Hard on hardbacks
Sir: As a novelist and critic partly depen- dent on public lending right income, I deplore the new policy of Cambridgeshire libraries. In future, they will buy almost no hardback fiction. This means that novels which never get into paperback will not be available at the public library, or anywhere else after their shelf-life (about three months) is over.
The implications are serious: those of us who need professionally to keep abreast of current fiction will have to find £12 or £15 a time in order to find out whether the latest fashionable book is worth reading. Most readers either borrow or wait for the paperback. Readers stand to lose access to new fiction; authors stand to lose both library sales and PLR income.
Barbara Cartland and Catherine Cook- son will continue to flourish: good serious fiction has received another death blow. Publishers are already wary of publishing any novel not likely to make a hefty profit. The new American publishing consortia (for example, Gollancz, under new man- agement) are axeing fiction from their lists. When even library sales of hardbacks disappear, the plight of the novelist, apart from a blockbusting few, will be desperate. And where is the seedcorn to come from? Valerie Grosvenor Myer
34 West End, Haddenham, Cambridge
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