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The Scottish Arts Council's decision to close down its monthly magazine Scottish International leaves something of a sour taste. Of& .! announcements indicate that the Council had spent £28,000 on the venture during the past seven years, that the accumulated deficit had increased from £1,500 to £2,500 in the past twelve months and that the circulation, at "'around 2,000," gave no prospect of an improved financial position. Scottish International's editor Tom Buchan, who was appointed eight months ago to try and give the magazine a much-needed shot in the arm, tells a different story. He says that when he arrived last July the circulation stood at 1,400 copies, the advertising revenue averaged £150 a month, and the financial deficit at that time should really have been shown as £2,400 and not £1,500. By the time the Council decided to close the magazine down in February of this year he claims the circulation had risen to "about 6,000 copies," the advertising revenue was up to £500 and the magazine itself, clearly on an upward trend, was suppressed because the Scottish Arts Council thought it was becoming too radical. No, Bookbuyer does not know which party is lying.
An interesting new publishing venture was launched last Monday, one which could reshape future thinking on that slippery specimen, 'the Novel.' It is the brainchild of two leading protagonists in the recently formed Sub-Media Group, a coterie of intellectual activists whose avowed aim is to "broaden the structural framework of conventional art forms." In setting up the new venture they have succeeded in enlisting the substantial financial support of Cheetham and Co., the well-known games and puzzles manufacturers who see publishing as "a logical extension of their existing interests." The principal aim of the imprint — which will operate under the banner of Breakthru Books — is to bring down the price of experimental fiction which, the founders believe, has been given a bad name by the conventional cheaply produced yet highly priced editions necessitated by dismally low print runs.
In an effort to counteract this, Breakthru have begun by producing signed and numbered editions of between 100 and 300 copies of each volume and costing up to £30, using the excess capital to fund the production of papercovered bunched "tear sheets" costing as little as 40p a set, Six titles have so far been contracted, each by a writer (or "anti-writer" as the catalogue explains) on the younger side of twenty-five, none of whom have previously been published in England. The first in the series, which appeared on Monday, was by the controversial Belgian polemicist Emil Yttret who describes the work, called simply V. as a socio-cultural essay in fiction in which "the characters are the words and the plot is the sense." Bookbuyer wishes luck to Messrs Rook and Cheetham who dreamed up the idea and chose such an appropriate date to launch its first fruits.
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