I NOTED with some surprise that two-thirds of your letters section on May 30 was taken up with replies to Hunter Steele's article on Scottish publishing by what seems like a two-man campaign against that same industry. It is intriguing that despite the waging of this war for a couple of years no-one else seems to be paying much attention or joining in.

I am involved with two publishers - Canongate Books and Birlinn Ltd. I also run a sales agency. In the last eight years I have seen a leap in quality, quantity, and professionalism from Scottish publishing which should elicit praise and not condemnation.

The simple answer to those who say that they have never met an author happy with a Scottish publisher is to look at this rise in output and publication from authors who have chosen to be published in Scotland.

Indeed, what is even more curious is the number of authors who are dropped by these self-same ''professional'' southern publishers because they no longer can sell them and are then republished in Scotland by publishers who do understand, can sell and market them far better.

It is easy to check empirically my statements by looking at any Scottish section in any bookshop, or indeed talking to any bookshop manager.

The second point that is being made is that Scottish publishers no longer publish anything worthwhile and our lists are largely a reheating of ''cauld kale'', to quote Mr Alan Taylor. Really? Intriguing that the Stakis Prize, one of the premier literary prizes on offer, was last year won by an author published in Scotland. Mr Taylor may have missed it as his paper chose to ignore the fact completely. Never let facts interfere with a good story.

Let us widen the net a little and look at some of the projects on the go or relatively recently published in Scotland.

We should start with Duncan Macmillan's major history of Scottish art published by Mainstream or indeed the same company's book on Scottish music from John Purser. Both seminal works, both intensive in investment on a scale at which a London publisher would balk, or let us take Canongate's commission of a massive and multi-author new history of Scotland, or even, on a smaller scale, Birlinn's projected five-volume series of anthologies covering Gaelic poetry from the Middle Ages to the present day. Lacking in ambition? Lacking in belief?

And then of course there is that Canongate Bible series - introducers including A S Byatt, Will Self, Louis de Bernieres, all seemingly unaware of the kailyard reek of incompetence and parochialism into which they are stepping. Does it not bespeak belief and creativity to take the central work of the western literary tradition and believe you can publish it in a better and a more exciting way than it has ever been published before?

But of course all this is not necessarily ''creative'' literature to Giles Gordon and Alan Taylor. And what subconscious snobbery there is in that remark. It is published by a Scottish publisher, ergo it is not ''good''. It is published by a southern publisher, ergo it is ''good'', followed by the somewhat specious conclusion that therefore Scottish publishers are somewhat second-rate. I am not the only one who finds the logical processes in such an argument a little curious or indeed a little self-fulfilling.

I will not even trouble to reply to the comment that all we do is ''publish tourist-trap pap, sports hagiographies, and tartan kitsch''. It is derisory. I would once again refer your readers to any Scottish bookshop - clearly not something Alan Taylor has been in for quite a number of years.

And now to take the false dichotomy of ''Scottish'' incompetence and ''English'' professionalism. There is indeed a polarity here but it is not a national one. It is between the independent and the multinational conglomerate. For most of these big houses whose business acumen is so lauded are no longer owned from within the UK but from Germany, France, and the US. They were often sold into foreign ownership because of poor financial management and lack of strategy.

Let us boil down the arguments of Giles Gordon and Alan Taylor: Scottish publishers aren't very good. We don't like them. Nobody we know likes them (but we can't give you any names). Some of the Scottish Arts Council's funded titles aren't very good either

It is hardly a bold prospectus addressing Scotland's literary problems for the twenty-first century, rather more the mutterings of a pair of Private Frasers.

There is a simple test for how seriously we should take these ruminations. It is this. Either put up or shut up. We are told we are undercapitalised, we are told we are unprofessional, we are told we are unambitious. Have they told us how to do it? Have they achieved better themselves? That after two years of campaigning they have signally failed to put one penny into the industry they so deride surely speaks volumes for the soundness of their case.

Until they do I intend to carry on just as I am, secure in the knowledge that the books I have commissioned, the work which I have done, will stand the test of time far more surely than the relentless jeremiads of those who reserve the right to criticise but refuse to accept the responsibilities for action that that criticism imposes. If the views of Alan Taylor and Giles Gordon are indicative of the spirit of the new Scotland then God help us.

Hugh Andrew,

Seol Ltd, 5 New Street, Edinburgh.

June 1.

CAN I say my pennyworth in this dispute about publishing and idealism?

I am not a writer. I was a teacher. I had a story to tell. So I wrote a book. I wrote it well. Canongate, before it went into liquidation two years ago, showed a little interest in it but after the ''buy-out'' lists had to be curtailed and interest was dropped, understandably.

I decided to publish but I belong to the working class and am poor. The cost of publishing was #6250. My bankbook stated that all I had in the world was #2600.

I faced my dilemma. I would never recover any money. I was not an author. No-one knew me. How would I even get my book on the bookshelves of shops? I knew those who loved me would buy one - and there were two of those, both children!

This book was no ''magnum opus''. This was no more than a true story, a nice book. Nothing in it for me. I have no vanity. I know myself too well!

But I went ahead because I wanted to give the public, if they would ever be around, the chance to have a nice story and a good read. For a year, while I paid the deficit by instalments, it was back to ''auld claes and porridge''.

I am proud to know my book sits in the libraries of several schools. The head of English at Falkirk High, my old school, has told me that I sit on a bookshelf in the senior library, between McIlvanney and Alan Massie - so put a price, if you must, on having bedfellows like that!

Yes, idealism is alive and well.

Morag McKinlay,

36a Weir Street, Falkirk.

June 2.