Through the activities of one travelling salesman named Bernard Robinson, Angus & Robertson was to learn that overseas branches could not forever remain independent of local book trade politics. In late February 1950, George Ferguson notified Hector MacQuarrie that the long-overdue catalogue of Angus & Robertson's titles was nearing completion and would soon be on its way to London. Though in actuality the catalogue would not be at the proof stage until July, the pressure increased for MacQuarrie to have salesmen ready to cover London, Scotland and the English provinces. So too to have regular advertisements – ‘as attractive as those of, say, Faber, Chatto or Jonathan Cape’ – start appearing in the Bookseller in order to ‘prepare the way for … travellers’.

Angus & Robertson was very enthusiastic about the cargo of books in transit and produced circulars for display in the Bank of New South Wales, located in the West End of London, and also for the Australia House on The Strand, London. But while Angus & Robertson's London office was ‘enjoying considerable success in the London area’, it had ‘little to speak of outside the metropolitan area’.