Hard Times and the Author

I

SHORTLY after I had begun to serve my turn as a publisher’s apprentice I suffered the unavoidable experience of falling in love. It soon became clear that, whatever the young lady might think, her elders regarded me as unnecessarily risky. This was not because I was a two-bottle man or fond of stepping out late with the chorus; no, so far as I could tell, their suspicions centred chiefly on the fact that I had committed myself to a bookish career. In an effort to save me before I had sunk too deep in the literary quicksands, one of the elders admonished me in this fashion. ‘Don’t you think you’re making a mistake,’ he said, ‘to go into publishing? A serious mistake. People don’t have time to read books to-day: they’re too busy with other things. Motors, dancing, moving pictures, the radio, golf — they ’ll put books out of business. Twenty-five years from now you’ll find yourself at the end of a blind alley. Books are doomed.’

I cite this somewhat private conversation — which, incidentally, took place a dozen years ago — not with any sense of personal vindication, but because it represents such a drear and philistine estimate of literature. There doubtless are other citizens of this country, other guardians of eligible princesses, who hold the same opinion. In that opinion are equal portions of truth and fallacy. My well-wisher first said that people no longer have time for books — a remark which may apply to New Yorkers with plenty of money to spend, but not to those who are unemployed and impecunious. He put books in the class with other luxuries, which was quite right. He prophesied that reading would show a steady decline, a statement debatable and probably wrong. Finally, he inferred that those who derive their living from books will never be rich. What, never! Well, hardly ever.

But of course it needs a provocation such as this to open one’s eyes. And I must say that those words have stuck in my crop. I thought of them as I watched the book business swell up with that afflatus which infected American industry in the last of the platinum twenties; I thought of them as I participated in the grim housecleaning which was forced upon every editorial office by the depression. An incurable optimist, I don’t believe that books are doomed. But having counseled authors, edited manuscripts, and studied the public in fat years and in lean, I should be myopic if I did not see some means of improving the market for books, authors, and readers to-day.

To look back on the American literature produced in the decade 1919-1929 is to recall, at first glance, the vigor and variety of the more notable publications: Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis, JohnBrown’s Body by Stephen Vincent Benét, Willa Gather’s A Lust Lady and Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, Anna Christie by Eugene O’Neill, the short stories of Hemingway, the vignettes of Thornton Wilder, the poetry of Millay, MacLeish, Frost, and Jeffers, the history of Charles Beard, the sociology of John Dewey, Page’s Letters, and Beveridge’s biographies of Marshall and Lincoln. I simply wish to indicate that we did produce books of quality, books quite distinctive enough to keep people awake nights.

Judged by its quantity, our production was equally remarkable. With every new book of quality we (I am not boasting — I mean publishers generally) printed ten which were either of specialized content or of ephemeral interest; and these likewise found their readers. Year by year, from 1919 to 1929, the number of new titles rose, year by year the book trade showed a steady increase in the cash value of the business. The peak was reached in 1929, when American publishers sold approximately eighty-four million copies of books for the general reader. Now, even admitting that many of our private libraries serve no better purpose than interior decoration, this figure would seem to indicate that a fair percentage of our citizens were busy reading.

I have said that a good many books ‘of ephemeral interest’ were encouraged into print. So they were: novels with a flair for daring detail and with a dismal absence of character; biographies of the Freudian and debunking schools, hastily compiled and inaccurate; children’s books that were inanely written and poorly illustrated. These inferior craft sailed along in the current with books of better make and purpose, and both, be it said, were sold at the highest price the traffic would bear. Why not? A public used to spending $15 for a theatre seat would not boggle at a $5.00 biography or a $2.50 novel. I do not mean to say that those mediocre books dissipated our taste for the first-rate, but I think it is candid to admit that their presence lowered the tone of the book trade.

When a book sells well, a publisher is naturally enabled to spend more and more money on its advertising. There is no proof that the advertising in our flush years directly contaminated our book reviewers. Yet the fact remains that the advertising of our books throughout the twenties became increasingly misleading. The announcements of the new publications, the ‘ blurbs ’ which are prepared within the publishers’ offices, passed from the comparative to the superlative. Novel after novel was proclaimed (by its backer) as the discovery of the season, and was recommended to the public as ‘the most convincing,’ ‘the most salient,’ ‘the most overwhelming,’ just as every writer worth a fuss was declared to be ‘at the full plenitude (or the happy magnitude) of his powers.’ Reviewers delight in being quoted, and, considering their meagre pay, one can hardly begrudge them this vanity. It became one of the knacks of the fraternity to frame somewhere in the review of a book a phrase or two which, when lifted out and mounted on an advertisement, would gleam like lustre. Publishers do not, as has sometimes been contended, arrange to have their books reviewed by the author’s best friends, but publishers can arrange to send complimentary copies of a book to a friendly audience and to use the verbal bouquets they receive for all they are worth. There are, in short, a number of ways of painting the lily.

Another misconception appeared in those figures which are usually emphasized at the bottom of advertisements, ‘8th Printing’ or ‘15th Impression.’ Such statistics are calculated to make you feel a country cousin if you have n’t read the volume cited. But, unhappily for veracity, there was no standard measurement of what constituted a ‘printing’ or an ‘impression.’ Some publishers dealing in a large way with a very potential title would run the early editions in 5000 lots, while others would credit themselves with a new printing each time they bound up 500 copies. The publishers knew among themselves which figures were telling the honest story. But did the public? Let us say that your eye has been caught by an advertisement stating in boldface type that Smothered Lovers is now ‘in its 97th thousand.’ ‘Wow,’ you say, ‘I guess I’ll have to read that novel if I am not to be left behind.’ The panic appeal. But the truth might show that when that advertisement was actually written the sale was approaching seventy thousand. Reorders were coming in fast enough to warn the publisher that he had better lay in paper for his future editions. He orders paper to carry him up to the 97th thousand and promptly coins the slogan, ‘Now in its 97th thousand.’ Is this dealing in futurities?

Finally, for those not content with the trade editions, for those who wished to acquire (without effort) a reputation as a collector, the publishers revived a special gilt-edged product known as a ‘limited edition.’ Now the pursuit of legitimate first editions and the acquisition of association copies are both perfectly healthy pastimes. I mean by an ‘ association copy ’ a volume, generally of the first edition, which has been inscribed by the author and presented to you in all friendliness. I have a few such. They constitute, indeed, one of the few assets I shall probably be able to leave my heirs. But an author’s circle of acquaintance is apt to be a small one. In order to give the amateur collectors a better chance publishers did two things. First, they sent their booming authors on a tour of our largest department stores; there the authors were placed on exhibition and signed copies of their books as fast as the money hit the counter. Secondly, they began to issue costly but limited editions of their more salient new books. Certain authors — James Branch Cabell, for instance, is one — lent themselves to this practice very gracefully. Just how much the limited edition of Jurgen would bring to-day in a forced sale I cannot say. But what about ‘Dancing Lobsters and Five Other Tales by Niemand Zuhause with thirteen illustrations by Puvis de Puvis, printed on hand-laid Holland paper from a specially designed Rubberneck Type and limited to four hundred copies, of which this is No. -’? There were a good many ninnies who paid ten dollars for those Dancing Lobsters in 1929 who might find it difficult even to give the book away to-day.

Here, then, is a thumbnail sketch of the American book trade at its best and at its worst in the platinum twenties.

II

Came the dawn — and a rather overcast morning it was. With panic in the air and stocks on the run, people began to keep their money in the sock. Luxuries were naturally sensitive to this parsimony. To avoid buying luxuries all you have to do is to tell yourself (thank you, Mr. Coué) that they are n’t worth much, they are n’t worth very much, they are n’t worth very much anyway. By January of 1931, American citizens were beginning to find unsuspected virtues in Fords and Chevrolets; they were beginning to prefer homemade gin to Booth’s, the movies to the theatre; they were beginning to use fifty-cent golf balls instead of the dollar variety, and to buy fewer books.

Sometimes when I was in the company of candid friends I would hear a protestation such as this: ‘ I know you won’t like us to say so, but we’ve simply got to cut down on our books. They’re expensive; only one in ten is really worth keeping, and the rest just clutter up the apartment.’ That was the handwriting on the wall. As might be expected, the inflated values were quick to wilt: those limited editions of perishable authors, on sale at handsome prices at Christmas of 1929, were being marked down or exchanged the year following. But publishers were not losing sleep over this side line. They were wondering what was to happen to their more dependable assets, the better novels and biographies, the books of academic or scientific content, enjoying a steady demand in the past.

A good merchant anticipates the tide, and, once the depression set in, it was no news to publishers that book prices would have to come down. The problem presented itself simply as one of manufacturing costs; the Code had not yet begun to police the premises. Printers and binders were prevailed on (with an axe) to accept lower terms; the purchase of the different grades of paper was conducted with economy in mind; dust jackets became less colorful, gold was used on the cover sparingly if at all, and, most important, the size of the edition was more closely calculated. But not closely enough. Publishers were still tempted to base their new printings upon the sales of the preceding year. But the system will not work when you are slipping downhill.

Publishers knew that the book trade could no longer absorb 2000 copies of almost any first novel; they knew more as their sales cards began to show them that this book on modern art had sold exactly 623 copies, this volume of poems 401, and this collection of French travel letters had staggered on to 1130 copies and then quit. Ingenuity was called in to combat these red figures: books designed for a limited audience were printed from movable type (at a saving roughly of about $200 an edition) and English books were reproduced for American readers by the photo-offset process — that is to say, by the collaboration of camera and printing press. By saving a penny here and three cents there, prices came down to new levels. Three-decker novels, instead of being published in parts, were sewn up between single covers. I attribute a measure of the success that came to Anthony Adverse to the singular skill with which that omnibus was manufactured. When a household found it could buy several months’ good romance for as little as $3.00, it did n’t begrudge the money. But Anthony was and is a white whale.

In their zeal to cut corners, some publishers created a distinctly false impression along Main Street. The cry of ‘paper books’ was revived as a means of lowering the cost of novels. This experiment is not a new one; it has been tried out in this country at various times and never with sustained success. The economic difference between a book bound in paper and one bound in cloth boils down to about eight cents a copy. The publication of paperbound novels¹ at the arbitrary price of $1.00 depends upon other elements than binding and can only be selfsupporting when (1) labor costs have been reduced to a point comparable to those in Europe; (2) authors have agreed to take a 50 per cent smaller royalty per copy; (3) the public has shown its willingness to eat up a minimum printing of 5000 copies of every book so published. This the American readers have steadfastly refused to do. Nor did hard times in the early thirties change their mind. Their appetite for these cheap paper-bound volumes proved as fickle as ever; one after another the paper editions folded up, leaving their particular problem still to be solved, and also leaving — though quite unintentionally — agrowing suspicion in the mind of the public. What about those dollar books?

But confusion was soon to be worse confounded. For suddenly in the summer of 1930, in drug stores, tobacco shops, fruit stores, and other unlikely spots, there sprang up whole flowerbeds, whole counters full of gayly decorated and respectable books at amazingly low prices. The public never stopped to think that these were reprints, that in some cases these books — The Mind in the Making, The Life and Letters of Walter Hines Page, Ludwig’s Napoleon, Wells’s Outline of History — had been run off plates which had already accounted for 50,000, even 100,000 copies years previous. The public did not consider the enormous saving in plant cost, the reduced margins, the coarse paper and plain binding, that made these prices possible. John Doe merely hunted through the mass, found two volumes of Page’s Letters, remembered he had intended to read them, remembered that the pair had once been priced at ten dollars, paid down his two iron men, and walked off well satisfied.

Strewn through these assortments of reprints were certain less appetizing dainties which I might term wallflowers. When the natural life of a book is over, the publisher is apt to have in his bins a few hundred (or a few thousand) copies for which there is no call. When after two or three years it is evident that no one will dance off with them, they become ‘remainders’ and are sold to jobbers. These remainders were also liberated in the lean market at cut prices; they were bought and, I dare say, embraced with little relish. It was a clever stroke to serve up — temporarily—these reprints and remainders at depression prices. But it helped to debase the currency of new books.

Small wonder that the public became price-conscious, even a little leery about its books. Small wonder that American publishers who in 1929 had taken in, roughly, forty-two million dollars’ worth of receipts from the sale of their trade publications — I mean novels, biographies, travel books, and so forth, as apart from textbooks — in 1933 found their proceeds cut to a rough total of twenty-two million. In short, a 50 per cent decline in book buying had taken place in four years’ time. It is illuminating to get inside those big figures. From 1929 to 1933 our volume of fiction (measured not by the number of new titles, but by the number of copies distributed) shrank 55 per cent; the volume of children’s books shrank 38 per cent; biography, 47 per cent; books about fine arts, 70 per cent; religion and philosophy, 61 per cent. The only item which showed a positive increase in activity was that termed ‘sociology and economics.’ Thus the effect of the New Deal upon literature.

Were books doomed? Not a bit of it. People simply could not afford to buy them as freely as before. Reading did not pass into the discard along with miniature golf courses and international matches; I should say it definitely increased. The American Library Association estimates that between four and five million new borrowers were added to library lists during the years I have just mentioned; in that time the total circulation of public library books in the United States increased by nearly 40 per cent. The same years witnessed the enormous, unchecked, and almost immeasurable development of the circulating libraries, which have invaded practically every literate town and city within reach. Judging from the depression, by the time we all come to live on a four-day week our reading will really amount to something.

III

It is by now permissible to consider the author. Popular romance to the contrary, his lot is not always a happy one. Industrially, American authors can be sorted into one of two guilds: those who depend upon the magazine industry for the major part of their livelihood, and those who (with private means or uncompromising courage) take the longer risk of committing themselves to the six months’, the ten months’, the eighteen months’ toil of writing a book. I am speaking primarily of authors — not dramatists, radio performers, or rewrite men for Hollywood. In prosperous years both guilds enjoyed considerable revenue from their royalties and from the byproducts of their industry — film rights sold to Hollywood, dramatic rights to a producer, serial rights to periodicals and syndicates. But it was a very different story when the depression closed down upon motion pictures, theatrical production, and magazine circulation.

In normal times the financial status of our authors admits of three levels. At the top are a small group of what I might call literary magnates — E. Phillips Oppenheim, Zane Grey, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Willa Cather, Sinclair Lewis, Kathleen Norris, Louis Bromficld, Temple Bailey — each one of whom in full production might earn in the neighborhood of $70,000 a year. A fellow publisher, Thomas R. Coward,² has made a composite picture of the income of a popular novelist whose new book has just sold 50,000 copies and who is eager to pursue every offer. Before you read these figures, let me caution you that mighty few moguls are capable of this earning power and still fewer of them can maintain it for long.

I doubt if in any year as much as one per cent of the writing profession is capable of reaching this maximum figure. In 1934 there were exactly fifteen authors whose books sold 50,000 copies or more in the United States.

On the plane next below will be found a group of well-known novelists and short-story writers, authors of the best technical books and the standard juveniles, and a few exceptional biographers who with utmost industry are able to average an earned income of between $10,000 and $15,000 a year. They comprise perhaps 12 per cent of the writing profession.

By simple subtraction, 87 per cent of our army of writers are to be found on the third and lowest plane. To put it generously, the annual proceeds of their writing range somewhere between $800 and $5000. The Authors Guild puts their average earning in good times at $2500 a year. Since many of them are people of maturity with families to support, it goes without saying that the members of this third estate must depend either upon private incomes or part-time jobs if their bills are to be met. For them literature is a poor staff and a not altogether reliable crutch.

The pinch of hard times was of course felt on each of these levels. The shrinkage of advertising and circulation compelled magazine editors to economize. That is to say, they reduced the size of their publications, they printed material they had paid for but never used; they bought, in short, about half as much new material as they had needed in the happy days. Magazine writers who had been living in assumed security suddenly realized that their markets were disappearing and — worse — that even when a sale was made they were likely to receive a price smaller by 50 per cent than what they had been accustomed to.

Meanwhile the book writers were facing their own particular grief. Readers, as I have said, were losing the habit of buying the many books they wanted; they had suddenly become price-conscious. They bought only the irresistible books; the others were borrowed from the public libraries or rented from the circulating libraries in the bookstores. The royalties of even the best-established writers came down on the toboggan; the royalties of authors whose books customarily sold over 10,000 copies suddenly dropped 50 per cent below the 1929 return. The royalties of unestablished writers, by which I mean first novelists, young poets, beginning biographers, dwindled to the vanishing point. ‘Fewer and Better Books’ was an ideal rule to enforce if booksellers and publishers were to survive. But, reduced to financial terms, it meant that mature authors had to tighten their belts and beginning authors had to surmount a higher wall than heretofore.

Readers became price-conscious. It was perfectly natural that they should. Families accustomed to buy twenty books on an income of $10,000 a year cut themselves down to six volumes when their income was reduced by half. A survey of 100 families of Ford employees, with incomes averaging $1711.87, showed that these households were spending 20 cents a year for their books, other than schoolbooks. Encouraged by economy, a mushroom growth of circulating libraries sprang up throughout the United States, not only in bookstores but in drug stores, fruit stands, news stands, stationery shops, private homes, even in comfort stations. Their number is legion. Their effect upon publisher and author has never been accurately estimated. In 1928 the circulating libraries then in operation were said to have absorbed about 15 per cent of the fiction published in the United States; to-day they absorb close to 40 per cent. (The percentage varies from 15 per cent to 75 per cent, depending upon the nature of the novel; an average of 40 per cent would seem to be a fair guess.) In England, where the situation has developed more rapidly than on our side of the water, they are said to absorb close to 80 per cent of the current novels.

I should perhaps explain what I mean by ‘absorb.’ The circulating library in the Old Corner Book Store of Boston is operated with remarkable efficiency. The books placed in that library are expected to — and do — maintain an average of twenty rentals per volume. That is to say, twenty households — or perhaps thirty different people — read each book in that library before the copy is finally sold or withdrawn. Thirty readers have taken their turn with a new novel. The fees which they paid for their enjoyment were collected by the bookstore. But the author’s reward for his share in the business was simply the royalty on the single copy sold to the circulating library. If the book was originally priced at $2.00, his average royalty amounted to 24 cents. In other words, thirty people read this one copy of his book, said ‘Thank you very much,’ and paid him a total of 24 cents!

Now extend this illustration to cover the country. The novel we are speaking of achieves, let us say, a total sale of 15,000 copies — a much better than average performance. If my suspicions are justified, 40 per cent of this figure — or 6000 copies — will pass into the circulating libraries. Presuming that the libraries maintain their average rental, these 6000 copies will be rented by 120,000 patrons; they will probably be read by a good many more, yet in the end all that the author has to show for this loaned entertainment is the meagre sum of $1440 ($1800 if he has a reputation) — his royalty on the 6000 copies sold to the libraries. If that’s not unfair I’ll eat my hat.

Whether a book rents twenty times, whether it goes into fifty-two households, as was the case with Dr. Harvey Cushing’s Life of Osler, which I happened to sample from the Old Corner shelves, whether it is rented (and halfread?) by the multitude who were swallowed up in Anthony Adverse, the element of injustice remains virtually the same. The royalty contract between author and publisher, the percentage of profits which a writer is entitled to, has altered very little since the copyright law was invoked to enforce honest dealing. It was assumed by both parties that copies of a book distributed through the normal commercial channels would be read by no more than two, three, or four people, and when you remember the number of unread books in your own private library, you will realize that this was not an unfair assumption. Not, that is, until the circulating libraries threw things out of kilter. ‘Well,’ your answering argument may be, ‘if more people are reading each copy of a printed book to-day, there is only one thing to doRaise the price.’ And that leads me to consider the cost of a book.

IV

Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle between them have been responsible for popularizing that great pastime of the twentieth century, the reading of detective stories, a pastime which many brainy people (and some who are not) find more relaxing than cards or alcohol. But once the killer has been identified, once Gwendolyn’s innocence has been proved and the guileful villain handcuffed, the detective story becomes just another book, one to be loaned, given away, or returned to the library as rapidly as possible. ‘Why,’ demands the constant critic, ‘charge two dollars for a book no one wants to keep? Surely you can make it for less.’

But can we? The two-dollar price is to-day affixed to detective novels, Western novels, to the ‘hot’ romances that swarm in cheap circulating libraries, to most first novels, and to short books by established authors. By way of answering the critic, I should like to exhibit a manufacturing sheet which has been compiled with very strict attention to averages and which seeks to identify the chief expenses in printing 2500 copies of a two-dollar novel whose text runs to not more than 320 pages.

In short, what my figures are trying to say is this: that after the publisher has paid the bookseller his commission for selling the book, paid the author his royalty, paid for the manufacturing of the finished product, and for its advertising, he has a remainder of 22 cents with which to meet his overhead charges. ‘Overhead,’ I realize, is one of those lovely vague words which business men use to impress their wives. The bookseller’s ‘ discount will be eaten into by the ‘overhead the operation — of his shop. The author’s royalty is no clear profit, for out of it he has got to pay the ‘ overhead the expenses — of writing: that is to say, the fee of a typist or secretary, the purchase of books or source material, and the rent of his workshop. In this instance a publisher’s overhead consists of the following items: his and his associates’ salaries, office rent, taxes, traveling and selling expenses, warehouse and shipping expenses, unearned advances to authors, and bad debts. It is an economic necessity to-day to charge off to overhead 28 per cent of a publisher’s net receipts. If this be done in the instance of a two-dollar novel which has sold 2500 copies and no more, it will be seen that the publisher has sustained a paper if not an actual loss of 10 cents a copy. In actuality a novel with such a small sale as this not only does not show a profit; it cannot even pay its rightful share of the publisher’s expenses. Its financial failure has to be balanced by the success of the best seller on the list — if there is one.

These figures may explain to you why the new book of a well-known novelist — why, in other words, the novel which can depend on a loyal audience — is usually priced at $2.50. Understand, please, that the author, the bookseller, and the publisher take their proportionate percentage of this increased price. These books cannot be allowed to appear stillborn; they have to be pushed, their promotion costs are high, and the publisher therefore must have his share of that extra 50 cents if his advertising is to sell the book and please the author. These books are the breadwinners of the entire list; such profit as they may allow must offset the losses incurred by those less known and neglected volumes which a publisher honestly seeking for new talent must hazard. ‘Fewer and Better Books’ — yes, but not to the total exclusion of the promising aspirant. How many books of Conrad’s do you suppose proved themselves failures before the public learned to respect his genius? The first three.

In the face of this equation a fulllength new novel cannot fairly be priced below $2.00.³ Yet your own experience will tell you that considerable reductions have been made in the price of the more expensive volumes. A new biography with half-tones, maps, gilt top, and good binding (Douglas Southall Freeman’s R. E. Lee, for instance), which would have sold for $5.00 in 1929, to-day can be had for $3.75 a volume. Books of nonfiction generally — even those of 175,000 words — have been stepped down from $5.00 to $4.00 and under. This is good psychology, for a $3.50 price still leaves a substantial portion of a five-dollar bill in one’s pocket, whereas anything over $4.00 reduces the matter to quicksilver. This economy in the field of nonfiction is the more remarkable if you will bear in mind that, according to statistics obtained in 1931 (before publishers were properly cautious), in the first year of publication four out of every ten books of nonfiction sell less than 1000 copies; four sell over 1500; three sell over 2000; two sell over 3000; and one lone volume sells over 6000. If, therefore, you as a consumer will agree that book prices cannot be measurably reduced below their present level, I as a producer will give my word that they will not be measurably increased — despite the upward pressure of the printing Code. My promise will be no good if we have Inflation.

But, if economy precludes our raising the price of a book for the readers, how are we ever to secure for the author his rightful share of those retail fees which the circulating libraries are reaping in these lean years? The circulating libraries argue that they must maintain an average of twenty rentals a book if that branch of their business is to operate profitably. This sounds to me rather high. Suppose we reduce the average to fifteen.⁴ Now if one admits the principle that an author should be reimbursed by each reader for the pleasure his book affords, would it not be just to ask that the circulating libraries divide with the author and publisher the rental fees — in other words, the excess profits which they take in after the first fifteen borrowers have been accounted for? This would seem to me the ideal division. But I recognize that it would call for elaborate bookkeeping and would of course be difficult to enforce.

So I turn to a simpler solution. Let us say that the Old Corner Book Store of Boston buys twenty-five copies of a new novel by Edward Weeks. Fifteen of these copies will be reserved for general sale, and, if the shop and I are lucky, the public will plunk down $2.00 for each copy. But ten copies are to be placed in the circulating library; and these the bookstore is obligated to purchase from my publisher at $2.50 each — that is to say, at the increased premium of 50 cents a copy. A sticker — a license, if you like — is placed inconspicuously on the inside cover of the book, authorizing the inclusion of the book in the circulating library at the premium price. This extra premium of 50 cents is paid to the publisher, and half of it helps to increase my royalty account. The remainder goes into the publisher’s treasury to offset, you might say, the loss of sales indirectly attributable to the lending of books.

This licensing of books was first experimented with in Denmark, and I am indebted to the Danish author, Peter Freuchcn, for an accurate account of the crusade which ho led, not against the circulating libraries as we know them, but against the public libraries, which are subsidized by the state and the municipalities in his enlightened country.

Here, in the words of Mr. Freuchcn, is what happened: —

Our sales went down, and in a number of cases, when we checked, we found that people now got in the habit of borrowing books who used to buy them. That was why I, in a meeting of Danish authors, set forth my plan to make the libraries pay something to us. The authors did not think it possible, but I had printed in my next book, The Sea Tyrant: ‘This book may not be lent out in libraries without the permission of the publisher.’

By mutual understanding a librarian did, and I sued him. I won in the first court, and he brought it to the Supreme Court of Denmark. I also won my case there. Thus it was proved that the lending of books can be prohibited in Denmark.

We then arranged it in the following manner: The libraries that buy books have to buy licenses, too, to lend the book out. In this way the libraries buy a license mark from the publisher (a sort of stamp) which must be glued in the book on the inside of the book cover. The price of that license mark was equal to the retail price of the book. The money thus collected was to be divided between the author and the publisher.

Mr. Freuchen, you see, was intent on doubling the price of his book. But this, I am afraid, would be more of a tax than our circulating libraries could afford. Unhappily for authors, his little revolution then petered out.

I was very much applauded by the authors when I won the case. But that was all. We have a socialistic government, but as soon as the authors, for the first time, started a trade-union movement, the government jumped on us. It was said to those of them that had pensions from the state that this pension would be taken away from them if they would not permit the libraries to lend out their books free. That stopped lots of them. They are poor people, and they dare not throw overboard the state’s money, which provides their house rent. Result was that the whole movement fell to pieces. I am still the only author in Denmark that has that remark printed in my book.

I don’t want to involve our public libraries in this adjustment. They perform a public service, they receive a much smaller discount than the bookseller, and they are particularly valuable in giving continued life to old books. But circulating libraries which make hay while the sun shines on our brand-new books should, I firmly believe, share a portion of their excess profits with the author and his publisher. There are said to be between forty and fifty thousand circulating libraries now operating in the United States. In England, where the movement is as wildfire, I am told that in addition to the five big chains of Smith’s, Boot’s, Mudie’s, Times, and Harrod’s there are seven thousand circulating libraries which no longer require even a deposit. You arc simply loaned any book in their possession (their selection does not always include the best) at tuppence a week.

Let us be candid: these agencies — which have certainly come to stay — are a mixed blessing. In affording new outlets for books and in attracting new readers the country over, they are a positive asset. Over 50 per cent of our rural population have no ready access to bookstores to-day. As a new department in the general store, the circulating libraries will help to stimulate reading in the far comers. Admittedly they obstruct the purchase of books and in so doing have appropriated to themselves an undeserved share of the author’s potential earnings. This financial maladjustment will have to be corrected if our book writers are to be self-supporting. Finally, by stimulating the publication of what the trade terms ‘lending-library tripe,’ by stimulating the distribution of silly, ‘warm’ romances, — you know the titles: Hot Flesh, Bed and Bored, Two Girls in a Studio, — they have definitely helped to cheapen the production of books in this country. There are certain circulating library chains that pretend to very little interest in fewer and better books by the best talent we can produce. They demand quite candidly those amatory novels having what they call ‘box-office appeal.’ To meet that demand some of our smaller publishers are now bending their entire energy. I must emphasize this cheapening influence of the inferior circulating libraries when as a publisher I am asked to believe that these new agencies are outlets for good books the country over.

V

You have by now argued me into the mood of a reformer. And the world is never as black as a reformer would have you believe. The depression in the book trade reached its low tide in the summer of 1933, and since then the current has turned in a more heartening direction. American readers purchased 10 per cent more books in 1934 than they did the previous twelvemonth, and very glad we editors were to hear it.

But a housecleaning is not really efficacious unless it affects all the inmates. If American readers are again acquiring the habit of buying books, it is, I think, because of certain healthy changes which are manifest in publishing practice.

In the first place, publishers worth their salt are more exacting of the books which they add to their list to-day. It is harder to get a book published now than it was in 1929 — and it ought to be. Mediocre books are no longer fobbed off under the categories of travel, juvenile, and biography. They are concentrated in the cheap circulating libraries and covered by that comprehensive word ‘tripe.’

Secondly, publishers are more conscientious about the prices they charge. Expensive books have been reduced to lower levels, limited editions are few and far between, and there is an economic tendency to compress the big three-decker novels (increasingly popular, be it noted) into the dimensions of a single volume. Occasionally one still hears of a backslider, of a novel originally published at $2.00, then awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and, in response to the fresh demand, promptly reprinted in large editions at $2.50. The public may never have been aware of this extra pound of flesh, but I think the consensus of publishers would regard it as sharp practice.

Thirdly, advertising shows signs of becoming more legitimate and less preposterous. Neither in the bookstores, in the catalogues, nor in the advertising columns of our literary supplements are you conscious of so many superlative encomiums. The increasing candor in selling books is evident in the work of Miss Virginia Kirkus. She has made it her business to secure proof sheets of all the more notable books; reading them night and day and several weeks in advance of publication, she is able to pass on to some sixty bookstores that subscribe to her service a forecast of each book’s contents, a forecast honest and calculating, thus helping the bookseller to place his order with more knowledge than before.

Fourthly, if that slogan ‘Fewer and Better Books’ be applied intelligently, I believe we shall all be better off. I could wish that there were some central and confidential bureau to whom publishers might report their book projects before the contracts are signed. Such a bureau would certainly prevent the appearance — within two months — of six books on Technocracy, seven biographies of Knute Rockne. It would avoid the coincidence whereby three publishers brought out and widely advertised in a single season three carefully written and scholarly biographies of Thomas Jefferson. Such a bureau might also be of service in helping editors to schedule the publication dates more uniformly through the year. At present there is so much congestion in the months of October and November that many books worthy of note are simply lost sight of in the Christmas crush. ‘Fewer and Better Books’ will ease the lot of the bookseller by relieving him of sticky stock; by the suppression of the ephemeral it will definitely increase book buying, and so long as it is applied sensibly it should intensify rather than impede the emergence of new talent.

Finally, I must come back to the author. Taste his books through the agency of the circulating libraries if you will, but when you find a book which is rewarding, when you find a book which has merit and is worth keeping, then buy it! For if you don’t the authors will go to the wall. Believe me, if royalties fall much lower than their present level our book writers will have no choice but to wear the red kimono in earnest, to write short stories and smart serials instead of books, to hire themselves out as scenario writers, to write (under assumed names) that st icky tripe which clutters up the worst circulating libraries, and to wear themselves out on the lecture platform or crooning over the air.