IVO TIME FOR READING Sta,—The pity with Mr. Allsop's article
last week, No Time for Reading,' at least as far as those in the publishing world are concerned, is that he asked all the right questions to all the wrong people. We already know that most of those he questioned are addicted to television rather than to reading and while it is, I suppose, a vague challenge to each and every pub- lisher to endeavour to draw people away from mentally effortless visual entertainment to creating their own entertainment through reading, this is not the prime question to which a publisher must attend. What publishers need to know a great deal more about are the factors which influence a person in buy- ing a book. Clearly they must, partially at any rate, have answered this question already, since people are buying the increasing number of books published each year, but they still need to go into the problem of exactly what influences the book buyer—whether it be reviews, advertisements, outstanding literary merit, or merely a book by a favourite author.
Mr. Allsop may have painted a gloomy picture in his article, but the fact remains that the reading and buying of books is increasing every year. Increased numbers of books borrowed from libraries, the huge influx of paper-back sales, the large number of flourishing book-clubs, and, above all, the fact that more and more books are being published each year, all these bear witness to the fact that reading is be- Coming more popular as a form of relaxation and further study. To question the people who are known to buy and read books, people to be found in book- shops and libraries, university graduates, members of Ithe scientific, legal and artistic professions, and readers of the literary weeklies, to find out what books they borrow from libraries, what books they buy and why they buy them, here surely is a challenge worthy of Mr. Allsop's attention.—Yours faithfully, 65 Hillway, N6
A. 0. WILSON
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