at the published price and nothing less, which obviously amounts to compelling the public to pay more than before for the book. Again, if the object were to benefit the retail bookseller by relieving the pressure of competition, it is plain that after abolishing discounts the publishers would charge the same wholesale prices as before to the booksellers. But, on the contrary, they have so adjusted their prices that the retailer gets no more profit upon a book sold net than he formerly obtained from a book of the same published price after allowing a discount. Thus the object and result of the net system is to increase the profits of the publishers at the expense of the public. This has been accomplished at a time when paper is cheaper than at any previous period, and when machinery has reduced the cost of composition, printing and binding to an almost equal extent. It is a remarkable illustration of the power of combination among quasi-monopolists to raise the price of their commodities even in the face of a falling market.
The Book War came to an end in 1908; but though the publishers and booksellers appeared in the result to have brought the Book Club within terms which were satisfactory to them, the whole situation had really been changed. The public for the first time had been educated. Public attention had been forcibly directed to the fact that there is no reason in the nature of things why the price of books should increase, but on the contrary, every reason why they should be cheaper than at any previous period. A certain mystery which had hung over the publishing trade was effectually dispelled. The man in the street learned that books priced to him at six shillings can be produced by the joint labours of the paper maker, the printer, and the bookbinder for about sixpence, and that in many cases the author gets little or nothing out of the difference. There followed a quickening of the public demand for literature at reasonable prices, and enterprising people were found to meet the demand. A vast quantity of good literature, much better than nine-tenths of what is written to-day, has been brought within reach of persons of the smallest incomes. Hundreds of standard works have appeared in convenient and readable editions at a shilling, at sevenpence and even sixpence per volume. These cheap editions have an enormous sale, not only because they are low in price, but because they have permanent value. For the cost of a novel which he will never look at twice, and which perhaps was hardly worth reading once, a man may obtain half a dozen books that have stood the test of time, and that will become the valued companions of his leisure. He gets them too in a form suited not only to his purse, but to the limited storage accommodation at the disposal of the mass of modern readers, who can neither buy nor house the stately editions that adorn the libraries of the wealthy. Thus, in respect of the large class of books read for recreation, we have reached the paradoxical position that cheapness and excellence go hand-in-hand; and that the disparaging adjective frequently linked with “cheap” is more properly associated with dear and pretentious.
Nor does the counter movement stop even here. There is a growing tendency to bring out books of current production in cheap editions, and also to publish the original edition at prices which must give a painful shock to the authors of the net system. Cheap magazines, and the feuilletons which newspapers are adopting from French practice, make considerable inroads upon the province of the six-shilling novel; and as regards more serious books the newspapers now give an amount of information about their contents which goes far to console the public for the prohibitive prices of the books themselves. These movements are developing and will continue to develop, seriously interfering with the plans of those who devised the net system. The combination publishers have never understood that, apart from the very small percentage of works which make real additions to the sum of knowledge or of genuine literary achievement, the reading of the books they turn out is a pastime, which has to compete in public favour with a great variety of other pastimes. They have chosen to make their form of recreation extremely expensive, with the double result that the public turn to others, and that even their own is increasingly supplied by cheaper agencies.
There are certain classes of books which must always be relatively expensive, because they appeal only to students of some particular branch of science or of art or of literature, whose number is not great. But these are books of enduring value. Their price is justified not only by their prolonged service, but by the erudition or the exceptional qualities which go to the writing of them, as well as by the frequently exceptional cost of producing them. But as regards the vast output of books which merely amuse an idle hour, the existence of a large body of readers is the only excuse for their appearance, and if they cannot be produced at a low price ensuring an extensive sale they ought not to be produced at all. Thus there is more than a mere money question involved in the contention about price. An artificial system of prices leads to the printing of a vast quantity of trash, which demoralizes the reading public and is a serious obstacle to the success of the better books. Such a system operates, in fact, as a protective duty infavour of mediocrity and even of something worse. It is no defence of such a system that it panders to the vanity of incompetent scribblers, and enables publishers to make money by soiling paper that had better have been kept clean.
A rational system of prices would automatically solve some of the difficulties of the book-world. If a book is selling by tens of thousands of copies, as every book printed for pastime ought to do, it would not matter at what price any large buyer chose to resell his purchases. They would only be a drop in the bucket, and all the contention about second-hand prices would disappear. Then there is the troublesome system of “remainders,” that is to say, the unsaleable copies of thousands of books published every year. The editions are small enough—probably not more than one thousand copies—yet, in spite of circulating libraries, a third or a half of that modest number remains in the warehouses of the publishers. Sometimes they are sold for about the cost of their fiimsy covers; sometimes they simply go to be reduced to their original pulp at the paper mills. If a book has any sale justifying its production, there will be no question of remainders, supposing its supply to have been regulated by the most ordinary prudence. The sale of such a book never stops dead, and any small surplus of copies can always be got rid of at a small reduction in price.
Towards the end of the 19th century came a large influx into England of American literature, especially fiction. Not only was there a growing appreciation of many American writers, but the attractive “get-up” of American books made its influence felt upon the British market. Some of the American methods of distribution were also introduced into Great Britain, but at first with only partial success. The most successful effort was the sale of important expensive works through the medium of newspapers. Canvassing, which was a common method of distributing books in the United States, met with little support in the United Kingdom, although about the middle of the 19th century a large trade was done through England and Scotland by canvassers, who sold in numbers and parts such works as Family Bibles, Daily Devotions, Lives of Christ and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.
The methods of publishing in America are similar to those adopted in Great Britain, but the discount to the booksellers is generally given pro rata according to the number purchased. It is, however, in respect of the means of distribution that the systems of the two countries differ most. In America the general stores to a large extent take the place of the English bookseller, and by their energy and extensive advertising a wider public is served. In the distribution of fiction the American plan of “booming” a book by copious advertising, although expensive, is often the means of inducing a large sale, and of bringing an author’s name before the public. In 1901 the net system, as adopted in Great Britain, was partially introduced into America.
The continental methods of publishing and distributing, especially in Germany, differ, in many respects very materially, from those of Great Britain. In even the smallest German towns there is a bookseller who receives on sale, immediately upon publication, a supply of such new books as he or the publisher may think suitable
to his class of book-buyers. The bookseller submits these books