Bookend
Bookbuyer
Shareholders of the theatre owners, Howard and Wyndham, will be reassured to hear from the company's annual report that its subsidiary W. H. Allen " continues to maintain its position among the top ten of British publishers." It is true that Allen, which has changed hands three times in the last five years, has cornered an appreciable slice of the showbiz market with biographies of Piaf, Chevalier, Coward and others — though the firm was doubtless aggrieved to have Garson Kanin's bestseller Tracy and Hepburn snatched from under its nose by the unlikely firm of Angus and Robertson.
When it comes to literary league tables, however, one may well ask what criteria make Allen a candidate for the top ten in the first place. In terms of title output, statistics for the first half of this year show W. H. Allen at number 38, behind such little-known firms as lnterscience, Stockwell, and R. and W. Holt. With a 1971-2 turnover of £1,038,227 (including three months' contribution from a recently acquired bookshop) the firm would be struggling to make the top twenty, while profits (£65,266 before tax) are healthy but hardly top tenable. And though Allen is the proud published of Alan Sillitoe, a great part of the list — whose recent titles include The Sensuous Woman, The Love Bite and The Erection Set — lays few overwhelming claims to " literary prestige."
Bookbuyer is disinclined to sneer at any publishing firm trying to pocket an honest penny — as Allen certainly does — and would prefer to attribute the " top ten " claim to the over-enthusiasm of the
company copywriter. But in matters relating to money, truth should not be allowed to become stranger than fiction. If Howard and Wyndham would really like to begin to substantiate their claim, they might do worse than read a book which their subsidiary is publishing next February: How to be a Successful Executive by Paul Getty.
In the matter of literary prizes, Allen may reasonably feel well out of it. This autumn's spate of awards has managed to exude a noticeably clubbable aroma. The £5,000 Booker Prize judges have just found for John Berger's novel which in the same month received the Guardian fiction prize. Among the Booker runners-up was SusanHill, already winner of the Somerset Maugham, John Llewelyn Rhys and Whitbread prizes. The judges for the latter, dare one say, included Lady Antonia Fraser, who also helped select the winners of last year's £2,500 New English Library prize and, together with John Braine and Peter Grosvenor, last month's Daily Express Book of the Month. Braine and Grosvenor doubled up on the Robert Pitman award.
All of which leaves one wondering whether the literary prize system is not defeating its own purpose, which presumably is to open up the 'world of literature to the public at large. Don't blame the authors; they're doing their remarkable best. But are the organisers?
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