The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1894-12-24
CHEAP BOOKS.

NC QudulilJ VI SpOQ lltcIdbUIc WDlCU
is being diffused through the agency of THE
CALL at nominal prices is enormous. and
the innovation cannot but produce note
worthy results. The masterpiec of
Thackeray. George Eliot, Scott, Dumas,
Carlyle. Bulwer Lytton, Charles Reade,
Ruskin and others, the poems of Poe,
Tennyson, Lowell. Longfeilow, Bryant
and others. and the works of such contem-
pnrary writers as Rider Haggard, Rudyard
Kipling, Beatrice Harraden, Clark Russell,
Walter Besant, j. N. Barrie. NJ. E. Brad
don, Ouida, Bertha N. Clay. w. Z. Norris
and others. are offered By THE CALL at the
price of ten cents each; each work being
printed in legible type. Oh fair paper, aud
in presentable shape. This has been made
possible by improvements in the business
of book making. There is an establish
ment in New York which prints 5000 copies
of novel an hour. It uses two cylinders
which at every revolution of the press
print $50 pages. The pages can be bound
al the rate of 30 copies per minute, and if
a sufficiently large edition is printed, the
cost TO the publisher is not over three
cents a copy. 1t is needless TO remark
that this means a revolution in book max
ing.
The new devices only apply TO books of
which large edition can be sold. 1t
costs as much as it ever did to manufae-
ture few hundred or two or three or five
thousand copies of book. Thus, only
writer's of established fame or the heirs
of dead riters, whose place ia letters is
assured. can benefit by the new improve
ments. They do not help the living
yrif hn 10 fha
edge of popularity, except in this-that
they dffuse taste for reading among those
who never have been consumers Of liter
allure, and that, sooner or later, all pro-
ducer5 must find their market enlarged.
Whether the 10-cent editions are calculated
for the moment to diminish the reward of
authorship may be a matter of contro-
versy.
Where the retail price of book is 10
cents and its wholesale price to dealers.
who take a thousand or more, is cents. 6
cents or cents. there is no margin for a
royalty by way Of authors copyright.
But the royalty business has already been
reduced to an absurdty. A successful
book sells 1000 or 5000 copies. That is
probably the average sale of HowelPs or
Crawford's novels. II these works retail
at 81 % or 81 80. which is generally the
price, the authors copyrig ht-10 per cent
on the retail price of all copies sold-will
amount TO something like $500 or $500. An
industrious writer can produce two novels
in a year; thus a man of genius, with
whose wit and fancy and humor and
pathos the world is ringing. makes less
money than bookkeeper in a merchants
store. No arrangement could be worse
than this; any revolution would be
gain.
1t is obvious that the business of book
publishers, as at present conducted, is
drawing to a close and that it will be
superseded by new system. Either the
author will sell his manuscript outright to
publisher for sum down or he will be-
come his own publisher and will sell his
book through some distributing agency.
Both plans will probably be tried. They
are being led up to by the UNEXPECTED
effects of the new International copyright
law. When that law was passed it was
anticipated that it would merely relieve
oar publishers from the stigma of piracy
and that it would place Anne lean and for
eign authors on an equal footing. But in
effect it is handing over the American mar
ket to the foreign producer. Three of the
most prominent publishing houses in New
York are mere branches of London houses {;
another concern is devoted TO the repro
ducton in this country Of French books.
The American publisher. like the Ameri-
can author, is being crowded to the wall
by the foreigner; the American readers
preference for the foreign article being
more pronounced than ever.
This incongruous state OF things is
bound to lead to change in some direc-
ton, and the chances are that before all
hopes of the growth of our Am erican
school of letters ID abandoned an effort
will be made to save it. Books published
by English branch publishing houses in
New Y ork or their American imitators at
81 volume cannot compete with equally
good books published by the new publish.
ing firms at 10 cents a volume, however
inferior the latter may be geographically
and artistically. and when the new race of
publishers have reconquered the American
market they will be in a position to offer
authors price for their works which the
old school of millionaire publishers never
saw their way to afford.