"Books: the Warehouse of Knowledge"

Abstract

WITH reference to the leading article "Books: the Warehouse of Knowledge", published in Nature of September 9, p. 319, Mr. Stanley Unwin writes: "If the established book publishers had as much as 5 per cent of 'the paper in the country available for printing' they would be in clover. The total of 420,000 which you give merely includes four categories of paper consumers and omits all others such as the printers. At the beginning of the War it was estimated that books called for about 1¼ per cent of the total. It is unlikely even to-day that the figure exceeds 2 per cent."We regret our error in stated percentage of paper available, and since it was a considerable over-estimate, Mr. Unwin's correction adds still further point to our argument. It may be possible, however, that even Mr. Unwin's figures need correction, so far as books are concerned, for, as The Bookseller of September 14 points out: "These usages, however, do not consume all the paper available for printing. There is, in addition, an unknown but obviously considerable quantity of printing paper employed outside the above categories; for instance, the paper used in company reports, trade catalogues, and for a large variety of other commercial purposes".