FORTY THOUSAND MORE BOOKS
Publishing: Paul Johnson on the remarkable rise in the number of new titles
IN ITS issue of 4 January, that admirable publication, the Bookseller, recorded that no fewer than 52,994 books were published in Britain last year. That is 1,449 (2.8 per cent) up on 1984, another record figure. It is true that, of this total, 11,740 were various kinds of reprints, paperbacks and new editions. All the same, more than 40,000 new titles is to my mind a staggering amount. Moreover this particular statistic has been going up for 40 years. When the Bookseller first recorded the post-war tot- al, in 1947, it was 13,046. It passed the 20,000-mark in 1957, 30,000 in 1968, and 40,000 in 1979. With very few exceptions, the figure has increased every year. The one big drop in recent years was in 1981 at the trough of the recession, which was particularly severe in the book trade, when the total fell by over 5,000 from the 1980 figure of 48,158. But the 1982 total was again a record, at 48,307, and the graph has since continued to go up.
Of what do these enormous numbers of new books consist? The largest single group in 1985 consisted of fiction titles, a formidable 5,846. To be sure, of this 2,636 were new editions and reprints; all the same, with over 3,200 brand new titles published last year, no one can conceivably say that fiction is dead in Britain. The credit goes, at least in part, to the new scientific marketing of fiction, especially to the hugely successful television razzama- tazz of the Booker Prize. The current winner, Keri Hulme's The Bone People, though an unpopular choice in many quar- ters, is nonetheless number two in the hardback fiction bestseller list, and the 1984 winner, Anita Brookner's Hotel du Lac, is still in the paperback top fifteen.
After fiction, the second largest category of new titles in 1985 was children's books, 4,410, which included a mere 779 reprints, so that last year more new books for children were published than any other type: it is the biggest single growth area in publishing. Third in the list, amazingly enough, was Political Science and Eco- nomy, with 3,917 titles. If we lump History and Biography together they make the fourth biggest category, at 3,712, which must be a healthy sign. Close behind is Medical Science, at 3,655. Then comes the most surprising figure of all: 1,997 titles were published in 1985 dealing with theolo- gy and religion, of which over 1,600 were entirely new books. It may be that some of these were designed to prove that Mary was not a virgin or even that God does not exist at all: but the size of the figure does indicate, to my mind, the existence of a huge sub-culture of belief in this country. The religious category, indeed, comes well ahead of Engineering (1,826), School Text- books (1,824) and Law (1,800) which make up the rest of the top ten. These are very broad categories, of course, and it would be dangerous to draw any profound con- clusions from them. But it is significant is it not? — of the state of mind of the great British public, that in 1985 more than twice `This Westland business is getting out of hand!' as many books were published on Occult- ism (239) as on General Science (116).
The blip on the upward trend in pub- lishing which occurred in 1981 marked the painful and bloody reorganisation of Brit- ish publishing which occurred around that time, the point at which it ceased to be the old-style 'profession for gentlemen' and became a serious business — increasingly, indeed, big business. Last year was noted for huge acquisitions and mergers, what the Bookseller calls 'a powerful trend towards concentration of ownership', in both publishing houses themselves and in bookshops. A lot of the famous old names still exist but are subsumed in larger groups. Half the total turnover of the industry is now divided up among a mere eight groups, dominated by Pearson- Longman (including Penguin which itself in 1985 acquired the Thomson stable of Michael Joseph, Hamish Hamilton, TLB, Sphere and Rainbird), which does £240 million worth of business a year. Paul Hamlyn, the biggest success story in con- temporary British publishing, bought the Heinemann Group in 1985 and so pushed his firm, Octopus, into the number two position with a turnover of £150 million. Close behind comes Collins (which Rupert Murdoch is close to owning) with turnover of £140 million, followed by Reed, OUP, Associated Book Publishers, Macmillan and Hodders. The 1985 acquisitions mostly cost huge sums: Octopus spent £100 mil- lion getting Heinemann, for instance. But large-scale publishing can now be im- mensely profitable. Octopus made a profit of £9.1 million in 1985, which was 44 per cent up on the previous year. Collins, with a profit of £11.7 million, was 37.4 per cent up. Penguin's trading profit was 23 per cent up at £11.3 million, the OUP were up 24.3 per cent at £8.85 million, and Hodder was 24.2 per cent up at £8.85 million. Executive salaries are going up too. Until recently they have been notoriously low. But according to the Times the new boss of the enlarged Octopus Group, Ian Irvine from Fleet Holdings, has broken through the £100,000-a-year barrier. Top publishing salaries over £50,000 are now becoming common.
What's in it for the authors, then? As I have pointed out before, authors in general must benefit as the publishing industry rationalises itself and becomes more pro- fessional and go-getting. The difficulty is that many authors will not take part in the rationalisation process themselves: they will not, for example, play a wholehearted personal role in the marketing of their books. During a recent literary conference at Leeds Castle, I noted — though not with surprise — the ingrained hostility several distinguished authors present showed to- wards the televised plugging of books. And how many authors have followed the ex- ample of the publishing trade, and made a cost-effectiveness study of their own work? They think it beneath their dignity — the old, defensive stand-by of the shabby- genteel.
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