Bookbuyer's
Bookend
Bookbuyer is pleased to learn that Mr Ernie Godfrey; salesman extraordinary, is to make his colourful presence felt once more in the book trade. Godfrey, it may be remembered, was one of a number of talented p'eople to leave the House of Barrie & Jenkins earlier this year when the Hon. Tony Samuel was trying to sell his stake in the firm. Barnes new moneyman, Mr Forbes ('sewing machine') Singer is likely to be less delighted by Godfrey's return to trade affairs. As hinted in Bookend last July, Mr Godfrey is to set up an independent firm to handle the UK sales of the Swiss Nagel travel guides which, until recently, were one of Barrie & Jenkins's most profitable lines.
Those who ungallantly believe that eliciting information from the Publishers Association is like looking for a needle in a haystack on a foggy night, may be moved by the following story. On the night the news broke in London that the US government was filing its Anti-Trust suit (Bookend, last week) a reporter from a leading national newspaper tried repeatedly to contact the PA president Colin Eccleshare. Each time he dialled his home number, the ringing tone
• suddenly and mysteriously changed to a dialling tone. The reporter concluded charitably that Mc Eccieshare's telephone was out of order.
Few would quarrel with the Publishers Publicity Circle's choice of winner for their Ronald Politzer award — a trophy named after the legendary Collins Svengali and presented each year for "significant services in the widening of book ownership and readership." The 1974 winner, announced at the PPC's Christmas party last Thursday, was none other than Melvyn Bragg, producer and presenter of BBC's Read All About It paperback programme. When the show finally got off the ground and on to the air last June — thanks largely to Bragg's own persistence — it was the first time a purely books
• programme hadoccupied a prime TV slot (10.15 pm, on the main channel). Whilst it occasionally lapsed into literary clubbability, the seven, week series was still something of a breakthrough attracting viewing figures in excess of 21/2 million and doing enough to convince the BBC hierarchy that it was worth bringing back next year.
One sad little footnote. Among the names suggested for the Pulitzer Award was that of Leonard Fearnley, the genial founder of Book Promotion Services who compiles and mails several excellent annual catalogues on such themes as children's books, business studies and Christmas gifts. As the Politzer voting was about to take place the judges were disconcerted to learn that Mr Fearnley, himself a former Collins employee, had been fired by the great Politzer some ten years earlier. That's no reflection on Mr Fearriley, nor on Mr Bragg who would almost certainly have won the award anyway. A happy Christmas to them both, and to Bookend's readers, good sports all.
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