New Britain herald., 1928-05-21
BOOKS

figures, however, one does not read fly come to the conclusion that the nation is going book mad. Knowing the propensity Of the average person 10 spend more money on gasoline and sundry modern luXuries than upon books one is not surprised al the results Of the analysis.
 The figures indicate that approXi- mately two books per capita are sold each year. That does not mean by a great deal. however that each family of four persons bought eight books Most families don't buy any all year through, which is q sad feature of the book business. II means that a minority of book buy CTS buy q much larger share of the output than the majority, and that mas always been the case in this country
 First we must subtract from the per capita consumption what the public libraries buy. These are a fer tile field for the book business. As every city and thousands Of small towns have public libraries it can be guessed that the consumption they represent is not to be taken lightly The libraries buy books of all types, those that don't sell well ! to the general public as well as those 1 that are popular; and We long ago came to the conclusion that many tonnes were put out with no better libraries, where they go on the refer : encc shelves and circulate among q part of the public which otherwise would never have access to them. Of regular book buyers, people who buy books every week or every month as regularly as they pay their i electric bills, there are comparative 1 ly few. One statistician computed that their entire number did not exceed 100000, although this may be merely surprisingly low csti- mate rather than an exact compila- ton.
 One point about the statistics of the booksellers association hard to 200, 100000 books sold was only S250, ,o0o,0 ,000. This would make the average price Of each book s1.25. New issues cost more than that f, many of the most popular issues go- ing mucn higher. We suppose, how ever. that the practice of issuing cheap reprint editions has bearing upon the statistics. We always have thought that one good way to in crease the circulation of purchased books was to decrease the price. We are the richest people in the world, the most intelligent, etc. Our educated millions should be trc- mcndous readers; whether they are or not depends upon the point of view. An immense total Of reading matter is devoured but not between the covers of books. The readers immersed in bound volumes, con- pared with those who are immersed in reading matter that is not per minority. Newspapers are convent ent: the myriads of gayly covered magazines slightly less so; the bound books are for the home and for per manent decoration of the book shelves. The future Of the book in. 1ustry lies in the stimulation o, private libraries. When it is realized
 that in millions of homes ill thi. country there are no private librarie.
 worthy the nanI", that etatistician.
 have shown that ill parts of tn country the average bound books or
 hand total no more than two. on. gets an impre ssion Of the Nastnes. of the field.
 While on the subject il IS aIs, worth while comparing the circula
 ton Of books in large cities com pared with small cities Tine bi;
 markets ar" in the large cities be cause the book public IS concon
 trated there. But when one begin
 figuring lle percentage of book buy
 ITS in New York, for instance, com 7 pared with thc population the per . c>n'age figures do not entirely sub merge the percentage figures in tn smaller cities of the country. l l eight volumes of any one book Circu
 late in city ot a few thousant
 popuation-as often happons-th
 percentage Will be higher than in tn
 metropolis.
 Wc do not know what the percent
 age in New Britain would be but W
 have plenty of evidence that import
 Iu' books reach q comparativel
 large public in this city.
 25 Fears Ago Today