Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1859-02-12
BOOK MAKING IN AMERICA.

Hshhhb vi DOCKS, not including periodicals., /
amounts to more than three hundred. About
three-fourths of these are engaged in Boston,
New-York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore the
balance being divided between Cincinnati, Buff
fald, Auburn, Albany, Louisville Chicago. st. |
Louis, and few other places. There are more
than three thousand booksellers, who dispense
the publication Of these three hundred, besides /
six or seven thousand apothecaries grocers. and .
hardware dealers, who connect literature with /
drugs, molasses, and nails.
The best printing in America is probably now
done in Cambridge; the best cloth binding in /
BOSTON, and the best calf and morocco in New |
York and Philadelphia. In these two latter
styles we are, as yet, long distance iiom Hay-
day, the pride of London. His finish is SUI
preme. There is nothing between it ant per-
fection.
Books have multiplied to such an extent ~
our country that it now takes $50 paper-mills
with 1000 engines in constant operation, to
supply the printers, who work day and night
endeavoring to keep their engagements with
publishers. These tireless mills produced 270,-
100000 pounds of paper the past year, which
immense supply has sold for about S27 1000, 600
pound and quarter of rags are required for
pound of paper, and 340,000,000 pounds were
therefore consumed in this way last year. The
cost of manufacturing twelve months supply
and rags, is computed at S4,000,000.
Some idea of the stock required to launch
popular work may be gathered from Messrs
Longman's ledger. These gentlemen report
that when 2j,000 copies of Mr.. Macaulays two
recent volumes went flying abroad from pater-
noster Row, no less than 5000 reams of paper,
6 tons of pasteboard, and 1000 yards of calico
were swallowed up.
Most of the large publishing houses now
stereotype everything they intend to print. The
electrotyping process is already employed, and
an experiment is now being made in Boston, of
which we shall hear more at some future day,
which, if successful, will decrease the expense
of stereotyping about one-third. We have late
ly heard that a machine is in use in New-York
for type-settng, and that the second volume of
Mr. Irying's Life of Washington" was prepar-
ed for the press by its aid.
-Four hundred years ago, single book of
gosspping fiction was sold before the palace
gate in the French capital for fifteen hundred
dollars. The same amount of matter contained
in this expensive volume, Mr.. Harper now sup
plies for twenty-five cents. Costly books, how
ever, are not yet out of fashion, for we are glad
to know that seventeen hundred subscribers
have already been obtained for Professor Agas-
| siz's splendid new enterprise.
The Harper establishment, the largest of our
puoH>hiilS HOuses, covers nan an acre Oh
ground. If old Mr.. Caxton, who printed those
stories of the Trojan war so long ago, could fol-
low the ex-mayor of New-York in one of his
morning rounds in Franklin Square, he would
| see in one room the HoUr IUuueo wltnr6 r,I5ll
of $50 tons of presses The electrotyping pro-
cess would puzzle him somewhat; the drying
and pressing process would startle him; the
hustle would make his head ache, and the stock
room would quite finish him.
An edition of Harper's Monthly Magazine
alone consists of 100000 copies. Few people
have any idea how large number this is as ap-
piled to the edition of book. 1t is computed
that if these magazines were to rain down. and
one man should attempt to pick them up like
chips, il would take him fortnight to pick up
the copies of one single number, supposing him
to pick up one every three seconds, and to work
ten hours a day.
The rapidity with which books are now man.
ufactured is almost incredible. A complete copy
of one of Bulwer's novels, published across the
water in three volumes, and reproduced here in
one was swept through the press in NewYork
in fifty hours and offered for sale smoking hot
in the streets. The fabulous edifice proposed
by Yankee from Vermont no longer seems an
impossibility. "Build the establishment accord
ing to my plan," said he: "drive sheep in
at one end and he shall Immediately come out
leather apron, and quarto bible.'
About one book only in hundred is a sue
cess. When Campbell, at literary festival,
toasted Bonaparte as friend of literature, be-
cause he once had bookseller shot, he was q
trihe too rough on the trade. 1t is impossible
always for publisher to decide rightly. All
publishers are naturally shy of new MS. OF
poetry, for instance, for they know by expert
ence that the deadest of all dead books is a
dead volume of verse. The sepulchre for dis
eased poetry in Mr.. Burnhams churchyard OF
old books, in Cornhill, is the largest bin in his
establishment.
Some of the best books, which have after
wards had the largest sales, have been in man.
uscript most widely rejected. The novel OF
"Jane Eyre" was turned away from the publish
ing doors of almost every respectable house in
London, and was pulled by accident out of a
publishers iron safe, where it had begun to
grow mouldy, by the daughter of bookseller
who had himself forgotten it. "Eothen" was
carried by its author, Mr.. Kmgake, to twenty
different houses, till at last in fit of despair
he gave the copyright away to an obscure book
seller, paying the expenses of publication out OF
his own pocket.
Mr.. Thackerays "Vanity Fair" was rejected
by Mr.. Colburn, for whose magazine it was
written, that astute gentleman complaining that
there was no interest in it. A New York pub
Usher fought the writer of new popular book
from spring to- autumn and at length gave in
from sheer inability to escape importantly lon
ger. After it was stereotyped, and before il
was printed, he offered every inducement tc
persuade bookseller to take it off his hands
but without success. In despair, he at last pub
lished it himself and the sale went up to 20,-
600 in one season.-Boston Transcript.