Bookend
Bookbuyer
Keeping old Stradivari violins in the bank can hardly be justified; producing new books which are not for reading certainly cannot. Andre Deutsch are publishing a £25 edition of the eighteenth century Infamous Essay on Women, which you are not supposed to read apparently. To keep this " collector's piece" in " mint condition," a "second, reading copy" is supplied (Bookbuyer's italics).
Why is publishers' publicity often so unconvincing — if the question is not disingenuous? The new Alcove Press, which is putting out its first list, introduces itself rather feebly by saying that it will be devoted in "an almost lost, traditional way " to the reader-writer relationship. It has other irreproachable aims, but this particular one is very poorly expressed — the phrase suggests the publishers' methods will be directionless. Appropriately enough, the catalogue's cover shows a print with the legend " La libreria non fa l'uomo letterato " — loosely translated: a whole bookshop can't make a man write grammar.
The office in which the phoenix-like Paul Hamlyn works, has his new being, and had his spectacular lunch party to launch the new Octopus books is very large and very ritzy — possibly not altogether unlike Mussolini's famous office, which, by design, presented acres of carpet to be crossed before the intimidated outsider arrived within speaking distance of the great man. Bookbuyer was suitably impressed, and equally sorry to see a large stain of raspberries and oysters spread across the halfway mark. But Octopus profits will certainly be large enough to replace several such carpets, for Paul Hamlyn says he hopes to make publishing history with sales of £100,000 per employee. The books are tantastically saleable, amazingly cheap hardbacks: Bookbuyer overheard someone haughtily describing them as "coffee, table for the plebs," and does himself feel that the text's quality is even lower than the price; but the pictures are very nice. Sadly Britain will only benefit from 30 per cent of total sales, since Mr Hamlyn believes that the British don't buy books, and he will be exporting 70 per cent. So most of Octopus's tentacles will be exercising themselves elsewhere.
The Portsmouth News Centre, which has sent out a roneo'd letter to leading publishers asking them not to send them "fictional books" many of which "verge upon pornography or at the very least are unsavoury" has not been taken as seriously as it would like by the tough-minded metro politan literary world. It is about two years since the News Centre sent a similar letter to Macmillans (of all people), but clearly the flow of filth is not easily checked. The only fictional books now allowed through the net are those "based on the classics " — but is this wise? Fanny Hill and Moll Flanders may soon be the staple diet of Portsmouth newspaper readers.
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