Those who support imaginative and creative writing, and I am thinking of fiction like the winners of the Booker prize, and the output of such as Patrick White, Morris West, Judah Waten and Alan Marshall, will be pleased with the new Heinemann list and happy to know that important British publishers such as Methuen believe that ‘British fiction is now alive and kicking and that in particular, its feminist writers who are dealing with central issues relating to people’s lives and that reader response is there’. British advance lists promise good books and one hopes that Australian lists will follow suit because it is certain that there is a real demand waiting to be filled.

A & R announce that they are going to launch the following three books at the forthcoming Adelaide Festival:

Harry: a first novel but not a first book by Australian newspaperman John Yeomans. Of his three non-fiction titles the best known is The Other Taj Mahal, a history of the Sydney Opera House.

One Hundred Riddles: a third book of poetry by Timoshenko Aslan- ides These poetic riddles (solutions at the end) are of a genre I know little about except that it is medieval.

The Pausing of the Hours: a new collection by Alan Gould who won the 1981 N.S.W. Premier’s prize for poetry.

What were the most successful books launched in Australia in 1983? Well, certainly not the Grey book despite a highly successful marketing venture by Hodder & Stoughton who reported printing 70,000 copies in Australia and getting more than half of them into bookshops within hours of the Melbourne Age breaking the news of the previously secret book in advance of publication. Hodders claim sales of 30,000, which might be above break-even point; but booksellers advise that there will be many more returns.

No, I think the two best sellers were Lansdowne’s Banjo Paterson, in an excellent slip-case very limited edition at $50, which extremely surprisingly was followed by a trade edition at $60, minus the special binding and colour plates of the limited edition. Close behind must be A & R’s 60 Minutes, undoubtedly sold because of an extremely expensive and wide-spread advertising campaign and the same publishers Complete Book of Australian Mammals which, despite the price tag of $45, sold some 30,000 copies.

One has no idea of the sales figures of books launched and sold direct by major newspapers; but they are probably higher than booksellers would like because, unlike the ABC, they do not sell their books through bookshops.

Henry Lawson Bookshop: at the time of going to print, the sale of this valiant Sydney bookshop by the Abbey group is all but finalised. It will be bought by a group of enthusiasts organised by Ian Tucker. One can but hope that the new venture will receive greater support, especially from librarians, than did Eve and Ron Abbey who worked like Trojans and lost a lot of money to maintain this purely Australian outlet. Now they will be able to concentrate on their specialist bookshops, especially the King Street shop, which is already notable for its stock, especially of rare and stock titles.