The Evansville daily journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ia. [i.e. Ind.]) 1848-1862, 1859-02-07
Book-Making In America.

!. the number of houses now actively engaged
in publication of books, not including peri
| odicals, amounts to more than three hundred.
| About three f0urths of these are engaged in
Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Balti-
more, the balance being divided between
Cincinnati, Buffalo, Auburn, Albany, Louis
vile, Chicago st. Louis, and few other
| places. There are more than three thousand
| booksellers, who dispense the publications
of these three hundred, besides six or seven
thousand apothecaries, grocers, and hard
ware 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 from Hayday, the pride of London.
His finish is supreme; there is nothing be-
tween it and perfection.
Books have multiplied to such an extent
in our country that it now takes 720 paper
mills, with 1000 engines in constant opera
ton, to keep their engagement with pub
fishers. Those tireless mills produced 270,-
100000 pounds of paper the past year,
which immense supply has sold for about
$27, 100000. A pound and a quarter of
rags are required for pound of paper, and
$40, 600, 600 pounds were therefore consul
med in this way last year. The cost of
manufacturing twelve months supply of
paper for the United States aside from labor
and rags is computed at $4,00O,00o.
Some idea of the stock required to launch
a popular work may be gathered from Messrs.
Longmans Ledger. These gentlemen re-
port that when 25, 900 copies of Mr.. Mac
aulays two recent volumes went flying all
abroad from Paternoster Row, no less than
5000 reams of paper, 6 tons of pasteboard,
and 1000 yards of calico were swallowed up.
Most ofthe large publishing houses now
stereotype everything they print The cleo
trotyping 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 lately heard that machine is in
use in New York for type-setting, and that
the second volume of Mr.. Irving's "Life of
Washington" was prepared for the press by
its aid.
Four h@adred years ago, a single book of
gossiping fiction was sold before the palace
gate in the French capital for fifteen hun
dred dollars. If old Mr.. Caxton, who print
ed those stories of the Trojan war, so long
ago, could follow the ex-Mayor of New York
in one of his morning rounds in Franklin
Square he would be, to say the least, little
surprised He would see in one room the
floor loaded with weight of $50 tons Of
presses. The electrotyping process would
puzzle him somewhat; the drying and press
ing process would startle him the hustle
w0uld make his head ache, and the stock
room would quite finish him,
An edition of Harper Monthly Magazine
alone consists of l60, 900 copies. Few per-
sons have an idea how large number this
is, as applied to the edition of a book. 1t is
computed that if these magazines were to
rain down, and one man should attempt to
pick them up like chips, it would take him
u fortnight to pick up the copies of one sim
gle number, supposing him to pick up one
every three seconds, and to work ten hours
a day.
The rapidity with which books are now
manufactured is almost incredible. a COM
plete COPY of one of Bulwer's novels, pub
lished across the waters in three volumes,
and reproduced here in one, was swept
through the press in New York in fifty hours,
and offered for sale smoking hot in the
streets. The fabulous satire proposed by n
Yankee from Vermont, no longer seems an
mpossibility-"Build the establishment ac-
cording to my plan, said he, "drive a
sheep in at one end, and he shall Immediate
ly come out at the other four quarters Of
lamb, felt hat, q leather apron, and a
quarto bible.
About one book only in Il hundred is a
success. When Campbell, at a literary fes-
tival, toasted Bonaparte, as friend of lit
erature, because he once had bookseller
shot, he WAS trifle too rough on the trade.
1t is impossible always for a publisher to
decide rightly. All publishers are naturally
shy of a new MS. of poetry, for Instance,
for they know by experience, that the dead
est of all dead books is a dead volume o.!
verse. The sepulchre of deceased poetry,
in Mr. Burnham's churchyard of old books,
in CornIlilI, is the largest bin in his establish
ment.
Some of the best books, which have after
wards had the largest sales, have been in
manuscript the most widely rejected. The
| novel of "Jane Eyre" was turned away
! from the publishers doors of almost every
respectable house III London, and was pulled
| by accident out of a publishers iron sale,
! NllSIS II h111 an W SAO" iliOu'us' -
| the daughter of the bookseller, who had
himself forgotten it. "Eothen was carried
by its author, Mr.. Kinglake, to twenty diff
ferent houses, till at last in fit of despair,
he gave the copy right away to an obscure
bookseller paying the expenses of publ
cation out of his own pocket.
Mr.. Thackeray's :" Vanity Fair was re-
| jected by Mr.. Colburn, for whose magazine
it was written, that astute gentleman COM
planning that there was no interest in it. a
| New \ York publisher fought the writer of a
new popular book from Spring to autumn,
and at length gave in from sheer inability to
escape importantly longer. After it was
stereotyped, and before it was printed, he
offered every inducement to persuade 9
brother bookseller to take it off bis hands
but without success. In despair, he at last
published it himself, and the sale went ur
to 20, 900 in one season.-BoSton Transcript
A CHEMICAL VIEW OF DEATH.-M. Blot 6
French author, is speaking of school o
philosophers whose view of immortality art
scientific, but peculiar
e Yoll do not die; you only change you
state of aggregation 1t is true your nitro