(a) Baneful to the bookseller, since it frequently leaves him with a dead stock of books on hand that cannot be turned without loss.
(b) Baneful to the publisher, since the book stops selling and the plates become valueless before he has had time fairly to recoup himself for the expense of bringing it out, advertising it, and putting it on the market.
(c) Baneful to the author, since by shortening the life of his books the value of his property in them is reduced.
But perhaps the most baneful effect of this craze for ephemeral literature is upon the people themselves. As the standard or degree of civilization for a given age is marked by the character of the literature the people produce and read, we cannot hope for a golden age in American letters, unless the present system is reversed. Work of real merit is never done by accident, nor is it the product of mediocre talents. If we are to develop a national literature that shall fitly characterize the sterling qualities of the American people in this, the full strength of the early manhood of the nation; at the time when the nation has taken its place in the vanguard of civilization; at the time when the consumptive power of the nation is equal to one-third of that of the entire civilized world; at the time when men of talents and genius are annually earning and expending, for their comfort and pleasure, more munificent sums than were ever lavished on the most opulent princes; I say, if we are to produce a literature that shall fitly characterize this age of our nation, we must hold forth such rewards for the pursuits of literature as will attract men of genius, men of the most lustrous talents, men who are the peers of their co-workers in other walks of life. But this will not be possible so long as the present strife to furnish cheap literature to the people continues.
It should be observed that the bookseller has not suffered alone in this cheapening process. The publisher has suffered. Within the past few months two names that for half a century were household words, synonyms of all that is excellent in the publishing world, have met with disaster, and others were approaching a crisis.
Fortunately one firm stood out so prominently, as a bulwark of financial strength and security, that its president, Mr. Charles Scribner, of Charles Scribner's Sons, could afford to take the initiative in calling for reform. He invited the co-operation of other publishers, and a year ago this month they met in New York and organized the American Publishers' Association. Their organization now includes practically all of the general publishers who contribute anything of real value to current literature.
The publishers canvassed thoroughly the causes that had led to the decline of the trade, and they appointed a committee to draft reform measures.
In reviewing the decline of the trade, two facts stood out so prominently that it was impossible to disassociate them as cause and effect. The three thousand booksellers, upon whom, as purveying agents, the publishers had depended a generation ago, had shrunk in number until only about five hundred could be counted who were worthy to be called booksellers. The other fact, which doubtless made quite as deep an impression upon the minds of the publishers, was that the long line of books, on each of their published catalogs, was practically dead. Those books of high standard character, by eminent authors, books that for years had had a good annual sale, no longer moved. These standard books have been a large source of revenue to publishers and their authors for many years. But now so few of them are sold that it hardly pays the publishers to send their travellers over the road.
Few dry-goods merchants, druggists, newsdealers and stationers, that have recently been induced to carry a small number of books, feel sufficiently well acquainted with salable literature to warrant their carrying anything more than the most popular-selling new copyrighted novels and cheap reprints of non-copyrighted books that sell for twenty-five cents or less. As stated above, there are a few large department stores that carry a more general stock, but they are so few that the support received from them is not sufficient to compensate, in any measure, the loss sustained through the sacrifice of the regular booksellers. Moreover, the regular booksellers that still remain in the business have not been buying many standard books of late. Seeing their profit in fiction sacrificed by unfair competition, many of them have ordered only enough of the new copyrighted novels to keep alive their accumulated stocks of standard books, until they can sell them out or reduce them to a point where they can afford to abandon the book business.
From the character of the reform measures adopted by the American Publishers' Association, which went into effect on the first of May, it is evident that the publishers have determined to restore the old-time bookseller. This can be done only by the publishers enforcing the maintenance of retail prices, the same as is done by the proprietors of the Earl & Wilson collar, the Waterman fountain pen, the Eastman kodak, and many other special lines of which the retail price is listed.
When dry-goods stores and clothing stores bought these special lines and retailed them at or below the cost price, in contrast to the list price asked in the special furnishing stores, in order to attract customers to their stores because of their wonderful "bargain counters," the manufacturers realized that the dry-goods stores were simply using up these wares to advertise their other business. They cut off the supply of their goods to these price-cutting dry-goods stores, and refused to supply any more goods, except under a substantial undertaking on the part of the dry-goods stores to maintain the full list price.