The Publisher and the Book

A LONG row of tall, soot-belching smoke-stacks along the river front; trainloads of manufactured goods leaving the busy railroad yards almost every day; a very efficient street railway and interurban system; an up-todate, recently rehabilitated telephone service; an adequate pure-water supply; an auto-equipped fire department; a half-million-dollar hotel; a commission form of government; a small Carnegie library, and one lone bookstore: such is the prosaic picture of our hustling and bustling western city of 30,000 inhabitants.

This complex aggregate of material push and intellectual stagnation may perhaps explain to a certain extent the publisher’s complaint in the April Atlantic, that the distribution of books of real merit is a difficult and thus far unsolved problem. ‘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.’ And then ‘the indifference of the public to the new books of the day is commonly blamed for the change in publishing methods.’

Sweet consolation indeed!

Our lone bookshop makes a specialty of office fixtures, from fancy wastebaskets up to expensive mahogany desks and approved filing devices; it frames pictures, retails typewriters and supplies, sporting goods of all kinds, cameras and photographic sundries. Whatever space is left after room has been made for innumerable view-cards of our proud and booming burg, for the inanities of humorous-postal-card designers, for fountain pens, calendars, magnifying glasses and some fiftyseven varieties of popular magazines, is eagerly filled in with glaring posters in multi-colored dress, lavishly forwarded by the publisher to advertise to the blasé public his latest best seller, a few copies of which are usually kept on hand.

But generally the up-to-date reader has long since made the acquaintance of the fearless hero and the self-sacrificing heroine between the covers of the popular magazine; he has no time or inclination to pore over their stirring adventures afresh at the cost of $1.50; he has passed on to the next serial with its breathless situations and melodramatic episodes.

Or if perchance this great boon have not fallen to his lot, there is the little Carnegie bookshelf, which he helps to support, and where the latest effusions of the inexhaustible novel-writer appear as early and as regularly as in our lone bookstore. Several copies are on hand, free for the asking. Why invest the good coin of the Republic in an article whose vogue is more ephemeral than that of the proverbial insect?

For a work of general literature there is of course no room in our busy bookstore, — and no demand that would justify the investment on the proprietor’s part. Now it happens that I am in favor of ' keeping trade at home,’ and when I want some such work, I carefully write out the title, together with the author’s and publisher’s names, and take it to the bookstore, with instructions to order the work for me. For I have long since got over the habit of inquiring first whether they have the book in stock: I believe in the conservation of natural resources, personal as well as national.

The order having been given, I wait quietly and patiently, — in the sweet anticipation of spending a few delightful hours in the company of some select mind, — until the volume is sent up, which is usually from four to eight weeks later. A mild complaint, now no longer ventured upon, brings the answer that the order has been duly forwarded to their ‘jobbers in Chicago’; I have never succeeded in tracing it any farther. ‘At any rate, the book may be here now almost any day.’ I am sorry to confess that at times I have cast my principles of ‘ keeping trade at home’ to the winds!

This is an honest recital of twentiethcentury conditions in a wide-awake American city, with — considering its size — a not inconsiderable number of millionaires.

Why has not some aggressive bookdealer set up a rival establishment, provoked competition, and stimulated the book trade? Most probably because it would not pay. You see, we are too much absorbed in industry and manufacture, city improvements and political quarrels, building projects and corporation baiting, to have any time left for deep cultural reading; and this notwithstanding all the ennobling influences which our elaborate and expensive public-school system is supposed to exert in that direction.

Indeed, our well-meaning publishers, to whom ‘ the publication of a worthy and distinguished book is a matter of high satisfaction,’ are facing a bigger task than they are perhaps themselves aware of.