"It's about—it's about a dollar and a quarter," was the quick retort.
Perhaps here we find the substitute for the reading that maketh a full man. Repartee of this sort is disarming, and the quickness of wit that prompts it is not one of the least useful attributes of salesmanship. To carry the moral a step farther, it is only fair to say that the nimble salesman has had the wit to get out of the publishing business into another line of industry that, if reports are to be believed, has made him independent.
The commercial traveller who sells books has no fault to find with the people with whom he deals. By the very nature of his calling the bookseller is a man of reading and culture; now and then among them you find a man of rare culture. So genuinely friendly are the relations existing between seller and purchaser that a travelling man has the feeling that he is making a pleasure trip among friends. Such relations are no mean asset to the salesman, although they are not wholly essential. For it is to the bookseller's interest at least to examine the samples of every publisher's representative. It is not a question of laying in the winter's supply of coal, or of being content with one good old standby line of kitchen ranges. It is books that he is dealing in; an article that knows no competition and that has a brief career. Should my lady ask for Mark Twain's last book, it would be a poor bookseller who answered, "We don't sell it, but we have a large pile of Marie Corelli's latest." Or should the customer desire a copy of Henry James's recent volume, what would it profit the bookseller to inform her that he did not have it in stock, but he had something just as good?
It is because of the immense numbers of titles the bookseller must carry that the salesman always finds him a willing listener. And in the end, even though he does not buy heavily, he must order at least a few each of the salable books. Such complacency on the part of the bookseller might argue for direct dealing on the part of the publisher by means of circulars and letters, thus saving the expense of a traveller. But firms that have tried this have had a change of heart and have quickly availed themselves of the traveller's services.
He is useful in ways other than selling. If he is keen to advance his firm's interests,—and most of the book travellers are,—he will interest the bookseller's clerks in the principal books of his line. He will send them a copy of an important book, knowing that the clerk, should he become interested in the book, will personally sell many copies.
In the matter of credits, the travelling man is of considerable service to his house. He is on the spot, can size up the bookseller's trade, note if he is overstocked, particularly with unsalable books, or "plugs," as they are called, obtain the gossip of the town, and in many ways can form an estimate of the bookseller's financial condition that is more trustworthy than any the credit man in the home office can get. There were a dozen publishers' representatives who once sat in solemn conclave discussing the financial responsibility of an important customer. He was suspected of being beyond his depth, and some of the travellers had been warned not to sell him. Several personally inspected his business, obtained a report from him and his bank, and threshed out the matter as solemnly and seriously as if they were the interested publishers whom they represented. It was decided to extend further credit to the bookseller; his orders were taken and sent in with full explanations. How many orders were rejected by the publishers I do not, of course, know. But the judgment of the travellers, as events proved, was justified.
The publisher is learning to regard his travelling man as more than a salesman. He is asking him, now and then, to assist him in the selection of a manuscript, to aid him in planning the letter-press, and binding of a book. For by the very nature of his work the traveller is the one man in the publisher's employ who has a comprehensive grasp of the many branches of this alluring, but not very profitable, business.[Back to Contents]
SELLING AT WHOLESALE
By Joseph E. Bray
In the process of manufacture a book passes through so many hands that if the finished product is exactly in accordance with the plan that existed in the mind of its designer, he is justified in looking upon it with the satisfaction felt by an artist who has worked well. After a book is issued, however, it is quite another and equally important a matter to sell it, and this part of book publication requires as much thought and perhaps more dogged persistence than the other. There are some books, such as "Ben Hur" and "David Harum," for instance, that make a market for themselves, and the demand for such successes, though starting perhaps in a rather circumscribed locality, moves onward and outward, gathering force all the time like an avalanche. These are rare exceptions, however, and for most books a market must be created. No matter how good the book, it is not enough to view the finished product with satisfaction and expect that the public will buy it in the proportion that it deserves. It has to be marketed like any other article of commerce; and a book is only on the market properly when you find its selling points known to the trade, and the volume itself temptingly displayed on the counters in the bookstores everywhere, ready to become the property of any one who may be attracted by a reviewer's description, a clever advertisement, the polite recommendation of a well-posted clerk, or any other of the many reasons that induce people to buy books. This condition of course obtains in all large cities on or soon after the day of publication of a well-managed book—but urban publicity is not sufficient. The whole country must be taken care of, and the several thousand booksellers scattered over this great land must be placed in the same relative position as their brethren in the large cities. How they are supplied with the book, posted as to its merits, and enabled to take care of whatever demands arise, is the wholesale, or "jobbing," side of book selling.
This class of booksellers relies mostly upon the wholesaler for information and supplies. Everyone knows when Winston Churchill and Mrs. Humphry Ward are writing books, and what they are about; but when a dealer in a small town gets a call for "The Sands of Time," author unknown, a book he has never heard of before, he usually transmits the order just as he has received it to his jobber, who supplies him with the book if it is on the market, or with the necessary information regarding it if he is not able to supply it. The jobber's work, broadly speaking, is twofold: To see that a book for which the demand is certain to be large and immediate is in the hands of all his customers promptly after publication, and to take care of all inquiries that arise throughout the country for lesser-known books. His establishment must be a very temple of learning, and he has to know everything in the book world, from the plot of the latest "best seller" to the relative importance of a work on the differential calculus.