Publishing and the new look
That Anthony Blond should write a book about publishing; that he should call it The Publishing Game; that he should go to Jonathan Cape Ltd to have it produced; that Jonathan Cape should give him a pretty laminated jacket with a picture of publishers' colophons imprinted on dominoes; that this quite short book should cost us two pounds, rather more than one new penny a page; all has a certain irrevocability about it. What is less predictable is whether it will sell. Libraries will subscribe, the book trade will have a few discount copies circulating and aspiring first novelists will put down their money and read every word. But for all its moments of glamour publishing is a business, a trade like any other, and no amount of varnish or gloss is likely to turn it into a pastime.
To he fair, Mr Blond doesn't concentrate unduly on the fun and games, although in the early days his own imprint must have been as gay an enterprise as any in London. There are chapters on how to produce books (a good description of monotype setting, but nothing on binding, nowadays the most expensive single element in hardback production); on how to sell books (nothing on Charter booksellers); on the economics of publishing; on paperbacks; on textbooks (where he can speak as an expert); and on publishing in the United States.
In this last instance, Mr Blond points out that the American public spends seven pounds per head per annum on books. The British spend one pound per head and, he adds, a book only becomes a best-seller here when people can't wait for the paperback. But the size of the American industry brings its own problems. An author often becomes attached to a single editor in an otherwise anonymous set-up and trails after him from publishing house to publishing house, so that a best-selling author becomes a guarantor of his editor's promotion. Instructively, Mr Blond quotes Raymond C. Hagel, president of CrowellCollier Macmillan: " We are not a conglomerate; we are a cultural congeneracy." Congenitalia, one might reply.
The book abounds in mildly interesting snippets of information. We learn that the Oxford University Press has a turnover of nine million pounds a year excluding paper and print; that Tony Godwin, editorial director of Weidenfeld and Nicolson, gets a salary of £8,000 a year; and that Michael Joseph was once married to Hermione Gingold and loved cats. Anyone who wants to know how you inject glamour into publishing if you use a big enough needle should read the lyrical passage from Tom Maschler starting, "Met Desmond Morris at a party" and ending, "the acclaim, the sales, the rest, is history." The book begins with a modest epigram from Koestler — " a publisher who writes is like a cow in a milk bar." Here we have something more like a milkshake in a farmyard — frothy, light, palatable, an excellent guide to publishing without tears.
Christopher Hudson
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