The Battle of the Books
By GRAHAM WATSON
HE book-trade is going through one of its periodic financial crises. On the face of it this would appear to be strange. The total annual turnover of the trade as a .whole has shown a steady increase-over the. past ten years. (The amount of money now being spent on books annually is three times what it was pre-war.) Publishers are apparently sharing in this prosperity. The balance-sheets of all those com- panies accessible to the public show that . perfectly adequate profits in relation to capital investment are still being earned. The ancillary trades—printers, binders, paper-makers, &c.— have never seemed more prosperous, Why, then, are the corres- pondence columns of The Times loud with the laments of author and publisher alike ? Why is the popular Press filled with its usual quota of alarmist misinformation ? be strange. The total annual turnover of the trade as a .whole has shown a steady increase-over the. past ten years. (The amount of money now being spent on books annually is three times what it was pre-war.) Publishers are apparently sharing in this prosperity. The balance-sheets of all those com- panies accessible to the public show that . perfectly adequate profits in relation to capital investment are still being earned. The ancillary trades—printers, binders, paper-makers, &c.— have never seemed more prosperous, Why, then, are the corres- pondence columns of The Times loud with the laments of author and publisher alike ? Why is the popular Press filled with its usual quota of alarmist misinformation ?
In the 'first place it is necessary to understand.that there is nothing unusual about an economic crisis in the book-trade. It has been suffering from a periodic outbreak of this malady at fairly -regular intervals for years. There is every reason to believe that it will continue so to suffer until the fundamental laws of finance are allowed to take effect. - At present the book-trade exists in an economic cloud-cuckoo-land, and, whilst on the one hand it complains bitterly at the consequences which arise from the unreality of its situation, on the other hand it fights to the 'death any. attempt that may be'Made to bring- it down to earth.
,There would appear to be two basic disorders of publishing. One is that the trade is over-capitalised. The other is that its retail-price structure is .crazy. To deal with the first point first. It is' not, of course, suggested that the capital of individual com- pinies is, in many instances. adequate to deal with the appalling rise in costs since the war, with the consequent locking up in stock of what normally should be 'fluid resources. Many, exceedingly prosperous publishing houses are as deep in the red with their banks as their banks will pernit. It is, none the less, trite that the alleged attractions of publishing are such that new capital is constantly being poured into the trade to fOund new firms for which there is no legitimate call, or to bolster up near- bankrupt companies whose continued unwanted existence merely serves to reduce the portion of the total income available for . distribution among the better-established companies. Numerically the supply of books, title by title, category by cate- gory. good, bad and very indifferent, is. far in excess of the public's requirements. The amount of mediocrity which finds its way on to the market in a desperate attempt to bump up inadequate turnover is apparent to any casual browser on the book-advertisements in the weekly papers.
The other hindrance).to a financial equilibrium is the price at which books are sold to the public. Publishers are always busy piously proclaiming that books are cheap. They point out that for the price of a theatre stall—which is, anyhow,. far beyond the means of most people—you have an article which will give abiding pleasure to many readers.. They emphasise that the rise in retail cost to the public since the war has been in ratio less than for almost any other article. They suggest that the margin of profit left to them is such that they are, in all but name, public- philanthropists. They tactfully imply that every time the public buys a book it becomes a little in their' debt for the privilege of being allowed to do so.
All of this is true—er partially true. What many publishers do not appear to understand is that from the purchaser's point of view books are frantically expensive. Anyone who wishes to read a book may do so at no cost to himself, other thaii his normal compulsory contribution to the rates. He may, if he finds it convenient, borrow all the books he wants from a com- mercial library for approximately thirty shillings a year. He may, should he have the compulsion, buy many of the most famous books written during the last fifty years in a Nicely printed edition for eighteen pence. Try and convince him that a book is cheap at half-a-guinea !
The truth of the matter is that the lending library is at once the principal mainstay and the principal menace of the book- trade. One day, it is conceivable, a system will be devised Whereby both publisher and author will get a royalty .every time a book goes out on loan. At the moment the pliblic borrows something for virtually nothing—nothing, that is, other than the price of the impending bankruptcy of a sizable-pro- portion of the publishing profession. This worsening oU the situation has, of course, undoubtedly been accelerated by the recent mounting costs of raw materials. Paper now costs -more than four times what it did in 1938, and another rise is fOrecast. Printing-rates are rather more than double pre-war, and binding rates are up nearly four time's ; forty per cent. of the increase has come in the last twelve months. It is these rocketing costs which have brought about the recent agitation for a reduction in authors' royalties. The argument used is that, since the retail cost of a book- will rise, an author can accept a reduction in royalty and still obtain, the iamb return.
While it is probably true that another' steep rise in retail prices would detrimentally. affect sales—libraries stubbornly refuse to increase theiritubscriptions- and thereby their purchas- ing power—it is also true that the cost of living for authors is rising no less steeply-than it is for other folk. It is also a lad that neither publishers, printers, paper-mills nor other interested parties who work- out their costings' on a percentage anargin- -either .for net or 'gross profits—are exactly queuing up -with offers that they should work on a reduced percentage. The author, whose costs are at least as basic as the paper-makers'. has traditionally been regarded by the publisher as the one party to a- book's making who can legitimately be subjected to a squeeze.
At the other end of the assembly line are the wretched book- sellers, so pitifully rewarded for their services that the majority of them have to try to make encis Meet by the sale of paper doylies and sealing-wai: To try to preserve this creaking struc- ture publishers have Viiluntarily *entered into an agreement to limit their channels of distribution to retailers approved by other booksellers as being fit and worthy for such a high mission : thus, at one stroke, ensuring that the vast general public never sees a book on sale except for the limited stocks carried occa- sionally by newsagents. The suggestion that books ongardening. for instance, should be made available in a seedsmans shop' is, seemingly, regarded as.a step not only unworthy of the calling of books but also one that would undermine the entire structure of the book-trade. And so the wailing and the lamentations continue. Unless the book-trade is once more reprieved by war or paper-rationing the economic facts of life will surely soon begin to operate. When they do the weak will, sadly, cease to be with us, and those who remain may live in a world where at least they can obtain a legitimate profit without its necessarily being at the expense of one or other of the numerous parties involved between the creator and the consumer.
Previous page
