Book-Publishing and Its Present Tendencies

NOT very long ago a bookseller, whoso name is known in this country, I think, wherever books are sold, told me that he was very much surprised at the lack of growth in volume of the trade in books. His remark was apropos of the number of novels sold, his statement being that, while the number of new novels published in any year was constantly increasing, by leaps and bounds, the total number of such novels sold, as far as his experience was concerned, was no greater than when the number of separate novels issued was less; the combined sale of the thousand or so new novels published in a recent year being very little greater than the combined sale of the much smaller number of novels issued ten or a dozen years ago.

This fact, if it is one, and statements of similar purport from other booksellers throughout the country, from time to time, have tended to confirm the opinion of my informant, would seem to show that the book-reading public is a more or less constant one in point of numbers; and perhaps, also, it would show that this public, even for works of fiction, does not grow in proportion to the general growth of the population, and especially that its growth is not nearly commensurate with the growth of the population in education and wealth, with the accompanying increase in leisure and general culture.

What was said in regard to the sale of works of fiction is, I am afraid, even more true of the sale of serious books, such as volumes of essays, the lighter works of travel, and new volumes of poetry, and the like; works which are generally referred to as volumes of general literature, the sale of which, so far as information generally received from the booksellers is to be relied upon, seems actually to have decreased in recent years rather than to have enjoyed that increased sale which would have been so natural in view of the continued wide prosperity throughout the country. And this becomes the more surprising when the much larger number of books of general literature issued by the publishers in recent years is considered.

The number of books published in the United States has, in fact, increased very greatly in the last ten years or so. In the year 1901, which was an active one in the publishing world, about eight thousand volumes were produced, whereas in 1910 the much greater number of thirteen thousand new publications was issued, and the prospects for the current year indicate an even larger number of new volumes. The increase in number of books published is more or less uniform in all departments of literature, but it is especially notable, as might have been expected, in view of the present unrest and the discontent in existing conditions, that a very great increase has occurred in the number of books issued in the last few years on socialism and its allied subjects, while the growth of the spirit of humanitarianism in the country may be traced in the considerable number of new books which are being issued, devoted to social betterment and philanthropic studies and kindred topics.

These two classes of books are among the most interesting signs of the times, the books on socialistic subjects showing how widely the criticism of our existing system has entered into the thought of our times, and how many persons must be devoting their efforts to attempts at the solution of the problems of the present unrest. And, on the other hand, the growth in the number and importance of volumes issued in what may be called works of social betterment, show conclusively the growth of the spirit of social service, looking toward the betterment of conditions for all classes of the community.

Some cynic has suggested that ‘The printed part, tho’ far too large, is less than that which yet imprinted waits the press.’ As a matter of fact, the number of books that appear in print is usually only about two per cent of the total number of manuscripts submitted to the publishers for examination, so that the large total in the number of volumes issued indicates very clearly a larger number of persons who are interested and occupied in the writing of books. If the above rule holds good, it is possible by considering the number of books published in any subject, or group of subjects, to get some general idea of the total number of manuscripts submitted on the subject, and its consequent growth or decline in public esteem.

If we turn to the reason for the failure to secure, for the much larger number of volumes annually published, that increase in sale which would seem only natural under the circumstances, and without which both authors and publishers must fail to receive the reward of their labors, it is to be found, I think, in the problems of distribution as applied to books; the distribution problem being the greatest of all problems of modern times, and the one which is engaging the attention of all who have to do with the supplying of the needs of the community, whether of staple articles or of those wanted merely for the public’s amusement and gratification.

Publishers of books of general literature (miscellaneous publishers, as these houses are termed in the trade) have shown in recent years a tendency to enlarge the scope of their operations so as to include the publication of magazines, of books on medical or legal subjects, and especially of school and college text-books, all of which are branches of the publishing business heretofore largely monopolized by publishers dealing solely with works of one of these classes. This tendency is becoming constantly more marked, so that we hear of one publisher who, up to a few years ago, had issued books of general literature only, who now has an estimated business of more than a million dollars a year in elementary school books. Another has recently supplied some millions of Readers to the grade schools; and a third has developed so large a ‘subscription’ trade in connection with the sale of his magazines, that this department of his business alone has far surpassed his general publishing in importance and in the amount of business transacted. In fact, among the larger publishers of the country, that is, those who carry on the business of book-publishing in its original meaning, and as it is still understood by the general public, there now remain only a few who confine their publications to books in general literature, which are offered for sale solely through the booksellers.

The reasons for this change in the methods and policies of the large publishers of the day are many, and perhaps no two observers would agree as to the causes which have brought it about. Those who hold it to be a natural evolution showing the tendency of all business to develop in bigness until the proportions of a ‘trust’ are reached, may defend it on the same grounds on which they justify the enormous growth, in recent years, of general stores where every known want of the average buyer may be satisfied. The minority may still deplore the passing of the publisher with a small list of the higher classes of works in general literature and better titles, just as the individual purchaser of articles of general merchandise misses the special merchant, dealing in a single class of wares, whose existence has been made precarious by the competition of the modern drygoods emporium, where anything from a needle to an elephant may be purchased.

The publication of books of general literature is by far the most interesting part of the publishing business, and the fact that our miscellaneous publishers are taking up other branches of the work can only mean that the publication of works in general literature has become the less profitable branch of the business. The discovery, among the manuscripts submitted to the publisher, of a new work of value and importance, and the finding of promise in the work of a new author, are among the keenest of all pleasures; and after many years of experience I can still say that it is the sort of pleasure that never fails to produce its thrill of satisfaction; and the zest continues without diminution, so that the search is just as keen and as anxious after many years as when the first manuscript submitted to me came into my hands.

Publishers, because of their having added the more profitable branches of publishing above referred to, to their publishing of books of general literature, need not necessarily be accused of merely mercenary motives if, by taking this step, they enable themselves to continue the publication of books of poetry or art, which, as I have shown, bring to them greatly both pleasure and satisfaction, and the knowledge that the influence of such books is of benefit to the community, even if little comes in the way of monetary returns from such ventures. The profits from the sale of school-books or magazines could not be better employed than in ‘mothering’ the publication of works of real and lasting value in general literature.

The indifference of the public to the new books of the day (not fiction) is commonly blamed for the changes in publishing methods. The assertion is not seldom heard that the audience, as evidenced by the sales of such books, is smaller than it was twenty years or more ago. But this indifference of the public may be more apparent than real. Certainly it is idle to blame the public while ignoring the principal factors which have brought about the present situation. The publisher and the bookseller alike must confess that the lack of sales of works of literature is primarily due to the inadequacy of present methods of distribution. Practically the sole means for the bringing of such works to the attention of the public is still the booksellers’ shops, with shelves and tables already overcrowded by the enormous output of the day’s fiction.

The outpouring of novels is so great that a recent authority states that the life of a ‘best-seller’ novel is now little longer than a month, as compared with a period of popularity extending over several years, when the vogue of the ‘best-seller’ first became a feature in book-publishing. Moreover, the bookseller’s shop, unfortunately for the publisher and for the author of such books as those to which I am referring, has never been a resort for the general public; and, if I am not mistaken, the number of books in general literature (not fiction) sold by the booksellers, does not increase year by year. Certainly the number of all books sold by the booksellers does not increase in proportion to the increase in the growth of population and the much greater increase in the education, culture, and buying power of the people.

No publisher has yet been clever enough to solve the great modern problem of distribution of his books. It was Dr. Edward Everett Hale, if I mistake not, who pointed out some years ago that no book of general literature had ever been adequately distributed or published (in the literal sense), and the difficulties of distribution, and especially the costs of distribution, have greatly increased since then. To have published a worthy and distinguished book is, as I have already pointed out, a matter of high satisfaction to a publisher of the right sort, critics of publishers and publishing methods to the contrary notwithstanding; yet, to know, or to feel morally certain, that thousands of his fellow citizens would value the work as greatly as the publisher himself appreciates it, must be a matter for despair if no effective or practical means exists for bringing it to their attention.

Some years ago the publisher’s task was a happier and easier one, for then there were, in considerable numbers, among the general public, book-lovers whose chief delight consisted in the discovery of the new author and the new book of merit. The discoverer would tell all his friends of his ‘find,’ to the great advantage of the publisher and author. Many a dinner-table in those days was made pleasant by such bookish talk. It is, alas, very rare today. The late Goldwin Smith, the last time the writer saw him in New York, remarked that he had not heard a book mentioned at a dinner-table for several years.

The publishers themselves are largely to blame for the disappearance of the book-taster, as a class, by having adopted for their wares the slogan of modern ‘efficient’ business: ‘Take the goods to the customer’ — a method which results in my receiving twenty or so circular letters a day, which go into the waste-paper basket unread, and has so filled our blanket newspapers with advertisements that my eyes have become trained until I think I can say that I never see the advertisements in my morning newspaper. Perhaps this is a peculiarity of mine, but I suspect it is becoming general with the public. At least on one occasion lately, an author complained to me that his book was never advertised. In reply I pointed out to him an advertisement of the book in question in the newspaper in his hand, which he confessed to have been reading on his way to my office.

The publisher who discovers or invents a new method which shall be both practical and effective for the distribution of books of general literature, will confer a boon upon the author, whose book will then be sold to all possible purchasers; upon the public, many individuals of which would gladly buy some books, now on the publishers’ shelves, of which, under the present methods, they will never learn; and especially upon the publishers themselves, whose profits increase greatly as increasing numbers of copies of a work are sold, and whose lack of profits on publications of these classes is due almost entirely to their failure to find practical methods for the distribution of such books.

Complaint is frequently made of the prices at which publishers sell their books, and the lack of sale is often laid to this fact of the alleged excessive selling-price. Publishers themselves are the first to recognize the theoretical justice of these complaints. The book of 350 12mo pages, after the plates are paid for by the sale of the first edition, costs the publisher, for manufacture and author’s royalty, usually less than fifty cents. The price to the public is a dollar and a half or thereabouts. The publisher’s difficulty in reducing the price at retail lies in the fact that the majority of such books published under present methods do not sell beyond the first editions, the costs of which include a large initial outlay for the printing plates. If modern ‘efficient’ business methods are used for the purpose of ‘ bringing the goods to the customer,’ the situation is not improved, for then the profits even of the second and subsequent edit ions may be inadequate for systematic and sustained advertising of commodities, such as books, which are still, in these days of cheap magazines and Sunday supplements, caviare to the majority of the public. A highclass automobile which sells to the public at five thousand dollars, costs, I am credibly informed, less than a thousand dollars to manufacture. A quart of milk costs three cents or thereabouts on the farm; the customer pays ten cents for it. In each of these cases the methods of distribution are as inadequate, or nearly so, as are the methods of distribution of books, and the costs of distribution are an even greater percentage of the price the public pays than is the case with books.

This question of distribution is one which I think is of fully as great importance to the public as to either the publisher or the author. It has been well said that ‘among the most satisfying of all pleasures is the pleasure of reading’; and as Henry Ward Beecher said, ‘Books are the windows through which the soul looks out. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries of life. A little library, growing larger each year, is an honorable part of a man’s history. It is a man’s duty to have books.’ The public may, moreover, well take a greater interest in the sale of books because of their educational value, which is of great importance to a nation growing with such rapidity as our own, and made up of so great a proportion of foreign peoples, unfamiliar with our ideas of liberty and order. In such a country as our own, the dissemination of knowledge and information regarding good books may well be regarded as educational work of the highest value and importance.

Especially is the distribution of good books important to a nation approaching the limit of its free land, foreseeing a time when its material resources will no longer be considered inexhaustible, and with a constantly growing discontent and criticism of existing conditions, an unrest only too likely to lead to social and political experiments of doubtful value. The American people, in this time of rapid change, needs nothing else so much as the calm judgment that comes from a knowledge of the best literature, so that I make no excuse for asking the public to take a hand and give the publishers their aid in solving the problem of efficient book-distribution, a problem which has so far seemed too difficult for the publishers and booksellers themselves to solve.

But if this question of the better distribution of books in general literature is important to the public, and of great concern to the publisher, to the author it is vital. The publishers are able to turn their energies, as we have seen, to the publication of other classes of books or of magazines, and the public, in large part, has hitherto displayed an indifference in regard to the matter which may not disappear until the American people shall find itself without a literature representing the current life and thought of the people. But the author is more intimately affected, because, under the present conditions, many books of high quality either fail of publication entirely, or return very little or nothing to their creators. Indeed, the author’s royalties from the sales of books of this class, which often represent months or years of painstaking effort, are sometimes so small as barely to pay the actual cost of the paper and typewriting of the manuscript which is submitted to the publisher for approval.

The way out of the difficulties in which the publishers of works in general literature find themselves, lies, I feel sure, in the direction of issuing such works at lower prices. In both France and Germany new books are sold for much less than with us, and while in Great Britain new books are as dear as they are here, many more books are successfully published in cheap editions than is the case here. Such experiments, however, as have as yet been made in publishing new books (apart from fiction) in this country at low prices, have not been successful, because, in my judgment, the present methods of distribution, inadequate at best, are particularly illadapted to render efficient service on the more economical basis demanded by the lower prices. That a very large public exists, however, which will purchase new books, well printed and bound, and at low prices, I have no doubt. Many of the books which appear every year, and have now but a small sale, are well calculated to give pleasure and delight to thousands if offered at a moderate price, and if a means of distribution for them could be found at a moderate cost.

If, then, means can be found by which books will attain the wide sale which so many of them thoroughly deserve, the author, instead of doing his work merely for the satisfaction which it gives him to publish his thoughts and ideas, — in itself a not inconsiderable reward it is true, — may also obtain some pecuniary reward in return for his labors. Even here it cannot be gainsaid that the laborer is worthy of his hire. But given the possibility of a successful trial of the experiment, the author, if he is to reap the increased harvest, must be far-sighted enough to recognize that one of the necessary conditions is a reduction of the present nominally heavy rates of royalty. The successful experiments in the publishing of cheap editions of books abroad are usually with those books which are either out of copyright, and consequently pay no royalties to authors, or for which a very low rate of royalty can be arranged. From the author’s point of view, it will probably be better for him to reduce the rate of percentage of his royalties — under which he now gets, as I have shown, little or nothing — to a rate which perhaps is much less nominally, but which, with a much larger sale of his books at low prices, would produce an income far greater than he enjoys at present.

This question of the percentage of the author’s royalties is certainly one of the greatest of the factors militating against the production of books at low prices to the public. At present the author’s royalties on books, as most people know, range from ten per cent to twenty per cent of their retail price, which is equivalent to from twenty to thirty-three per cent of the price received by the publisher from the retail bookseller. These royalties thus form no small part of the prime cost of the book; in fact, they usually represent the greater part of the total net profits obtained from the publication of any work in general literature. Indeed, popular belief among authors to the contrary notwithstanding, the author’s share of the profits is usually about twice as large as that of the publisher, while, in the case of novels, the royalty often absorbs the entire profit obtained from the publication of a popular work written by a well-known author, and consequently commanding the highest rate of royalty.

Authors generally look with suspicion upon any request on the part of the publisher for a lower rate of royalty for the publication of cheap editions, and I have known perfectly reasonable requests of the kind to be absolutely refused, with the result that the public has been deprived of cheap editions of books which it would purchase in considerable quantities, merely because of the author’s failure to understand the plain logic of the situation. It would seem sufficiently evident that, the current rate of royalty being based on a relatively high price, if a book is offered at a low price, the rate of royalty to the author must be reduced also. Yet I have in mind at the moment a work for which a very considerable demand exists in a cheap edition, and for which in the high-priced edition there is practically no sale, but which cannot be published in the cheap edition that the public demands because of the refusal of the author to reduce the royalty below the original rate of twenty per cent, as provided in the agreement for the publication of the expensive edition of the work.

In this connection it seems worth while to offer a protest against the unfounded criticism of publishers and publishing methods which has been so rife in recent years, and which has its origin almost entirely in the failure to obtain adequate sales for books of the classes we have been considering, as a result of the want of confidence on the part of the authors in the good faith or business judgment of publishers, so that authors very often approach the question of arranging with publishers for the publication of their books in an attitude of suspicion, or, at any rate, failing to grasp the actual facts of the situation.

A publisher of high standing, doing a large business through a long period of time, undoubtedly has built up a machinery and acquired a reputation which are of the greatest possible value to the work of any author, and are almost indispensable for a new author seeking for the first time the presentation of his book to the public. Moreover, in intrusting to a publisher the publication of a book, the author really should exercise more discrimination than in the selection of a banker to take care of his funds, for the depositor in a bank knows as well as the banker himself the precise amount he is intrusting to the care of another, while the author intrusts to the publisher the unknown earning capacity of his books, and the author must consequently rely entirely upon the publisher’s good faith and honesty to see that the sums due him are properly and faithfully paid over. Yet, notwithstanding these facts, it is not an uncommon experience with nearly all of the older publishers to have authors endeavor to drive hard bargains with them for the publication of their works, on the plea that some unknown, new, and possibly impecunious publisher has offered a rate of royalty on the publication of a work which, from the established publisher’s point of view, is impossible of payment with pecuniary profit to himself. With some authors, to paraphrase Byron’s words, it would almost seem as if ‘Death to the publisher to them is sport.’

I remember in this connection being offered, a number of years ago, a work, and having just such a proposition from another publisher quoted to me. Needless to say, I felt obliged to refuse to meet this unwise competition even although I knew that the publisher who was quoted as having made the rate could not possibly fulfill his obligations under such an agreement. The book was one which I much desired to publish, and the sequel to the story is that I finally bought it at the sale of the publisher’s effects when he went into bankruptcy some months afterwards.

Possibly we may find some help in the solution of the publisher’s present difficulties of distribution in a very interesting experiment which is being tried by a firm of booksellers in Great Britain, where they evidently also have difficulties of distribution to confront, although, because of the better bookselling facilities, not to anything like the same extent as in this country. These booksellers have made, or attempted to make, a card catalogue of the book-reading population, classifying the book-buying public according to the subjects in which the individuals comprising this public are interested; and whenever a work comes into their book-shop which is likely to interest persons in this classified list, they are communicated with by postcard, giving a description of the book and author. Thousands of such cards are mailed daily. Unfortunately, such an experiment would be almost impossible of trial in this country with its many large cities scattered over a much greater expanse of territory, all of which are centres of interest and influence to their surrounding populations, and are, in addition, much more shifting and unstable than similar communities in the Old World.

Some aid might be asked of the postal authorities, which now discriminate against books, and hinder their distribution, by charging eight cents a pound postage on books, while carrying magazines through the mails at the rate of one cent a pound. All arguments in favor of the low rate on magazines are equally applicable to the transportation of books at similar schedules; and in particular, the educational value of books is much higher, if for no other reason than because the reading of books inculcates the habit of continued thought and application of the mind, both qualities which we are in some danger of losing entirely through a too constant perusal of scrappy and highly flavored periodical literature.

Yet after all is said, the real solution of the problem lies with the reading public itself. Good books will be published only if the public calls for and demands them, and their prices will depend upon the extent to which the public seeks them out and assists in their distribution, for in this way only can the cost of making them known to their readers be lowered.

Current fiction has been purposely excluded in the survey of present conditions in the publishing of works in general literature, because the writer feels that not only the publication, but the author’s part as well, of the new novel of the day has become highly commercialized. It is said that many of our journals are edited strictly with a view to increasing the receipts from the advertising pages, with what truth I do not know; but it is certain that much of the current fiction is written with a view to supplying just the sort of thrills the public demands. Indeed, I am told that the author of a long series of ‘ bestsellers,’ immediately after a new work of his appears, sits in solemn conclave with his publishers and their editors and advisers, wherein the subject and scenes of his next effort are outlined and voted on, with a keen regard to the supposed dreams and desires of the rising generation of readers. Novels of merit and value, representing honest work and the real convictions of their authors, still from time to time make their appearance, but it is seldom indeed that one of these finds its way into the ranks of the ‘six best-sellers.’ Their appeal is to that part of the public which still discriminates in its reading, a smaller percentage of the whole, I fear, at present, than in any recent period of our history. One is reminded of the remark of one of our best critics, himself an author of many books well known to lovers of the best literature: ‘I should consider myself disgraced if I had written a book which in these days had sold one hundred thousand copies.’