(2) We encourage the publication of just those books which in our estimation contain the principles which we regard as destined to promote the happiness of mankind.
(3) The difference between the wholesale and retail prices is often enough to make successful a lecture course which would have otherwise died prematurely of bankruptcy. Where a meeting cannot live on the collection, the book sales may mean financial salvation. The morning we sold $220 of books at the Garrick we also took a collection of $80. Without the book sales $80 would have been the total receipts, and this collection was normal. Yet the Garrick meetings cost $140 each. After we had paid the publisher’s bill we had a balance from book sales of $120, which made the total receipts not $80 but $200. And this is among the least important results of book selling.
Everything, of course, depends on the book talk. I will now give sample book talks which any speaker may commit to memory and use, probably with results that will be a surprise and an encouragement.
CHAPTER XXI
EXAMPLE BOOK TALKS
We are by this time agreed that the sale of the proper books at lecture meetings is greatly to be desired. In this article we shall consider the chief instrument by which this is attained—the book talk.
We might treat this theme by laying down general rules as to the elements which enter into the make-up of a successful book talk, but while this is necessary it is not enough—so many speakers seem to find it very difficult to apply rules. This part of the question will be treated in a few sentences.
A book talk, to be successful, must answer the following questions:
(1) Who wrote the book? It is not, of course, simply a question as to the author’s name, but his position and his competence to write on the subject, etc.
(2) What object had the author in view?