Book trade

“ Sellers of books must always exist, but it is possible [Pg 61] to drive out of the trade those who do it the most honour. We see what has occurred in the new book trade, and there can be little doubt that the book-buyer loses much more than he gains by the present system of discount. When the bookseller could obtain sufficient profit by the sale of new books to keep his shop open, it was worth his while to take some trouble in finding the book required ”

“ Anyone who has given his heart and soul to literature and the arts is likely to regard everyone who pulls the financial strings in the communications world as a monster. But the commercial outlook on something like the retail book trade is so dispiriting that the wonder is anybody pays any attention to it whatever or publishes any books at all whose distribution depends upon such channels. ”

“ We have all sorts and conditions of booksellers: one is a fanatic on the subject of libraries. He thinks that every public library should be dynamited. Another thinks that moving pictures will destroy the book trade. What rot! Surely everything that arouses people's minds, that makes them alert and questioning, increases their appetite for books." ”

“ But the deadness is all on the outside. For a considerable period this street has been the head-quarters of booksellers and publishers, who, till the present day, continue in such numbers as to leave little room for other tradesmen—transacting business in the book-trade to a prodigious amount. ”

“ As the silk-trade is now to be estimated, not by the number of ladies of fashion who wear brocade on court-days, but of the millions who buy a silk dress for ordinary use; so is the book-trade to be estimated, not by the number of the learned who once bought folios, and of the rich who rejoiced in exclusive quartos, but of the many to whom a small volume of a living author has become a necessity for instruction or for amusement, and who desire to read our established literature in editions well printed and carefully edited, though essentially cheap. ”

“ The book trade is now one of the greatest branches of business, and many works of standard value, and of high reputation in Europe as well as at home, have been produced by American authors in every department of literary composition. ”

“ It was considered important, in order to insure the proper control by the university over the book-trade and the interests of the scholars who depended upon the book-dealers for their text-books, that the trade in the materials used in the manifolding of books should also be strictly supervised. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Latin and gives privilege to licensed booksellers to do such buying and selling at their pleasure. This seems to have been an attempt to widen the range of the book-trade, while reference to books in the vernacular indicates an increasing demand for literature outside of the circles of instructors and students.
In the beginning of the fifteenth century, there was, among a number of the nobles of families in France, a certain increase in the interest of literature and in the taste for collecting elaborate, ornamented, and costly manuscripts. ”

“ Their stock in trade consists, not only in the books they have for sale, but in their knowledge. This may be at your disposal, if you use them after your own honor and dignity; but to live, they must sell books at a profit, and the delightful talk about books which you so much enjoy must, at least occasionally, result in a sale. ”

“ Of which duties I perceive finance alone, and free trade alone will by no means be found to be the sum.... What alone concerns us here is to remark that the present system of book-publishing discharges none of these duties—less and less makes even the appearance of discharging them—and, indeed, as I believe, is, by the nature of the case, incapable of ever, in any perceptible degree, discharging any of them in the times that now are. A century ago, there was in the bookselling guild if never any royalty of spirit, as how could such a thing be looked for there? ”

“ The results in France and England are equally encouraging, and it is believed that as soon as the American system is fully understood, and as soon as enough books are included under the net-price system, so that a bookseller can once more make a living on the sale of books, many of the old-time booksellers will again put in a stock of books and help to re-establish the book trade in America. ”

“ The rest of the trade are content to take their refuse, with which, and the fresh scum of the press, they furnish one side of a shop, which serves for the sign of a bookseller, rather than a real one; but, instead of selling, dealing as factors, and procure what the country divines and gentry send for; of whom each hath his book factor, and, when wanting any thing, writes to his bookseller, and pays his bill. ”

“ In each trade there is an established course of business; and, however obvious may be some better course, the difficulties of altering the settled routine are, if not insurmountable, still very considerable. Take, for instance, the commerce of literature. In days when a letter cost a shilling and no book-post existed, there grew up an organization of wholesalers and retailers to convey books from publishers to readers: a profit being reaped by each distributing agent, primary and secondary. ”

“ Remembering a bibliopole's sincere care in gathering his treasures, the taste and tenderness he spends upon them, the actual individuality of the owner of which they partake, and which they proclaim with startling fidelity so long as they are together, an auctioneer's sale of a private library seems one of the cruelest things in the daily annals of a city. Yet if not transferred, in numbers or in the mass, to some benign shelter, the darlings of bygone hours are sure to be launched friendless on the rough chances of trade. A second-hand book is verily-91- a pitiful thing. ”

“ The most startling innovation he made in the trade of bookselling, and the one which led to the largest amount of opposition on the part of his fellow-tradesmen, was in regard to the way of dealing with what are called “remainders.” When a bookseller found a book did not sell well, it was his custom to put what remained into a private sale, “where only booksellers were admitted, and of them only such as were invited by having a catalogue sent them. ”

“ The trade has its sorrows and trials; but it cannot be a very bad one when we see how many live out of it, if they do not often make fortunes. The fact is, that the motives for buying books are almost as infinitely multifarious as the books themselves, and there exists not the volume for which the customer will not arise, if the holder can wait; and this customary incidence accounts for the familiar aphorism that booksellers accumulate stock, not money—an aphorism to which the exceedingly rare exceptions prove the rule. ”

“ The disposal in this manner of 1000 copies of a book not only pays the cost of its publication, but generally yields a small profit to the publisher.
By getting a one-dollar book for sixty cents, or "forty off," as they say in the trade, the dry-goods stores, who now sell a great many books, and the regular retail booksellers, [Pg 798] are able to offer it at 65 or 70 or 75 cents, and still make a profit on it; while at the same time the publisher is obliged, by his agreement with the trade, to charge the full list price for every copy of a book that he sells at retail. ”

“ If a book sells to any extent, the publishers and the trade do well, much better than the poor author, whose obligations to the trade are not great. Let me add that the publishers may do an author a little benefit when they subscribe his book. ”

“ In consequence of the large consumption of books the machinery for the manufacture of copies was substantially perfected, and publication was effected with comparative rapidity and cheapness; bookselling became a respectable and lucrative trade, and the bookseller's shop a usual meeting-place of men of culture. ”

“ It seems probable that, if the present conditions of trade are maintained, American book-makers need not be especially troubled ten years hence by the competition of books manufactured in England, and that, if the various duties affecting the manufacture could be abolished, we could well spare the duty on books themselves. ”

“ A vast number of books is also sold, every year, at auction, to miscellaneous collections of people, not only in the cities and considerable towns, but likewise in the villages throughout the country. By many booksellers, this method of sale is thought to be injurious to the trade, since it has reduced the prices of books, and interfered with the regular method of doing business. ”

“ In 1774, free culture was born. In a case called Donaldson v. Beckett in the House of Lords in England, free culture was made because copyright was stopped. In 1710, the statute of Anne said that copyright should be for a limited term of just 14 years. But in the 1740s, when Scottish publishers started reprinting classics (you gotta love the Scots) , the London publishers said "Stop!". They said, "Copyright is forever!". Sonny Bono said "Copyright should be forever minus a day", but the London publishers said "Copyright is forever".
These publishers, people whom Milton referred to as "Old patentees and monopolizers in the trade of book selling, men who do not labor in an honest profession ”

“ A new type of bookseller has developed during the last twenty-five years—a man who combines part of the knowledge of the antiquarian of yore with the qualities the modern collector and book buyer will request from his agent. Books and literary property have become commercial values equal to stocks which are listed upon the stock exchange; subject to{115} corners created by shrewd buyers and holders, to fluctuations caused by selling en masse. The successful rare-book dealer of today must operate with his wares like a stock broker. ”

“ To make a book is as much a trade as to make a clock; something more than intelligence is required to become an author. ”

“ The worst evil of the publishing trade at the present day is that if one publisher strikes out a new line, whether in the form of his books, or the prices at which they are issued, or by bringing into notice some hitherto neglected author or subject, one or more of his competitors immediately tries to put similar editions on the market, and to offer purchasers a little more for their money. ”

“ In the last analysis pretty much everything, including poetry, is merchandise, and every important book sooner or later turns up in the auction rooms. The dozen or fifty men present represent the bookbuyers of the world—you are buying against them. When you sell a book at auction the whole world is your market. This refers, of course, only to important sales. At other times books are frequently disposed of at much less than their real value. These sales it pays the book-collector to attend, personally, if he can ”

“ They meet the eye on every railway stall and in every stationer's window, glittering in green and crimson. But we also sometimes hear of large stocks of unsaleable ventures, and of consequent evil-fortune, in spite of one or two profitable undertakings. We have great confidence in the largest sale of the cheapest edition of an attractive book by an author of reputation; but we have no confidence in the large individual sale of a great number of such distinct books, each jostling the other in the race for popularity. ”

“ For several years past it has been frankly avowed by the trade that books have ceased to sell; that the best works are a drug in the market; that their shelves groan, until themselves are forced to follow the example. ”

“ The firm foresaw that they should have to advance the retail price of their books. Everything connected with their business advanced. The price and quality of paper, the size of books, taxes, interest, stereotype plates, pro rata increase, press-work, 203 expenses of business, comparative costs of comparative thinness, if there is any such thing, number of pounds of paper in thin books and thick books, discounts to the trade, were discussed with apparent intelligence. ”

“ In the preface to this last catalogue he says: “The prices of useful and learned books are in all cases moderate; the prices of palæographical and bibliographical curiosities are no doubt in most cases high, that indeed being a natural result of the great rivalry between English, French, and American collectors.... A fine copy of any edition of a book is, and ought to be, more than twice as costly as any other.” ”

“ The book-lover eliminates as far as possible the question of value from his walks abroad, and leaves his gold at home to be expended as opportunity arises in the auction-room, where open competition holds the market in a virtual equipoise, or in the shops of recognised dealers, who hold his commissions and are always on the look-out for important works. He is aware, however, that intrinsically good books are to be met with continually in all sorts of places, and it is these that he hopes to obtain, and from these that his library is most often recruited. ”