Book service
Sir: A couple of factual corrections to Bookbuyer's piece (Spectator, April 15), if I may.
First, our initial role will not, as he put it, be confined to "production and jacket design." We shall be publishing part of the Random House backlist here and abroad and we shall be concerned initially mainly with sales, marketing, promotion and widening the public's awareness of the Vintage and other Random imprints. To this, later on, will be added our own publishing of originals.
Second. I'm not quite sure what "similar to Paladin " means. We shall have—I imagine—a different price structure; a different subject range; and be aimed at a different, a 'non-mass' audience.
Third, whatever arrangements are made with respect to the ' runon' fiction idea—and I must say that no commitments have been made to us by any of the publishers mentioned—will not be instead of normal paperbacking. Most such books are nowadays never paperbacked and we believe that a highpriced paperback edition published with the hardback edition would serve to widen the book's initial market and make it a more attrac tive proposition for mass paperbacking later.
Oliver Caldecott
19 Turney Road, London SE21
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