WHAT PRICE LITERATURE?
asks: do we publish too many books?
I HAVE always agreed with Dr Johnson's remark, 'Sir, no one but a blockhead ever wrote a book except for money.' But is there money in books? Few authors man- age to make a living out of writing them. Public Lending Right payments have come as an agreeable extra to successful writers of romantic novels, thrillers and spy stor- ies, but most writers benefit tittle from it. By one of those computer quirks, my notification of PLR payment this year also included the figures for another writing gentleman. This poor chap, the author of six solid-sounding books, which obviously had involved a great deal of work, is to receive the munificent sum of £4.15 this year. Equally, those who work in pub- lishing are not well rewarded. For unavoid- able reasons most publishing houses have to be based in London. But many of those they employ can barely afford to live there.
Booksellers evidently do make money if they are smart enough. Last week W. H. Smith, which now has 410 high street shops, declared interim profits which are good by any standard: turnover up 20 per cent and now not far short of a billion; profits up 38.7 per cent at £41.6 million. Of course it sells many more things than books: it has 272 music shops, for instance, and 200 travel agencies, plus huge overseas outlets. All the same Smiths clearly coins it from books. The question is: could the book trade be further energised by abro- gating the Net Book Agreement? Smiths, along with most people who publish and sell books, is in favour of keeping this fixed-price system, which has legal back- ing. Others regard it as reactionary and outmoded. Terry Mather, the chairman of the Pentos book chain, says that he is going to break the NBA and discount new books this year.
My instincts put me on Mather's side, though I recognise the strength of the arguments for keeping publishers' prices. Books, like most other goods, should be sold for the price they will fetch. Much better to cut the price and get the books into readers' hands than have them gather- ing dust on the shelves or rotting in warehouses. Ian Black, chairman of a chain of Christian bookshops and an expert
on retailing, contributes a series of perti- nent comments to the current issue of the Bookseller. He declares himself in favour of reforming. rather than abolishing the NBA. But he points out that, because of the protection they enjoy, 'most booksel- lers cannot be termed fully professional retailers'. Hence when the NBA goes, and most people think it must go some day, independent bookshops may be slaught- ered by the supermarkets, department stores and chains. Most shops, Clark points out, are agents of their customers, attuned to the customers' needs. Booksellers, by contrast, are still 'agents of our suppliers. We sell shelf-space to our publishers, rather than books to our customers.' That is a provocative remark but it draws attention to the fact that flogging books is conducted in a manner which goes directly against the new Zeitgeist. Whereas post- war Britain, under the consensus, was run in the interests of big producer groups, Thatcherism is now systematically putting the consumer on top in every area, the latest being in education and health. Even in food supplying, the one area where the Conservatives have been successfully bul- lied by a masterful producer group, the farmers, the balance is now being shifted. What long-term hopes has the book trade of standing out against this massive and popular shift in power?
One of the arguments I have heard in favour of keeping the NBA is that, while abolishing it will lead to more books being sold, it will also mean that fewer titles will be published. I doubt that will happen, but even if it does — so what? Clark, in another provocative aside, points out that
Inz not AC or DC, I'm gas.'
although the grocery business is 50 times larger than the book trade, it launches only about one-50th of its new products. As a consequence, he adds, 'the typical stock- holding bookshop sells on average less than one copy of each new title launched'. That, he argues, is very poor salesmanship. Now I know you can't treat books exactly like groceries. But there must be something fundamentally wrong with a business most of whose new products are under-used. Figures of new book titles published in the United Kingdom and notified to Whitaker show that the upward trend continues without respite. Under the old system of computation, which included late returns, the total number of books published last year (including 14,594 re- prints and new editions) rose to 62,063- That is nearly five times as many as 40 years ago — the total 1947 figure was 13,046. Even under the new system, ex- cluding late returns, the figure was 56,514, a rise of 1,768 over 1987. That includes a total of entirely new books of 43,188. It is, to my mind, a staggering number. Where do all these new books come from? Whom do they go to? As one would expect, the largest single category of titles published in 1988 was fiction, 6,496. The number two category — and this is a sign of the times and modern affluence — is formed by children's books, 5,063. But what will surprise many is that, books on 'Political Science and Economics' formed the third category, 4,307. why should it be necessary to write and publish all these books on such threadbare sub- jects? Indeed, if you add books on sociolo- gy, another top category with 1,284 books in 1988, you get a total of 5,591, making it the second largest group of all. These subjects form the core of what it is fashion- able to call the social sciences, but which might more properly be described as the inexact or immature sciences. Their spread is almost entirely due to the expansion of higher education, which the government is constantly accused of neglecting. But what is being neglected? Medical science, which is making phenomenal advances on all fronts to the great benefit of us all, produced a hefty 3,423 new titles in 1988, but even this is only two-thirds of the pol-econ-soc stuff. Physics and chemistry combined account for only 839, not much ahead of philosophy (752). I can't help but think that many, perhaps most of these social science titles (the great majority, I stress, entirely new ones) are written by dons for dons or for students aiming to be dons. They are produced to strengthen the author's academic position and advance his or her prospects of promotion. Where, exactly, is the public interest served by this huge output? I ask this question because as Ecclesiastes says (xii 12), 'Of making many books there is no end,' and because the more books published, the richer our civilisation is not a self-evident truth, to put it mildly.
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