books "worth up to £17 in the publishers' editions," with a range of nineteen attractively presented titles to choose from. Well, that's true enough as far as it goes, but it's hardly the whole truth. It depends on which publishers' editions you are talking about.
Take, for instance, The Female Eunuch (Publishers Edition £2.25): that book has been available for several years as a Paladin paperback and its 350 closely-packed pages cost 50 pence. Then again there is .Solzhenitsyn's August 1914 (Pub. Edn. £3.00) which W. H. Smith branches have been selling as a Penguin paperback since last August (price 50p). Or again, Erik von Daniken's Gold of the Gods (Pub. Edn. £2.20) which is now out in Corgi at 65p; or Desmond Morris's The Human Zoo (Pub. Edn. £3.90) which has been out in Corgi at 40p for some time now; or Derek Llewellyn Jones's Everywoman (Pub. Edn. £2.95), a Faber paperback likely to cost you 95 pence in the shops.
It is true that none is as cheap as World Books' special 25p offer, but many of the nineteen books are far cheaper than World Books would have us believe.
It would appear that Mr Eric Deakins, MP, is not the only Government spokesman with a talent for stonewalling in the matter of "printed paper" overseas postal rates (Bookend, February 15). There now comes a remarkably polished display from Mr Gregor Mackenzie, Under Secretary of State for Industry with responsibility for the Post Office.
For several months publishers and exporting booksellers have been seeking a sympathetic government ear. For several months they have been directed from one government department to another without finding any kind of ear at all. Indeed they have had three requests for an interview refused. Finally, on February 20, the Book Development Council received a letter from Mr Mackenzie in which he agreed to meet its representatives to hear their case for reducing the increases on overseas book post rates. The mixture of joy and relief' emanating from the BDC offices was short-lived, however. The very next day the government announced what the new rates would be: they were exactly the same as the much-dreaded January proposals.
Quote of the week comes from a leading New York publisher, speaking on the current cut-backs in Amerian publishing to a New York Times reporter: "Of course we always strive for quality. But in choosing manuscripts and books to push, we've got to think of the bottom line so we put our promotion and advertising behind those books that have popular appeal."
And the press release of the week comes from Roneo Vickers: -Charles Dickens was fascinated by gadgets and machinery. Ironically he did not live to see those which might have been most useful to him. He died two years before the birth ot the typeweiter, a quarter century before he rotary duplicator and several generations earlier than the electrostatic copier. He would, one imagines, have appreciated the gift of a Roneo Vickers electrostatic 'book copier to the Dickens House."
Bookbuyer's not so sure. As a pioneer for authors' rights and for copyright in particular. Dickens would probably have smashed the damn thing to pieces.
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