Spring Books
CRITICAL TIMES FOR PUBLISHING
By GEOFFREY FABER HAS there, I wonder, ever been so much anxious, public speculation about the future of books as during the past three or four years ? Jeremiahs prophesying the decline and fall of English letters have arisen in, every genera- tion; but they have usually been voices crying in the wilderness, and their lamentations have been inspired rather by personal distaste for new forms of art or business than by visible signs of danger. Today almost everybody who has anything to do with books is alarmed for the future; and the alarm is only too evidently grounded on fact.
Two recent publications variously illustrate this growing concern. The very able Unesco. report on Television and Education in the United States by Mr. Charles A. Siepmann (H.M.S.°. 6s.) has something disturbing to say about the effect of television upon reading. " The newspaper habit appears to be relatively unaffected. The reading of books, however, appears to be seriously affected." A New York investigation reports that " of readers of books, forty-nine per cent. admitted having discontinued reading entirely after the purchase of a television set; sixteen per cent. read less than formerly, and only thirty-five per cent. claimed to have been unaffected." And, lest it should be thought that what happens in America is unlikely to happen here, Mr. Siepmann adds that already there is parallel evidence from research in Great Britain." Bookmen need not; perhaps, be driven to despair by this not altogether surprising initial result. T.V. is a new and expensive toy; and the first instinct of nearly everybody who acquires such a toy is to play with it all the time. It is encouraging to know that as many as thirty-five per cent. of the sample New Yorkers, who were book-readers before they bought their sets, still read as much as they formerly read. They would be the real core of the reading public : that rela- tively small number of relatively educated and intelligent people upon whom the book-trade mainly relies everywhere. But what about. the effect of T.V. upon children ? Here, Mr. Siepmann's report at least shows that it can be used to encourage reading. In Seattle, for instance, a series of '" telecasts " (this appears to be the best our baffled language can do to distinguish T.V. from sound broadcasts), deliberately designed to make children Want to read books, seems to have resulted in a mass storming of the Seattle public library and its rural branches by avid young borrowers. Clearly T.V. is capable of being a powerful friend as well as a powerful enemy. Its immediate effect, especially for the literature of light entertainment, is likely to be inimical. Its lasting effect, for many kinds of books, could be beneficial. Everything will depend upon the policy followed by the Programme-planners. But there is one danger, inherent in the very nature of mass-communication, which it will need very careful ingenuity to avoid. The books which the juvenile Population of Seattle wanted to borrow were the particular books round which the programmes had been planned. If T.V. fails to encourage viewers to make their own private choices of books, the last state may be worse than the first. Already in America, as the British Society of Authors points cut, there are glittering prizes for a few authors, " but for the poet, the scholar and imaginative prose-writer the rewards become smaller and publication progressively more difficult." The publication from which these words are quoted is a twelveLpage supplement to the spring issue of The Author, entitled Critical Times for Authors. This " survey of present conditions " repeats a number of familiar fallacies with which neither I nor any other publisher could agree. But, in general, it is a penetrating, informed and admirably written analysis of the conditions which threaten the survival of professional authorship both here and in America; and it is for the most Part refreshingly free from the suggestion that publishers do not know how to run their businesses. The survey is, of course, Written from the point of view of the author. But it opens with a clear acknowledgment of the fact that there is an economic crisis in publishing. So it may be taken as common ground between us that the future of books turns, very largely, on the future of publishers.
Now what is this economic crisis in publishing ? At first sight it might seem that British publishing is in an immensely stronger position today than it has ever been before. The value of the total annual trade done in British books stood in 1952 at about £43,250,000. Before the war it was thought to be about £10,500,000. Apart from a small recession in 1940. it has risen substantially every year. The increase may not have been quite so sensational as these figures suggest; since the earlier statistics were almost certainly incomplete. But, after allowance is made for early errors and omissions, it remains sensational. It must be safe to say that at least three-and-a-half times as much money is being spent on British books in the home market, and four times as much in the overseas markets, as before the war. (This doesn't, of course, apply to numbers of books; it applies only to their total value.) Moreover, the number of new titles (including 'reprints and new editions) published in 1952 reached the astonishing figure of 18,741; the pre-war record, reached in 1937, was 17,137.
Do not these figures indicate prosperity ? Well, they cer- tainly indicate vitality, energy, hopefulness; and these are qualities which, if any qualities can do so, will carry the British publishing trade through its present difficulties. But prosperity? The chief index of prosperity in a trade is abundance of ready money or easy credit. In the large industries, operated by public companies whose accounts are published and statistically collated, the inadequacy of their cash resources has become a matter of public knowledge and increasing concern for some time past. Publishing is a small, intensely competitive industry consisting very largely of private companies or partnerships; and there is no way of directly estimating its financial health. But for some years now cash stringency has been an inevitable topic, wherever two or three or more publishers were gathered a together. Publishers are entrepreneurs, who have to find all the money needed to produce and advertise each book and to pay the author's advance, long before any of the money earned by the sale of the book begins to come back to them. So long as costs remain reasonably steady, and taxation permits a steady accumulation of reserved profits, all is well. But neither of these two essential conditions has obtained for some years; and the financial position of the entire industry has been weakened, further, by a number of factors of which I must be content to indicate with extreme brevity only three. First, then, the enormous increase in ordinary running costs —in unavoidable overheads. This is common to all industries, but it bears with peculiar weight on publishing, which has to handle a very large number of separate articles (" titles ") and to account to a very large number of royalty-owners. Second, Excess Profits Tax at one hundred per_ cent. Again this was common to all industries, but it hurt publishing in a specially cruel way. The years of the incredible war-time boom in books (roughly 1941 to 1946) practically stripped publishers of their entire pre-war stocks. The rapid sale of these stocks, most of which had been gradually and properly written down to a nominal value or to no value at all, resulted in fantastic profits which had to be fully paid over in tax. As the boom petered out, publishers were left with an excess of war-time stocks, printed in close type on war-time paper, which rapidly became unsaleable. Great masses of these war-time books had to be simply jettisoned; and a start had to be made on the increasingly expensive business of rebuilding the stocks of those long-living, but often slowly-selling, books which are the real life-blood of the industry.
Third, the costs, of manufacture, soon after the end of the war, rose rapidly enough to create very-serious anxiety. But these earlier rises, which have since continued to advance, were suddenly dwarfed by the staggering increase in the price of paper, which followed the beginning of the Korean war. Up to that point the run of published prices had stayed a great deal nearer to pre-war prices than costs warranted. After that point substantial advances in prices were unavoidable. These further advances were made with the utmost reluctance, and they fell far short of the advances theoretically required. The cost of paper has now fallen and, may fall further; but the general level of book-prices, having barely reached the point which it should have reached (say) three years ago, cannot now fall back. If it were to do so, the economic crisis in pub- lishing would be intensified. A breaking-point would be reached, and a wholly new situation would come into existence, which I have no room to describe and must leave the reader to imagine for himself.
I have not touched upon many significant matters. But, if the Spectator can spare me any more space, there is one encouraging sign which I should like to mention—being, myself, an optimist and looking always for evidence to support my inner faith. An analysis of the business done by 199 publishers, during the twelve months up to March 31st, 1951, made by the Publishers' Association, yielded (among others) the following remarkable result. In every £100 worth of books sold in the United Kingdom ordinary " trade " sales (that is to say, in the main, to book-shops) accounted for 79.23 per cent., " education-contractors " 9.80 per cent., public libraries 7.41 per cent., circulating libraries 2.73 per cent. and book clubs 0.83 per cent.
There is reason .to think that some part of the " trade " percentage should go to the credit of the " education con- tractors " (i.e., buyers who supply schools). But, whatever ideal correction is required, it sticks dut a mile that by far the greater part of the book-buying still done in this over-taxed kingdom is done by individuals who wish to own, and not borrow, their books. This seems to me almost too good to be true. Long may they keep it up. If they but knew it, they are backing something infinitely more important than the book- trade or professional authorship. They are keeping their native civilisation alive.
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