Western Publishing Company

“ The present educational enterprise of this company was started in May, 1904, and the first two schoolbooks of the present list were a school edition of The Man Without a Country, and the series known as the Wide Awake Readers. Little, Brown & Company are known as the publishers of Bancroft’s History of the United States, also of Daniel Webster’s works. ”

“ They are the "natural resources" which simplified the problems of our early years and made possible our rapid development and growth, until today, by the application of the same editorial standards and marketing methods, in broader fields, we are able to offer to the author of technical books a highly developed machinery of publication and distribution. ”

“ William H. Appleton, William W. Appleton, Daniel Appleton, Alfred C. Barnes, Charles J. Barnes, Henry B. Barnes, Birdseye Blakeman, George R. Cathcart, A. H. Hinkle, David B. Ivison, Henry H. Vail.
“The American Book Company is a stock company incorporated under state laws for the purpose of carrying on the manufacture and sale of books. The American Book Company has purchased the schoolbook publications hitherto issued by D. Appleton & Company, A. S. Barnes & Company, Harper & Brothers, Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Company of New York, and Van Antwerp, Bragg & Company of Cincinnati. ”

“ Our attempts to market books in foreign languages from New York, or from one of our foreign agencies, have not been encouraging. Accordingly, the first question, when we are endeavoring to arrange for a translation, is for us to find a publisher in the country selected who will undertake the work of securing a translator and publishing the book. When a translator offers his services, we find it necessary to ask him first to interest a publisher in his own country in the venture. ”

“ When manuscripts were superseded by printed books the business of selling books naturally became a more important concern, although the London company established by printers and publishers was called the Company of Stationers. At first one man often undertook all the varieties of book production and bookselling, but gradually the four broad divisions of printers, publishers, second-hand booksellers, and auctioneers came into existence. ”

“ It is my view that West's probability of success on the merits simply cannot be measured on a record that does not provide any information in regard to whether West's new advance sheet pagination, like a judge's secretary's original pagination of his slip opinion, is nothing more than an electronic response to a direction given a machine or whether, as a matter of fact, West's new pagination may be considered an original work of authorship. ”

“ I believe that, in the course of time, the general laws of trade would and ought to so regulate the arrangements for supplying the American public with books that, if there were no restriction as to the nationality of the publisher or as to the importation of printed volumes, the author would select the publishing agent, English or American, who could serve him to best advantage; and that that agent would be found to be the man who would prepare for the largest possible circle of American readers the editions best suited to their wants. ”

“ The name of the printer, the author, and the publisher was to be placed in every book, and, with a view to encouraging English printing, it was decreed further that no merchant or bookseller should import any English book printed abroad. No person was to erect a printing-press, or to let any [Pg 179] premises for the purpose of carrying on printing, without first giving notice to the Company, and no joiner or carpenter was to make a press without similar notice. ”

“ But not only does the printing industry excel all other industries in human interest, it excels them in the relative progress it is making. The latest available figures, published in 1905 by the Government, show that the capital invested in the publishing business had doubled in the preceding half decade, despite the fact that publishing is almost unique among industries in the diffusion of its establishments, and in the tenacity with which it still clings to competition in an age of combination. ”

“ Henry’s complaints concerning futile and troublesome correspondence might, of course, be repeated in many a publishing office to-day, but the modern publisher is helped out of the difficulty to some extent by his stenographers and typewriters. It remains a marvel how it was possible, without any time-saving appliances, for the publishers of the fifteenth century to conduct a complicated business, to give personal labour to preparing for the press works calling for original scholarship and detailed labour, and to carry on, in autographic letters, literary and theological correspondence. ”

“ New Models of Publishing
A number of publishers have sought to redefine (or reset) the relationship with academic authors to a more cooperative one. The traditional model of physical printing meant that part of the contract was about the creation of a product. In a digital environment where templates can be used to easily create an online journal, the focus shifts away from the product and more to the services the publisher offers.
Publishers such as PLoS and Ubiquity offer Gold OA, but at relatively low cost, and with waivers for those who cannot afford to pay. ”

“ London is undoubtedly the great emporium for Literary Works, as for almost every other species of Production. Even Printers in the country are so well aware of this, that they rarely fail to obtain the co-operation of a London Publisher in bringing out any Works in which they may venture to engage; though Works thus Published labour under the disadvantage naturally arising from their not being entirely under the management of the London Publisher. ”

“ Most persons are content with smaller profits, providing they can be released from risk. Under the system which now developed the publisher assumed the risk. In that way he became the patron of both author and printer.
The first of the modern type of publishers was Jacob Tonson, the elder, who began business in 1678. A consideration of the development of the publishing industry would take us too far afield and it will be touched upon only as it directly concerns the development of printing. ”

“ Marketing a Book.—We take pride in the thoroughness with which we seek the market for all books bearing our imprint. The spirit of the agreement which we make with the author is that each book is a separate business venture into which we have entered as a partner of the author. ”

“ We need not attempt to estimate how immense is the periodical literature of the United States at present, embracing the newspapers, and the monthly and quarterly magazines and reviews. There is no department of art in our country in which greater progress [Pg 360] has been made during the last thirty years than in that of printing; and while the entire number of copies struck off, annually, must be many millions, much the larger proportion is produced for, if not by, the free West. ”

“ The publisher, to protect himself against the author who practically rewrites his manuscript after it has been set up in type, usually provides in his contract that corrections in excess of a certain percentage of the cost of composition shall be charged to and paid for by the author. The printer makes a careful distinction between printer's corrections and author's corrections. Corrections marked in galley and page proofs of a book where the printer has not followed copy are printer's corrections. ”

“ One aspect of the publishing business which has become increasingly prominent during the last fifteen years cannot be overlooked, for it is certain to affect seriously the production of literature as to quality, and its distribution. Capital has discovered that literature is a product out of which money can be made, in the same way that it can be made in cotton, wheat, or iron. Never before in history has so much money been invested in publishing, with the single purpose of creating and supplying the market with manufactured goods. ”

“ It is not necessary to remind you that publishers may to-day furnish a duplicate set of plates to any concern on earth desiring to reproduce one of their books, and that the book may be reprinted by the purchaser without the bother and expense of resetting the type; but the printer of the early days was not so fortunate, for if a concern in New York wished to reprint and sell a book originally printed in Boston, he was obliged to reset it, taking as copy the Boston production. ”

“ Within the last few years a new spirit has, to a certain extent, entered into American publishing, and there have cropped up magazines which, apparently, have for their aim the furnishing to their readers of the greatest amount of the cheapest material at the lowest possible price. Syndicate stories and photographic clichés struggle with bad printing, and possibly appeal to the multitude. ”

“ That definition expressly provides that a "compilation" is a work "arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship." Id. (Emphasis added) . ↑ The Berring affidavit (A31–39) , for example, simply states that West "arranges American judicial decisions within its National Reporter System publications" (A34 para. 13) . There is no statement made in regard to how those cases are "arranged" or, more particularly, how the page numbers are placed in any of West's volumes. ”

“ The consolidation of capital in great publishing establishments has its advantages and its disadvantages. It increases vastly the yearly output of books. The presses must be kept running, printers, papermakers, and machinists are interested in this. The maw of the press must be fed. The capital must earn its money. One advantage of this is that when new and usable material is not forthcoming, the “standards” and the best literature must be reproduced in countless editions, and the best literature is broadcast over the world at prices to suit all purses, even the leanest. ”

“ The absolute material which the American publisher sells, he takes, or can take, for nothing. The paper, ink, and composition he supplies in the ordinary way of business; but of the very matter which he professes to sell,—of the book which is the object of his trade, he is enabled to possess himself for nothing. If you, my reader, be a popular author, an American publisher will take the choicest work of your brain and make dollars out of it, selling thousands of copies of it in his country, whereas you can, perhaps, only sell hundreds of it in your own ”

“ Every lover of books will remember that during the continuance of the arrangement, a Canadian Publishing Trade hardly existed, and that the reading public who bought books were compelled in a great measure to satisfy themselves with American reprints, of so little value that specimens of them are now regarded almost as curiosities. ”

“ They were able, after utilising to best advantage the experience of previous generations, so far themselves to develop and improve methods and results as to make of printing not only an art but a fine art; and even if they had never placed a publishing imprint upon a title-page, they would, through their service as typographers, have earned an honourable place in the annals of bookmaking.
In their work as publishers, they had a very great advantage in doing business in a country in which literature was practically free from the burdensome interference of censorship. ”

“ To obtain a standard of editorial details as uniformly high as that of the subject-matter of our books.
Let it be understood, first of all, that these are suggestions, not rules. Although we endeavor to maintain high standards, we do not insist upon uniformity of style or consistency throughout the books in our widely diversified list. The editor of a periodical or the proceedings of a society properly insists upon uniformity, generally issues a style sheet to guide his contributors, and edits all manuscript to fixed standards. ”

“ They will not only publish, but sell; their efficient book-shops, their efficient system of book-distribution will replace the present haphazard dealings of quite illiterate persons under whose shadows people in the provinces live. [48] If one of these publishing groups decides that a book, new or old, is of value to the public mind, I conceive the copyright will be secured and the book produced all over the world in every variety of form and price that seems necessary to its exhaustive sale. ”

“ For a general rule it should be kept in mind that corrections in the galley proofs cost much less than corrections in the page proofs where remake-up of pages involving a large expense may result from the addition of a single line, or even a few words. But it is most important of all for the author to realize that every correction made after the manuscript has been set up in type is time-consuming and expensive, and that such delay and expense are reduced to a minimum when the author submits a clean, carefully prepared manuscript which embodies his final judgment of content and style. ”

“ Nevertheless, somewhere about the opening of our own day an iron-bound tradition became erected in the publishing business, at least in the United States, that books of essays would not sell; could not be made to sell even sufficiently to avoid a considerable loss on the investment of manufacture; in fact, were quite impossible as a publishing venture. No matter how much a publisher himself, or his manuscript reader, might enjoy a collection [Pg 17] of essays that chanced to turn up in his shop, his conviction as to its unmarketability as a book was not altered—not even stirred. ”

“ Moore had three thousand guineas for ‘Lalla Rookh,’ but what publisher would be rash enough to pay fifteen thousand dollars for the masterpiece of a minor poet now? The book, except in very rare instances, makes nothing like the return to the author that the magazine makes, and there are few leading authors who find their account in that form of publication. Those who do, those who sell the most widely in book form, are often not at all desired by editors; with difficulty they get a serial accepted by any principal magazine. ”