Bookbuyer's
Bookend
It is a funny thing, but whenever an outside public relations firm tries to involve itself with the promotion of books and authors, it almost invariably manages to cause confusion. The latest example is Fred Hift Associates, a high-powered London PR outfit who seem to have got themselves involved with the novelist Morris West, for several years a successful Heinemann author.
In one of those glowing press releases with which most journalists now know how to deal, Fred Hift Associates have told Fleet Street that West's new novel Harlequin is already in tenth position on the New York Times bestseller list; that it was there even before the book's official publication date; that US publishers Morrow are preparing a second reprint; that present demand indicates a sale of 80,000 copies in America; and that, finally, Harlequin is at number two position on the Sunday Times bestseller list.
The only thing the press release did not mention was the name of West's new British publishers Wm. Collins who, apart from being the country's second largest publishing group, have an unrivalled reputation for promoting and selling the 'big book'. Was Collins' publicity department aware of Fred Hift's mystifyingly unhelpful announcement? Surprise, surprise, it was not.
Congratulations to Jonathan Cape for winning the second Allen Lane 'Publisher of the Year' award last month (as Bookend predicted in June, but let's have none of that). Few people would quarrel with the judges' tribute to the all-round quality of Cape's 1973 publishing programme: major names, both British and foreign, appeared on the list — among them last year's Nobel prize winner Patrick White, Doris Leasing, Kingsley Amis, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Philip Roth and Kurt Vonnegut. There were several impressive first novelists including Catherine Heath, Emma Tennant and Martin Amis, winner of the Somerset Maugham award. There was that remarkable prize winning volume The Butterfly Ball (tipped for bestsellerdom by Bookend a month before publication, but let's have none of that) as well as other children's books by John Burningham, Joan Aiken and Quentin Blake, who has just been named joint winner of the Whitbread Award. And there was a varied non-fiction list with autobiographical writings by Herman Hesse, Claude Levi Strauss and Arthur Rubinstein, and some poetry by Roger McGough, William Plomer and the Greek Nobel prizewinner George Seferis.. But perhaps the most telling compliment paid by the judges was this: "The quality of book production and presentation was quite outstandingly high and we found no exception to this. It was clear that enormous care had been taken with every title, in the field of design, printing and illustration . It is nice to know that some commercial publishers still care about such things — and that there are still people prepared to give them credit for it.
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