The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1920-11-02
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
Information Bureau
MAKING sCHooLBooKs
FREDERIC ]. >HAEKIN. Director.
Washington, ID. @.

headS OF learning. ASIDE from mar
boring the great end awe inspiring
Harvard university. numerous lesser
schools. and endless bookshops spe-
Cambridge possesses the factory of the
largest schooIbook publishing COM
! pany in the country. This plant regu-
larly keeps 100000 schoolbooks on
hand IT Its storage bins. and even with
this huge reserve, the presses have to
run night and day at the busy seasons.
Right now, the factory is working
at the highest pressure. Schools from
Florida to California send to the COM
pany's offices in Boston for books, and
while most schools are opened by this
time, orders are still piling IN. Many
school officials it seems, have a way
of waiting until the term is about to
open and then deciding on the books
to be used and the company to patron
ize. This casual attitude of the local
powers is one of the chief causes of
white hair in the textbook business
| No ouija Board has yet been located
| that can tell firm how many physics
or spelling books of a certain kind will
be called for, so that it has to estimate
a reasonable number and then work at
top speed If orders exceed expecta-
tions.
This company. with it's stock of
1000, 900 books, finds it necessary to
keep no less than 1000 different titles
I
be called current books; for as soon
as textbook becomes Anticipated or is
| supplanted by a later edition the old
copies on the shelves are torn up to be
sold as junk.
| walking along the stofage rooms you
| can catch glimpses of spelling book
and arithmetics that call up pictures
| of your early struggles with culture.
Less familiar works are here too,
such formidable affairs as The APP
| Word Formation in the Roman
Sermo Plebeius," and "a Grammar
| of the Innuit Language" The guide
obligingly explains that Innuit means
Eskimo, that this particular work is
rarely called for, and that it sells for
1 five dollars, an unusually high rate
for a plainly bound schoolbook.
Books That Do Not Sell.
Books of this type are the "Jonahs"
of the. schoolbook business. Some
patient scholar spends perhaps 20
years writing an abstruse thesis on
| which neither he nor his publisher
can possibly make any money, be-
cause few copies will be sold. Yet the
demands CT advanced scholarship re-
quire such books and the larger pub
| fishers must. be the ones to produce
| them, even tho they often know in
| advance that the books mean a loss.
Ponderous works, however, make up
l >
| output. The bins for the most part
are stacked to the ceiling with ordi-
| nary grammar and highschool books.
The demand for schoolbookS in
creases every year, and this means
| plenty of trade for the publishers,
! They tell you, tho, that they are far
| from sailing on smooth sea of pros
| perity. Certain kinds Of paper are
| about to advance two cents a pound,
which means that the rates on school
/ books will go up, as 1T is claimed that
| they are now being sold on as low
margin of profit as is permissible. An
| advance will not cut down business,
| for schoolbooks are a necessity, but
| publishers say that they dread an
nouncing 4 raise, for the public, seeing
sugar leather, and wool drop, is all
| the more loath to part with larger
! sums for other commodities
! In the PAST. they say, schoolbooks
| have remained remarkably stable in
price. tho publishers have been con-
| Stantly increasing expenditures to i'm
/ prove the appearance of their product.
| Few people have any idea of the ms
and out of putting textbook on the
market. You may have paused to
smile over the fancy that school chill
| dren now have more history to as
| simulate than when you pored over
| dates and battles, but did you ever
| think of the schoolbook producer who
has to keep up with the wandering
boundaries of Europe and reduce the
world war to a few pages of text in
language suitable for children? Did
you know. for instance, that the more
| progressive publishers are having
their Biographies practically rewrit-
ten since the war in order to bring,
not only the maps, but the text up to
| date?
Revising the Maps.
An editor of the firm referred to
in this story says that his company
spent about 100000 before a single
copy of its newest geography could
| be printed. Now the book is being
run off the presses as rapidly as pos
| sible, and the firm cannot begin to
fill the demand for it.
Producing school books is in many
ways entirely different from publishing
| fiction. a best seller novel that would
| require an investment of three or four
| thousand dollars and sell for 81 a copy
has boom of a few months and then
| siZzles down to cheap editions and
| The returns are immediate and brief,
and the author is then expected to
| grind out a new masterpiece.
The initial cost of a history such as
1 is used in high schools, on the other
hand. is over five times as much, and
geography twenty-five times as
much, as the novel, because of numer-
Gus maps and illustrations. Yet the
price of the textbook is similar to that
of the novel or less. In the case of
an up-to-date geography, which just
now would be a best seller, the large
outlay might be quickly offset by
sales, but in the ordinary run of things.
| 1t is a year or more before a textbook
begins to pay for itself. Then, it
brings in to its author and the pub
Usher steady returns for five years, or
possibly twenty-five. according to its
lasting qualities. That is, a first
reader is apt to be popular only a few
years because new methods. of teach
| ing reading are constantly being
worked out A. mathematics book is
more likely to have a long and pros
porous existence. The Wentworth alge-
bras and. other mathematical works
by the same author have been on the
market for years, and perhaps forty
fof them are best sellers now.
! The Wentworth books are one of
| the notable successes of the textbook
A Wentworth