Filthy lucre

Hastings also mentions in passing the shock with which Britons reacted to the revelation, made public by the London Sunday Times in May, that publishers actually pay to have their books in booksellers’ catalogues and ‘recommended reading’ displays. Imagine! The going rate for WHSmith ‘adult gold’ Christmas promotion programme this year is apparently ₤50,000 (A$124,000) per title per week. Well, a bookseller has got to pay for those fixtures and fittings somehow, even if, in Hastings’ mind, the policy ‘stinks,’ is ‘monstrous’ and ‘debases the whole literary world.’ I think we might put him in touch with the Australia Council.