The simple truth is, here is one of the problems of distribution that have not yet been solved. There are throughout the land another one hundred thousand persons who would buy any novel of which one hundred thousand have been sold, if they could see the book and hear about it—if it were intelligently kept for sale where they would see it. This is a self-evident proposition. But nobody has yet found a way thus to distribute a book. And (this is the point) until better distributing machinery is organized, it will not pay publishers to advertise with as prodigal a hand as shoemakers and soapmakers use in making their wares known.
It is this lack of proper distributing machinery that has made possible the career of the book-agent. There are no shoe peddlers. Almost all the publishing houses—all the important houses—employ book peddlers. The business is generally regarded as a—nuisance, to say the most for it. But, from the publisher’s point of view, it is a necessity. And this is the crude way whereby it is sought to remedy the radical deficiency of proper distributing machinery. Of course, the book-agent method has its obvious disadvantages. It is not a dignified occupation, as most agents practise it. The most dignified members of the community, therefore, do not take it up. In every case it is not even the trustworthy members of the community that take it up. Again, the agent must be paid; and this is a very costly method (to the purchaser) of buying books. The purchaser pays half his money for the books; the other half for being persuaded to buy them.
And (to take a broad, economic view of the subject) the book peddler surely cannot be considered the final solution of the problem of a proper distribution of books. At some time in the future, when the country is three or four times as densely settled as it now is, there will be book stores in all towns. There may still be need for the persuasiveness of the agent, for some of the most successful of them now do their best work in cities within sight of good book shops. But the point is, few book-agents sell new books, and few of them sell single books: they usually sell books in sets. The problem, therefore, of the proper distribution of the four or five really good books that my publishing house has put out this fall still remains unsolved and, though I advertised them in all magazines and newspapers, I should not effectively reach the attention of one-fifth or one-tenth of the possible buyers of them. I should simply spend in advertising the profit that I may make on the copies that I sell with a reasonable publicity through the regular channels. I do insert advertisements of them for three or four reasons—with the hope of helping their sales; to keep the public informed of the activity of our publishing house; to please the press; and—to please the authors of the books. But I know very well that I am working (as every publisher is working) in a business that has not yet been developed, that is behind the economic organization of other kinds of manufacturing and selling, that awaits proper organization.
Figure it out yourself. Here is a book of which eighty thousand copies have been sold through “the trade;” that is, through the book stores. Our salesmen have visited every important bookseller from Portland, Me., to Portland, Ore., and from Duluth to New Orleans. We have spent quite a handsome sum in advertising it. Four-fifths of these eighty thousand copies were sold in a few months after its publication. The booksellers said that they could sell many more if we would advertise it more. We did so. By this time our salesmen were making another trip. No, they would not buy more, thank you; it is a little slow now. The second effort at advertising did not cause it to “move” in the market. The demand is slow yet. In other words, the demand for it that could be supplied by the existing book stores was practically exhausted. Our second advertising effort was a waste of money. We have frankly to confess that we do not know how to sell more copies of this book until the time comes when it may be put into a “set” and sold by book agents. This is the same as to say that, the few existing book stores utilized, there is no organized machinery for finding more buyers except the book agent.
Yet it is obvious that a wholesome book (as this is) which eighty thousand persons have bought would please eighty thousand other persons of like minds and taste if we had any way to find these second eighty thousand persons. They exist, of course. But they live out of easy reach of the book stores. The book agents will find them several years hence.
I have (I think) shown why there can never be a publishers’ trust, or “combine,” because the relation of the publisher and the author is a personal relation as intimate and personal as the relation of a physician to his patient or of a lawyer and his client. But, after a book has been sold and has become a commodity, the problem is a different one. The booksellers have perceived this; and they have made ineffective efforts to “combine.” They have failed because they have not made plans to widen the existing market. An organization of those that exist is not enough. The real problem is to extend their area, to find book-buyers whom they do not now reach.
Perhaps all this is very dull—this trade talk. But a publisher who is worthy of his calling regards himself as an educator of the public; and he has trade reasons and higher reasons as well for wishing to reach as many buyers of his good books as he possibly can. He knows (and you know, if you know the American people) that the masses even of intelligent folk have yet hardly fairly begun to buy books. Go where you will among the people and you will find few books—pitifully few. We are just coming into a period when book-buying is even beginning to become general. The publishers of a generation hence will sell perhaps ten times as many good books as are sold now—surely, if they find in their day distributing machinery even half adequate.