Who would have thought that the cost of postage would generate controversy in the book world? And the sorts of issues that would be raised as a result?
In my research of Trove for book-related issues in 1923, I came across a letter to the editor opposing some proposed changes in postal rates for books and other printed matter. Of course, I researched it a bit more, and discovered that the issue had started in 1922 (or perhaps even earlier. I didn’t look further, as my aim here is to document some issues that seem interesting rather than use all my reading time on detailed research!)
As far as I can work out, investigating postal rates had started perhaps in 1921, but it was in early 1922 that the Postmaster General promulgated new regulations. They are described in detail in Melbourne’s Age of 25 January, which explains why they were needed:
These regulations are the outcome of prolonged conversations between Postal officers and those interested in the trade, and are designed to put an end to the confusion which has existed for many months past, while removing some anomalies which caused great irritation, and were responsible for considerable loss. Up to the present none has been able to say definitely what constitutes a book from the stand point of the Post Office. The new regulations, while opposed by some who are engaged in the book selling and book buying business, will at least establish uniform practice throughout the Commonwealth.
The article describes the new regulations in detail, which I won’t repeat here. You can click on the link above if you are interested. I will just share the main contentious issues:
- the definition of a book for postal purposes: a cookbook, for example, isn’t one, and nor is one containing advertisements.
- the requirement to register books that are wholly printed in Australia (because they will get a favourable rate). The article tells us that books printed in Australia would cost 1d. per 8oz to post, while those printed outside Australia would cost twice that, at 1d. per 4oz.
Now, let’s jump forward to 29 January 1923 which is when I first clocked the issue. It was in a letter to the editor in Brisbane’s Telegraph by one E. Colclough who was the Hon. Secretary of the Queensland Authors’ and Artists’ Association. His beef primarily concerned the issue of advertisements preventing a book’s “registration” as a book:
Such a regulation renders it prohibitive for a poor individual to undertake the publishing of his own works because it frequently happens that only by the assistance of the kindly advertiser is he enabled to finance his literary venture.
His association wanted Australian writers to be “encouraged and assisted in every way possible”, and asked for the regulations to be amended.
A few months later, on 13 June 1923, W.T. Pike, President of the Booksellers’ Association, wrote a letter to Melbourne’s The Argus in which he enumerated seven changes the association wanted made to the regulations. Number three was for the book rate to be applied to
all books printed in Australia without regard to subject or where the author lives. At present books printed in Australia are subject to the pernickety whims of officials. For instance, postal officials say a “cookery book is not a book but printed matter.
The Association wanted “a reasonable number of general advertisements to be allowed” and for books to not have to be registered. They argued that this was an “unnecessary time waster” because the printer’s name and address always appear on books, and books are “automatically sent under the Copywright [sic] Act to two public libraries”. They also wanted reciprocity with New Zealand in terms of rates, and suggested the reduction of overseas postage rates from the “absurd” 8d per lb to 4d per lb would be beneficial. “Quite a lot of books would be sent South Africa if postal rates were reduced”, wrote Pike.
The Commonwealth’s proposed rates bill was moved in Parliament in August 1923, and reported in Adelaide’s The Register. It makes for some entertaining reading, with some arguing against the changes because the money could be spent on other things, such as improving the actual post offices. Do read the report, as it’s short and entertaining.
Meanwhile I will end with two things, one being that the bill was passed, and the other being The Register’s report of one MP’s contribution:
Dr. Maloney (V.) supported the measure, but pleaded hard for an increase to pay to officials in allowance post offices. Some of the women, he said, worked for eight hours daily, under great difficulties, and only got 20/ to 25/ a week, or less than messenger boys.
I like this Dr Maloney, who, according to Serle in the ADB, “loved humankind, fought inequality and pressed the rights and needs of the poor”. I’ve moved away from my topic here a bit but, you know, this little series is as much about serendipity as about books!
I hope you like serendipity as much as I do?
Other posts in the series: 1. Bookstall Co (update); 2. Platypus Series; 3 & 4. Austra-Zealand’s best books and Canada (1) and (2); 5. Novels and their subjects
Whispering Gums 
I find the bit about Mr Colclough to be amazingly interesting, ST: there were people self-publishing back then ??? And of what size would “the assistance of the kindly advertiser” need to be ? What kind of advertiser ?
Who knew ???!
Yes, I thought that was interesting too, but then thought why wouldn’t there have been self publishing then? I didn’t find much about what sort of advertiser in my reading, or the quantity the proponents of the new regulations thought would be reasonable.
Well, because publishing would’ve been a business that liked to protect itself (as do they all); and I’m gobsmacked that there were authors game enough to challenge ’em, so to speak ..
But do you think people are only game now? Why not back then? That said, I did enjoy seeing this specific evidence of it.
They don’t have to be, do they ?! What’s now called Amazon Publishing is hyooge !!!
You got me there at “hyooge” but then I realised – I think – that you mean HUGE! I guess you are right they don’t HAVE to be with the options around now, but some still are I think. Just the act of it is brave to my mind.
My mother self-published a book of poems way back when (in England).
Do I have a copy? No. It would have been a very small print run, probably egged on by her arty friend Arabella Rivington. (We lived in Arabella’s flat in Chelsea for six months; she was the sort of person who just happened to have a flat to spare. She was a sculptor with work in the V&A but if you have a spare seventy-five pounds you can buy a book of her poems self-published posthumously by her husband Charles. A nice romantic gesture, I think.)
My mother would have given her poetry book away to other arty friends because that’s what arty friends did. (She always had arty friends except in the cultural desert of the Gold Coast.) If she kept one for herself it didn’t survive our travels.
From what I’ve seen, it’s probably no loss. She used to write doggerel to liven up the scientific journal that my father edited, and humorous verses in letters and cards…
I can write doggerel – great fun !
How did your revered mama know how to self-publish ?
You must share some MR!
How people know how to self-publish would vary I think, but at the simplest my thoughts are that you would find a printer you could pay to print your stuff and ask them how they need the stuff presented. (Printers were named on most books back then so they wouldn’t be hard to find.) Then, you set about presenting it? And then you schlepp it around to bookshops etc or you give it away. That’s how I would have done it if I’d been around then. But, Lisa’s mother being in the arty world probably knew people, or, knew people who knew people?
I’m sorry, I don’t know any details of it.
But although it was a different era in publishing, when it was run by ‘gentlemen publishers’ I suspect that it was just like Amazon, raking in a nice little earner through vanity publishing.
There were some doggerel writers in my family too, Lisa … but some did get into ABC publications for children! Doggerel is fun in its place but perhaps is more what Banjo Paterson called verse (as he called his own work) than poetry.
Still it’s a shame you don’t have your mum’s.
But, onto the topic. I think Len’s paternal uncle might have self-published some poetry – we are probably talking 1950s not 1920s.
In the US we have media mail, which provides cheaper postage rates of you are sending media and ONLY media in an effort to make it easier to share information. So, if I sent someone a book in the US, it would cost less than if I sent someone a book plus a little note that said, “Enjoy! XoXo.” And yes, they do inform you that they will tear open your package to check that you didn’t add anything whatsoever to the medium.
Interesting Melanie. In some of the details I read about these regulations there was reference to a short dedication being written in the book or a card naming the sender being allowed under the book rate. Here is what they said:
“A dedication, consisting of any single expression of respect, or formula of courtesy by the author or sender, containing not more than five words, may be written in a book. A card bearing the printed or written name and address of the sender may also be enclosed”.
I don’t think we have any such rates in Australia now for mailing single printed items. It’s all just parcel post rates. There are some arrangements for people sending out bulk printed items, like an organisation sending out its newsletter for example.
Ah, yes, we also have the bulk mail thing, which I swear was designed to get junk mail to my house more cheaply while keeping the post office alive and well.
Haha yes indeed!
I would have thought self-publishing was always pretty straightforward – you only need a printer and a bookbinder and there used to be lots of those. Park & Niland’s The Drums Go Bang describes in great detail doing the rounds of publishers – it seems to me anyone could take an office and call himself a publisher.
The only case I actually know of is Henry Lawson, whose first book of short stories was published by his mother, who of course owned her own printing press.
I can remember getting advertisements to cover the publication cost of magazines at uni, and I thought I might find some older books in dad’s collection with adverts. No luck, but I did find half a dozen Aust Pocket Library books I didn’t know I owned.
Yes, I thought probably the same Bill about self-publishing. I felt printers were more visible back in those days – at least you’d see their names on old books like all those school boy and school girl annuals.
Would you call that Henry Lawson example self published?
I think those annuals had advertisements but then they were sometimes related to magazines weren’t they. I felt I’d seen some ads in old books … but haven’t got many left now. I’d love to know which Pocket Library titles you’ve got.
I would call the Lawson self published. He took off a couple of years later when republished by the Bulletin as While the Billy Boils (I think).
I have a lot of my father’s books I shelved without opening. As it happens the first are not APL but MUP from mum and her sister’s school days. Man Shy and ‘Cobbett and Lamb’ an anthology.
APL are Banfield, Confessions of a Beachcomber; Lawson, Winnowed Verses; CJ Dennis, Songs of a S/Bloke; Wood, The Voyage of the Endeavour; Walter Murdoch, Selections; Lawson, On the track and Over the sliprails.
Some he bought in 1945,7; some secondhand; and two from Army Educational Library.