The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-08-10
THE SECRET OF THE BEST SELLER

oESNE1 Sr 4I1E .DE04, oGs4<AEN
DY tsbest seller we may mean one of several
H. things. DR.. EMMETT Hours Care and Feed
ing of Children, of which the ffty-eighth edition
was printed in the spring of 1919, is one kind Of
best seller; OWEN WIsTERis The Virginidn is quite
another. The number of editions Of book is a
very uncertain indication of sales to person not
familiar with book publishing. Editions may con-
sist Of as few as 500 copies or as many as $4,000
or even $4,000. The advance sale of GENE STRAIT
ToN-PoRrER's A Daughter of the Land was, if we
recall the figure exactly, 10000 copies. These,
therefore were printed and distributed by the day
when the book was placed on sale, shortly there
after. To call this the first edition" would be
rather meaningless.
One thousand copies of book of poems-unless
it be an anthology-is large edition indeed. But
not for EDGAR GUEST, whose books sell in the tens
of thousands. The sale within couple of years,
Of 81 900 copies of the poems of ALAN SEEGER was
phenomenal.
Authors Earnings.
The first book of essays of an American writer
sold 5000 copies within six months of its publica-
ton. This upset most precedents Of the bookseing
trade. The authors royalties may have been
SLIPS A few hundred dollars should be added
to represent money received for the casual publ
cation of the essays in magazines before their ap
pearance in the book. OF course the volume did not
stop selling at the end of six months
Compare these figures, however, with the in
come Of one of the most popular American novel
lists. A single check for $4,000. Total payments,
over period of fifteen years, of $4,000 to ST.
100000. Yet it is DOUBTFUL if the books of this
novelist reached more than IS per cent of their
possible audience.
Books one-Quarter Sold.
1t is moderate estimate, in our opinion that
most books intended for the general reader"
whether fiction or not do not reach more than one
quarter Of the whole body Of readers each might
attain. With the proper machinery Of publicity
and merchandising book sales in the United States
could be quadrupled. We share this opinion with
HENRY BIAoKMAN SELL of the Chicago Daily Necs
and were interested to find it Independently con-
frmed by JAMES H. COLLINS, who, writing in the
Saturday Evenisg Post of May 8, 1919, under the
heading When Merchandise Sells Itself, said:
''Book publishing is one industry that suffers for
lack of retail outlets Even the popular novel sells
in numbers far below the real buying power of this
nation of readers because perhaps 25 per cent. of
the public can examine it and buy it at the city
book stores while it is by the rest of the
public. a.
"For lack of quantity production based on wide
retail distribution the novel sells for dollar and
half
s'But for dollar you can buy unsatisfactory
watch.
"That is made possible by quantity production
Quantity production of dollar watches is based on
their sale in $4,000 miscellaneous shops, through
the standard stock and the teaching Of modern
mercantile methods. Book publishers have made
experiments with the dollar novel, but it sold just
about the same number of copies as the 150 novel,