supply it to the trade. A paper is sent round with it for subscriptions; the large houses, if the book be likely to sell well, subscribe for, in some cases, 2,000 or 3,000 or 4,000 copies, and thus a good sale is secured at first. The advantage of the subscription is, that the trade have a quarter’s credit, whereas in their usual transactions they pay cash. This is almost the only speculative part of the business of the houses that do not publish on their own account. It is clear that occasionally they may encumber themselves with a book which does not sell, and for which there is no demand, but this is very rarely the case. The gentleman who buys for the house is generally wide awake, and will not order a single copy more than he thinks he can sell with advantage, and at once.
Let not my readers go away with the idea that the great bookselling firms, proud of their traditions, plant themselves down in Paternoster Row waiting for customers to come. Their business is no exception to the general rule, which requires excessive pushing to keep pace with the competition of rivals. They have travellers in all quarters of the country—they publish catalogues and their terms, which are everywhere
disseminated among the trade—and an author may be sure that it is not the fault of the booksellers that he is compelled to sell his crowning work, rich in graphic colouring, in interesting detail, in noble thought, in manly eloquence (I quote the author’s private opinion), to Mr. Tegg or the trunk maker. As I have mentioned Mr. Tegg, let me add, that it is the province of that gentleman to relieve authors and publishers of works which an apathetic public do not appreciate and will not buy. If Mr. Tegg is so fortunate as to purchase the sheets (which he afterwards binds up in a cheap form) at his own price, and sells them at the author’s, he ought by this time to be as rich as the Rothschilds or the Marquis of Westminster. What he does with his bargains, I cannot tell. I see them awhile in glaring colours, regardless of the suns of summer or winter snows, adorning the cheap book-stalls of Holborn, or Fleet Street, or the Strand, charming the eye of the juvenile population of the metropolis, and offering them the advantages of a circulating library without the inconvenience. I occasionally meet them in railway carriages, chiefly (I do not write it disrespectfully) third class. I have met with them in considerable
numbers in our seaport towns, and then I miss them and search for them in vain. Where are they? I believe I am not far wrong in conjecturing that they are gone where there are
“Larger constellations burning,
Mellow moons, and happy skies;”
that they stimulate the intellect or soothe the leisure of muscular gold-diggers at Ballarat; that pastoral New Zealanders read them with delight; that they adorn the drawing-rooms of distant Timbuctoo. Let me say a word for the authors of these works. Are they not true philanthropists? Not one book in a hundred pays, yet in what countless succession do they appear!
London: Petter and Galpin, Belle Sauvage Printing Works, E.C.
ADVERTISEMENTS.
Just published, price 3s. 6d., bound in cloth, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged,