Bookbuyer's
Bookend Bookbuyer hesitates to be critical of Granada Publishing once again, if only because it is so temptingly easy. But it really is time someone had a fatherly word in that young firm's ear. Journalists are used to receiving garbled and uninformative press releases (puboishers are by no means the worst) and take such offerings with a pinch of the nose before putting them where they belong. It is easy to tolerate eceentric enthusiasms, dislocated phrasing and mundane misspellings (especially that!). It requires little effort to overlook the unimportant error, like the one in Granada's advertisement for a new book by Alan Burgess, well-known author of Clockwork Orange — as opposed to the less 'illustrious Anthony Burgess who wrote The Shaul Woman. It is even possible to forgive a reasonable margin of pottiness, as for example in Granada's announcement, after the death of Henri Charriere, that Panther are to publish his last book Banco in 1975 — without the merest mention of the fact that their hardback imprint is to do it later this month.
Other recent items of Granada 'news,' however, are beginning to exceed the realm of fun. In a not particularly sympathetic reference to Hodder's troubles over their forthcoming Mailer biography of Marilyn Munroe (he is accused of lifting, without proper permission, large chunks of two earlier works by Guiles and Zolotow) the Granada copywriter adds airily: " Evidently the matter is likely to be resolved if Hodders pay W. H. Allen for the use of copyright" and then of course goes on to recommend Mayflower's own edition of Frederick Guiles' Norman Jean. Now fortunately most journalists are sufficiently wary of Granada statements not to have printed that — which is just as well, because neither Hodder nor W. H. Allen are directly involved in the copyright wrangling at all. That is a matter between Messrs Guiles and Zolotow and Mailer's American publishers, Grosset & Dunlap, to whom Hodder paid £31,000 in good faith for English rights. Whether they will now receive any compensation from Grosset, to offwt the commercial inconvenience of having had to postpone, is a matter of far greater interest.
Not content with an imputation against Hodder which runs rather close to libel, Granada bounced back last week with another knowing piece of trade information. Since, they said, the controversial book on Dr Issels had been 'banned' (that is, Gordon Thomas' biography, published by Hodder) people might be interested to know about The Conquest of Cancer, published by Gra
nada. It seems hardly necessary to labour the point, but most observers were under the impression that the book was temporarily withdran because the BBC were claiming a breach of copyright — which, even allowing for the quotation marks round "banned," is not quite the same thing. It is quite possible that Granada have nothing very exciting to say about themselves, but the press is not much interested to hear their distorted views on other publishers either.
As for that generally admirable firm Hodder and Stoughton, they are owed an apology. Two weeks ago Bookend went so far as to suggest that the price of their Everest South-West Face would be £4.50, and in so saying drew a ringing response from the publishers who pointed out that it was to cost only E3.95. Bookbuyer, suitably humbled, vows never again to trust a Hodder catalogue.
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