Bookbuyer's
Bookend
It seems only yesterday that Bookend was berating publishers for not giving better support to the £5,000 Booker Prize for Fiction, and J. G. Farrell for not being more gracious in his acceptance of it. Now, we are reminded in this week's Bookseller, the Great Prize will shortly be upon us once again and its fate in 1974 seems likely to determine whether or not Booker McConnell continue to sponsor the award after 1975 when the seven-year guarantee expires.
What immediately marks out Booker 1974 as something a little special is the abundance of big name submissions. The list is almost awesome. Heading the heavyweights is Lawrence Durrell, followed by Anthony Burgess, C. P. Snow, Laurens van der Post and a quartet of literary lionesses: Olivia Manning, Penelope Mortimer, Muriel Spark (again) and Iris Murdoch (for the umpteenth time). Of the Big Sellers there are John Le Carre, Leslie Thomas and Brian Aldiss. Of the Up and Comings, Melvyn Bragg, Peter Tinniswood, Thomas Keneally, Beryl Bainbridge, Jennifer Johnston, Mervyn Jones, and others. Accidents barring — and the Booker men know all about accidents — there seems every reason to hope for a thoroughly rumbustuous literary rat-race reminiscent of the Prix Goncourt to whose status Booker aspires.
Bookbuyer's face, normally black and blue, is red this week. Last April he spent the best part of a column eulogising the American firm Simon & Schuster, who have just celebrated their 50th anniversary and are one of the last of the truly independent US publishers. The eulogies still stand, but as for indpendence . . . well, friends Simon & Schuster have just agreed to a 'merger' which, if it comes to pass, will make them a wholly owned subsidiary of the large American educational company Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Still, it might have been Crowell Collier Macmillan.
Speaking of CCM, some readers have been asking why Bookend has uncharacteristically ignored some of the sordid goings-on in that so-called 'cultural conglomeracy,' whost recent acquisitions include Cassell, Studio Vista, the -bookshop Claude Gill, the library suppliers Woolstons, and a good bit more besides. The explanation is quite simple. Such things as readers would like to see in print about CCM are unprintable, even in Bookend.
Anyone who has seen British publishing delegates to Japan decked out diplomatically with kimonos. clogs and paper umbrellas, may be forgiven for imagining that life is a little different over there, Bookbuyer is indebted to America's Publishers Weekly for helping to dispel some of the illusions. According to the magazine's 'rights' expert Paul Nathan, the current top spot throughout the Japanese islands goes to Jonathan Livingston Seagull which sold out its first printing of 50,000 copies in two days. By the end of July there were half a million copies in print. On the same date there were 200,000 copies in print of How To Be Your Own Best Friend: 100,000 of Rose Kennedy's Times To Remember; 170,000 of Piers Paul Read's Alive? and, at the last count, The Exorcist had sold 165,000 copies.
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