The Welfare of the Bookstore
I
WHAT I have to say is really an appeal to book-lovers. As this article proceeds I may, at times, seem to regard the subject too much from the bookseller’s point of view. This may be due to the fact that my forty-seven years of business life have been spent either in the retailing (in both book-store and book department), wholesaling, or publishing of books. Nevertheless, it seems high time that the public should realize that the bookselling business is sick, and that there is a rational way to bring it back to health.
In proportion to population there are only half as many booksellers in this country to-day as there were fifty years ago — in many cities and towns there are even fewer stores than there used to be. There are actually several cities of fifty thousand or more inhabitants without a bookstore or a book department worthy of the name — I reluctantly abstain from giving these cities the invidious distinction they deserve.
Albany, Troy, and Schenectady, three cities in comparative proximity, with a combined population of over 250,000, have no well-stocked bookstore, and none of the department stores in these cities devotes much space to the sale of books. Fifty years ago Poughkeepsie, with a population of 20,000, maintained three stores, each with a well-assorted stock of books, and they were all on the main business street. Recently I met a man who told me he was a bookseller in Poughkeepsie. I asked ‘Who does the largest book business here?’ He replied,‘I do.’ ‘Where is your store?’ ‘On Liberty Street’ (a side street). ‘What is your selling force?’ ‘My wife and I.’
Poughkeepsie, which now has a population of about 30,000, is perhaps an extreme instance of the decline of bookselling; but the decline is general. A few years ago Des Moines had a distinguished bookstore, which was an object of civic pride, and the admiration of all Iowa. To-day the proprietors have given up the sale of books, and deal in stationery only, while two department stores with inadequate stocks of books supply the reading public. Fifty years ago New Bedford, with a population of less than 25,000, had more bookstores than it has now with a population of over 100,000; and those old shops carried a better assortment of books — books of general literature — than you will find in the leading bookstore of that beautiful city to-day.
Instances of the decline of bookselling could be cited ad infinitum.
So precarious has become the financial condition of booksellers that, in recent years, certain publishers have formed an association to provide extended credits to such large retail distributors of books as may be in financial distress. For example, a big bookstore in New York, another in Boston, another in Baltimore, another in San Francisco, have been saved from bankruptcy only by the timely help of this association.
This state of affairs is naturally a cause of solicitude to the leading publishers of books. To help the bookseller, a coöperative bureau, maintained at the expense of publishers, spent thousands upon thousands of dollars in efforts to increase the sale of books in various cities, by giving exhibitions, receptions, and lectures devoted to books; but not a single new bookstore, or any material improvement in trade-conditions, has been traced to these efforts.
Publishers are lavish in expenditure for advertising their publications in the daily press and magazines; catalogues and circulars in large quantities are freely provided to booksellers for distribution, and extra copies of books are lent them for window-displays. Some publishers go so far as to pay half or more of the cost of special advertising under the name of the bookseller.
To protect their own interests, in view of the lessened number of booksellers, publishers have more and more resorted to other means of distribution. One of these means is the sale of books by the personal solicitation of bookagents, who often persistently intrude upon possible purchasers, to their great annoyance. The term book-agent has become one of opprobrium. This method of bookselling has led to scandalous practices which are freely condemned by the trade, not only because of their fraudulent character, but also because they create in the minds of the bookbuying public a distrust of all selling methods. Another means of direct distribution by the publisher is extensive advertising, in magazines and newspapers, of books singly and in sets, which are sent for examination on the payment in advance of a small sum of money. The great expense of these forms of distribution usually makes the prices of books thus sold much higher than those of books of equal value sold in stores. These, and other special forms of distribution adopted by publishers, often result in large sales of a few publications.
All this, however, does not take the place of the vanished and vanishing bookstore as a distributor of books of general literature.
There is no question that the great public of this country has a keen appreciation of good books, and cherishes a latent desire for the entertainment and instruction that books provide. There is plenty of evidence of this, not only in big Boston, but in little Romeo — Michigan. But how to satisfy that appetite and how best to develop the taste for reading is the publisher’s big problem — as yet unsolved so far as this country is concerned.
In Great Britain and Ireland, also, the business of bookselling has been in a state of decline for many years. Although it has not sunk quite so low as in the United States, this decline has been a matter of deep concern to both publishers and booksellers in those countries, and just before the Great War, an agitation was begun to bring about reform in the distribution of books. This was interrupted by the conflict.
Contrast with this state of affairs the condition of the book-trade in the Latin and Teutonic countries of Europe. We find that, for fifty years or more, the business of both branches of the trade has been generally satisfactory in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark; Holland and Belgium; France, Switzerland, and Italy; Germany, Austria, and Hungary; Spain and Portugal. In normal times, the number of books published in each of these countries is much larger in proportion to the population than in the United States, and a wide distribution of these books is obtained. In the larger cities, the bookstores are as favorably situated as the shops of other branches of trade; and, in the smaller cities and towns, there is almost always at least one well-appointed store for the sale of books. In Norway, the city of Bergen, for instance, with a population of about 80,000, has three such stores; in all Scandinavia and Denmark there is no town of 10,000 inhabitants without a bookstore. Bookselling in Western Europe (excluding Great Britain and Ireland) is a thriving business. I shall have more to say about it later in this article; I allude to it here merely to contrast it with the unhealthy condition of the trade in this country, Great Britain, and Ireland.
II
To what shall we attribute the decline of the bookseller as a medium of distribution of the vast number of books provided by the publishers? Why, in this great country of opportunity and enterprise, constantly growing in population and wealth — why does not the number of booksellers increase?
Some people will tell you that the free public libraries, especially since their number has been greatly augmented by the bounty of Mr. Carnegie, make book-borrowers instead of bookbuyers. But this explanation fails to account for the fact that the best bookstores are most frequently found in communities that have good public libraries. In the trade it is now generally accepted that the well-conducted public library makes new readers; that the appetite for books, once acquired, is satisfied only by ownership.
Others will tell you that motoring occupies many of the hours formerly devoted to reading, and that the ‘movies’ engage the attention of countless thousands, to the exclusion of the reading of books: and still others will claim that the magazines, which have come into existence in amazing numbers in recent years, are supplanting books. But the decline of bookselling began long before the motor-car appeared on our highways, or the entertainment of the moving picture entranced both young and old, or the magazines crowded the news-stands.
Again, the sale of books in department stores has been suggested as the cause; but this comparatively recent development can be scarcely more than a contributory factor, for the decline set in before any department store entered the bookselling field. Undoubtedly, the sale of books by department stores, which, in the last thirty years, has assumed considerable proportions, has, in some cities and towns, drawn more or less business from bookstores. On the other hand, it is well recognized that the department stores have developed new book-buyers among the great public that looks to these big purveyors to supply the greater part of all its daily needs. The huge democratic department store is familiar to many who would hesitate before entering the store devoted only to the sale of books, stationery, and allied articles. I remember that, as a schoolboy, I looked upon the bookstores of my native city as almost sacred ground, on which I entered with trepidation, fearing to disclose my ignorance of the great world of books to the man behind the counter. How much easier to stroll from the hat department into the book department, and then, with casual glances here and there, to acquire at least a passing acquaintance with the books spread in profusion on tables or arranged on open shelves accessible to all! The fact remains that all the book-business of all the bookstores, and of all the departments devoted to the sale of books, is to-day materially less in proportion to the country’s population than that of the bookstores alone prior to the advent of book departments.
Another reason offered in explanation of the decline of the bookseller is the active and hurried life of our people, which leaves little time for the sustained reading of books. That we are a nation of fast and busy workers is well known, but this can scarcely be the explanation of the distressing state of our book-business; for in England, with a people leading lives of deliberation and composure as compared with ours, we have seen a similar decline of the trade, which has become more and more pronounced over a long period of years.
The bookseller will tell you that a large portion of his business has been drawn away by the publisher who does not hesitate to sell his publications direct to the reader. The greater part of the business in school-books, medical books, and law-books has been lost to the bookseller, and some publishers have proposed to take over the sale of books to public libraries, thus further contracting his business. At a recent national convention of booksellers, a publisher present told of a series of books of which his firm had sold two million volumes; one and a quarter million had been sold direct to readers, while all the booksellers and book departments together had sold the remaining three quarters of a million. Booksellers do not object to the sale of books at retail in the publishers’ shops, but they do object to the growing practice among publishers of advertising direct to readers, thus ignoring the bookseller, and more and more weakening the position of the bookstores.
And yet, with conditions as they are, what other course is the publisher to pursue? He finds the bookstores and book departments of to-day altogether inadequate as media of distribution. Few of the booksellers buy the more expensive publications, so the publisher advertises to individual customers in the magazines and newspapers, and even sends descriptive circulars to carefully selected lists of people who are recognized as habitual buyers of books. The sale of books by the publisher direct to the reader is undoubtedly due to the decline of the bookseller as a medium of distribution. In other words, it is an effect rather than the cause of the decline.
III
And now we come to the reason given by the publisher for the decline of the bookseller. He will tell you that almost all the latter’s troubles are due to his own lack of enterprise and initiative; that no other class of dealers is so lacking in the qualities that bring success in business. One of the most alertminded of our publishers told a convention of booksellers that, after visits to bookstores in certain smaller cities, he was so affected by the wails about poor business and small profits, that he was in the plight of the woman who said she felt so bad she’d just like to take down her back hair and have a good cry.
The publisher is right. While there are some men of high character and ability in the business, it is nevertheless true that it is very largely in the hands of men who lack enterprise and initiative; for in its present state bookselling is not sufficiently attractive to draw to it men with the adequate ability and character to carry it on in a spirit worthy of such a business.
When we find, in all the United States and in Great Britain and Ireland, the business of the bookseller to be generally falling off—a condition which has existed (with more or less prolonged periods of slight recovery) for more than forty years; and when, in the Western Continental countries of Europe, we find the bookseller generally prosperous during the same period, is there not ground for the belief that these widely different results must be due to fundamental differences in the way the business is conducted?
In this country, books are placed before the bookseller prior to publication, complete or incomplete, and often in the shape of a mere dummy — that is, a cover and blank leaves. The publisher’s salesman, who has been instructed by the sales-manager, has his little story of superlative commendation for each of the volumes thus offered, and now seen by the bookseller for the first time. In this predicament, for it is no less, how can the bookseller decide intelligently how many of each volume he should buy? For willy-nilly, buy he must, because the publisher, by his advertising, will at once create more or less demand which the bookseller must be prepared to meet.
I have asked men engaged in various branches of commerce what other articles of merchandise are bought with so little acquaintance with their qualities as new books. The invariable answer is, ‘None.’ Is it any wonder, therefore, that booksellers suffer serious losses because of their inability to find a market at normal prices for many of the books bought under such handicaps?
The money losses incurred from unsalable books are enough in themselves to render the bookselling business unprofitable in this country to many of those who engage in it; but there is a still greater loss involved: the accumulation of unsalable books often becomes, in the course of a few years, the major part of the bookseller’s stock and ties up a large part of his capital. This lessens his ability to pay his bills promptly, also lessens his capacity to buy books that his customers want. ‘Dry-rot’ sets in, and the business becomes precarious. This often leads to bad practices — improper means of getting rid of undesirable stock. Books which cannot be sold at normal prices in the ordinary course of business are called ‘plugs.’ When there is a large number of any one or more ‘plugs,’ they are placed in piles, called ‘monuments’ in the jargon of the trade. The ‘monuments’ will sometimes be put in the most prominent position in the shop, and the morally blind proprietor will say, ‘Now, boys, it’s up to you to sell these.’ Under this instigation the salesmen will try to dispose of these ‘plugs’ at their original selling price. If the ‘monument’ of any one ‘plug’ is unusually big, a premium of five to twentyfive cents is often given to the salesman for each copy sold. In such a shop, ‘plugs’ of which there are only one or two copies are constantly recommended instead of acceptable books. Of course, this sort of forced distribution must injure the morale of the business and, in the long run, discredit the bookseller with many of his customers. For what he has done is not in its essence different from the intentional passing of a counterfeit coin; indeed, it is even more heinous, because the bookseller is violating the trust imposed by his calling. Instead of being a stimulus to reading, the book is a deterrent. After such an experience, the reader more readily turns from books to other means of recreation, and the futile volume remains a reminder of misplaced confidence.
In an endeavor to find out the cause of the bookseller’s distress, someone will ask: Were not the retail prices of books in this country during the latter part of the last century cut and slashed to such an extent as almost to eliminate the profits of the bookseller? and is not this, in itself, enough to have caused his decline? The cutting of prices during this period was undoubtedly a contributory cause of his misfortunes; but the decline had been noticeable for several years before pricecutting became general. The natural and, I believe, the sound inference is that this price-cutting was an effect of the decline rather than its cause. Booksellers who found that their business was falling off sought to restore it by lowering prices, only to find their profits grow less and less.
Other questions will be asked. How is it that well-stocked bookstores were plentiful in this country fifty years ago? Will you explain how it happens that nearly every city of 15,000 inhabitants or more had good bookstores then and had had them for decades? While not so many books were then published, was not the bookseller in the same predicament then as now, when new books were put before him by the publisher’s salesman?
Happily, he was not; for, fifty years ago, he was protected from risk of loss with new books. It was the custom of publishers generally, and had been their custom for a long period, to send to booksellers at the time of issue from one to ten copies of each new book, with the understanding that unsold copies of books thus sent could be returned to the publishers. To-day he is always more or less apprehensive, when he buys new books, that many of his purchases will remain on his hands unsold. Unfortunately, this sensible custom of sending new books subject to return gradually fell into disuse; and it is probably not by chance that the decline of the bookseller followed close upon the abandonment of the custom. I would even venture the postulate that there is no other satisfactory explanation of the gradual decline of bookselling in this country.
In writing upon the problem of the distribution of books in this country a publisher of high repute has said: —
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 books 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.
It is significant that, in this utopian state of affairs for publisher, author, and public, nothing is promised the bookseller.
This was said several years ago; but there is no sign, as yet, of any new method that would solve the problem.
Instead of trying to find a new method of distribution, why not try to restore the bookseller as a distributor to the position he occupied fifty years ago? Why not make such arrangements as will attract fresh enterprise and capital to the business of bookselling, thus leading to the establishment of more and more bookstores, until the day shall come when every city and town will have at least one store with an ample assortment of books?
IV
Let us turn to Europe and see how books are sold there. Everyone in the book business knows that the distribution of books in Western Continental Europe is conducted on radically different lines from those followed in the United States and in Great Britain and Ireland. We find, too, that the book business in the countries of Western Continental Europe is conducted differently from all other branches of business in all these countries. It can scarcely be possible that books should be distributed in an altogether unusual way unless there is an altogether unusual reason for adopting methods at variance with those customary in other branches of business generally. Is it not fair to assume that the business of bookselling is conducted in a peculiar way in WesternContinental Europe for reasons peculiar to books as merchandise?
Dealers in all sorts of merchandise (books excepted), when buying supplies, are able from their knowledge of the goods offered them to exercise judgment in making their selections. For instance, the buyer of linens or any other textile can readily determine their quality by an examination of the goods; the buyer of teas can judge of their quality by taste; the buyer of metals by specifications and analytical tests. In fact, the expert buyer is always able to determine easily the value of the sort of merchandise with which training and study have made him familiar; but the bookseller, though he be familiar with the reputation of countless books already published, can have next to no knowledge of the several hundreds or thousands of new books put before him for consideration in the course of every year. Even though mere reading of books would provide the necessary knowledge, he would not be much better off, for no one could possibly read more than a small fraction of the books published. In the absence of knowledge how can anyone exercise judgment?
It is then the undetermined qualities of new books that put them in a class by themselves; and it is the recognition of the peculiar nature of books as articles of merchandise that has led publishers in the countries of Western Continental Europe to place their publications with booksellers on peculiar terms — terms that relieve the dealer of the dangerous risk of buying blindly. The details of these terms vary more or less with each country, and differentiation would be out of place here; but, generally speaking, the bookseller is granted the option of taking books by outright purchase or on memorandum. In all these countries the fundamental basis is the same: the protection of the bookseller from the hazards which are not of his making, whichare entirely beyond his control and which, therefore, should not be put upon him. School-books, what are known as ‘novelty ’ books (that is, books that depend upon their material appearance for their attractiveness), and a few minor classes are properly excepted, and must always be bought not subject to return.
This basis of the practice of bookselling has obtained in the countries of Western Continental Europe for more than fifty years — in some of them for centuries. Its decided advantages are convincingly demonstrated by the general commercial success of both the publishers and the booksellers of these countries; also by the production in large numbers of books of high character.
With this basis the attitude of the publisher to the bookseller and that of the bookseller to the publisher are wholly changed. The relation becomes one of coöperation, and with coöperation comes growth. The publisher will be careful not to ask the bookseller to take more of his books under the return privilege than in the publisher’s opinion can be readily disposed of, and the bookseller will try his best to meet the views of the publisher as to the possibilities of sale of his numerous productions; certain publications—for the most part the higher-priced books of general literature and those of more or less technical nature, which the bookseller would like to have in his stock for possible customers, but which for one reason or another, under present conditions, he would not dare to buy — will appear on his counters. The adventurer in the publishing field who often tries, and often with success, to foist books of doubtful merit on a too trustful market, will find increasing difficulties in exercising his propensities; the conscientious publisher, with fuller responsibilities, will become more and more discriminating as to the quality of the material he selects for publication; the author will be less tempted to submit indifferent productions; the public will gain new confidence in both publisher and bookseller; enterprising young men and women who find a congenial atmosphere in the bookstore will be encouraged to enter the bookselling field; new bookstores will soon be opened where none exist; and, as such stores are the best possible advertisements, many people who are now unmindful of the delights of reading will frequently have their attention drawn to books; before long, places for the sale of books will be as numerous as in those countries where the publishers long ago adopted the methods that appear to be essential for successful bookselling.
It goes without saying that the publishers, finding the channels of distribution provided by booksellers becoming bigger and better as well as more numerous, will come to depend upon them more and more, and thus place their books within easier reach of the reading public.
To adopt for this country and for Great Britain and Ireland the bookselling system of Western Continental Europe would in the opinion of many be revolutionary; but with a sick business would it not be worth while to apply a remedy of proved efficacy? The bookseller is the child of the publisher; if the latter desires his child to live and grow and prosper, he must provide the best means in his power to restore him to health and give him all possible opportunity to remain sound. This does not involve experiments with hypothetical or theoretical business plans, but simply calls upon our publishers to deal with our booksellers on a basis that has brought success to the trade in many other countries for generations.
The potentiality of bookselling in the United States is beyond measure.