Bookbuyer's
Bookend
The manifestos of new publishing ventures often suffer from over-enthusiasm and it is not hard to see why. For who, in command of their cool, would embark on a high-risk enterprise in a depressed economic climate in a country where there is roughly one publisher for every 'four booksellers and 35,000 new books produced annually? The book trade, because it is at heart a kindly one, tends to be more
helpful to newcomers than it needs, to be. The . press, because new things are easier to write about than old things, tends to be over generous in its coverage. But the time is fast arriving when both factions may find their goodwill sorely strained by the extravagance of publishers' launching language.
Does anyone now remember Bernard Geis, the quixotic American who launched himself on London six years ago and was going to show the British how to make bestsellers and at the same time overrun the tired obscenity laws? He left, as it were, with his tail between his legs and in 1971 the Financial Times was reporting that Geis had filed bankruptcy papers with the US Federal' Court.
And what of poor Tom Stacey ("most of the people working for me are from Fleet Street") who burst on the book trade in 1970 with the brave new words: "We are new, we are alive; our books are mostly aimed at a big public — easy to read, by the best authors on subjects • that people want and need to know more about." Even if it had all been true — and the
voluntary liquidation of Mr Stacey's company four years later suggests that not all of it was — the manifesto was more than most onlookers were able to take.
And then there were the glowing promises surrounding the launching of Thomson's paper-. back imprint, Sphere, when its American chief enthused: "By the end of 1967 we shall have gained third place in the paperback sales chart."
The absurdity of that statement was fully apparent by the end of the 1960s, though it is fair to add that Sphere has since managed to take a grip on itself and is now probably fifth or sixth in the: contentious league table.
There are one or two others Bookbuyer could name — and probably will quite soon. The sad thing is not so much that they will have failed, for there is sometimes distinction in failure, but that they will have misled a host of would-be helpers and damaged the credibility of other new ventures.
A fine example of how to win friends and avoid derision is to be found in the catalogue of Diploma Press, whose first book — a facsimile of Caxton's Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers — appears this month. In an in
troduction headed simply "Kick Off," the firm's founder Laurence Cotterell tells us: "Diploma joins the ranks of general publishers with no expectation of setting the Thames or any other river on fire; only the intention to run a profitable business, making its modest contribution to the trade as a whole. During what is left of 1974 we are 'running in' with re-issues of certain historical and detective novels likely to be in library or bookshop demand, and some non-fiction revivals with a similar potential market. Next year we will continue this process alongside some original publishing."
Diplomatic, in fact.
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