All geese are not swans

All geese are not swans JOHN GRAY Since it is almost two years since I retired from publishing my few remarks will necessarily be an impression of publishing affairs from the outside. The overwhelming impression is, as Bill Roberts said in his very fine speech made last night, that our trade is in a sorry state of disarray. In listening to the clamour, I am reminded of the mid-western American editor who some years ago gained a brief immortality by proclaiming: "Kansas should raise less Hell and more wheat." A simple and appropriate parody would be: publishers should issue fewer statements and more books. But I don't simply mean more books, I mean better books. It is a little like the old joke about the man who married a plain girl with a beautiful singing voice. On waking up beside her the morning after they were married he took one look at her and said "For God's sake sing." It isn't that we are not publishing any good books but we are publishing a great many that are less than good. This is chiefly the result of the economic pressures of the time - and this is true in London and New York as well as in Canada. With all costs rising, the need for sales volume grows. There can be little doubt that this need rocks publishing taste and judgment. We are in a trade in which it is fatally easy to believe for a season that all your geese are swans. But we should remind ourselves that bad money drives out good (Gresham's Law) and for those concerned to promote the value of Canadian books this can be self-defeating. In saying this I may seem especially to be criticizing the small publishers, or the young publishers. I don't mean to do that, though I think the pressures I refer to bear hardest on them in all ways. It is less easy for them to have the chance of publishing the obviously desirable manuscripts, and some of them have gone in for books that clearly have no staying power and show no great promise in the author. There are too many Journal of Canadian Studies instant books - just add money and stir. And yet I am impressed with much that the young publishers have done - though with almost nothing that they have said. Last nighfs paper from Mel Hurtig seemed to assume that a few radical moves would make all well, or all much better in Canadian publishing in English. I want to comment only briefly on that paper since it has been answered fully by Wallace Matheson. In the first place there has to be one fundamental correction that seems always necessary because it is a fact too often overlooked . In Mel's table of puhlication in relation to national populations, Canada is shown as having almost 22,000,000 people. Since French-Canadians buy few books in English (just as we buy few of theirs) a true figure is probably 14 or 15,000,000 which means, simply, that it has to be said again and again, we haven't really a market for a healthy publishing trade. Even with this amendment we don't show well on Mr. Hurtig's list. But we should recognize that some of the countries he reports on, in particular Czechoslovakia, do a great deal of manufacturing for export - this is printing rather than publishing. We have never been quite sure what these UNESCO figures mean, and I doubt that Mel can be. I agree with Wally Matheson that it is hard to know what Mel Hurtig means by "Net Book Agreement." If he uses the term only as it is used in Britain - meaning resale price maintenance - it is hard to see how he could believe that its introduction in Canada would have the results he promises. Price cutting is not a big problem in Canada, and is certainly not the reason that good bookstores do not flourish in Orangeville or Swift Current or Digby. In the matter of the "manufacturing clause" I am not as certain of its disastrous effect as WaMy Matheson...