Publishing

PUBLISHING. The modern publisher, as we understand the term, is one who produces printed books and puts them on the market. Of recent years, and especially since the World War, there have been some instances of English and United States pub lishers conjoining the business of the printer, and in a less degree of the bookseller, with their ordinary function. But it is not the usual practice.

The first problem of the publishing profession is naturally the relation between authors and publishers. The diatribes of authors against publishers are familiar to every one ; and publishers, on their side, have some hard things to say about authors, though their sentiments are less piquantly expressed.

However. within the last half century, especially in Great Britain many new developments have taken place, which have helped to bring about a better understanding of the con ditions affecting author and publisher, on both sides. The Society of Authors was established in London in 1883, with Tenny son as its first president. It offered useful assistance to authors ignorant of business in the way of examining contracts, check ing publishers' accounts, revising their sometimes too liberal estimates of costs of production, and giving advice as to the publishers to be applied to or avoided in any given case. It has, no doubt, been of great service in checking the abuses of the publishing trade, and in compelling the less scrupulous among the publishers to conform more or less exactly to the practice of the more honourable.

In 1896, with a similar aim of co-operation and self-protection, was formed the Publishers' Association, which has undoubtedly tended to raise the standard of their efficiency all round. One of the first questions they had to deal with was the market price of books. Many attempts have been made in the past to destroy free trade in books. In July 1850, 1,200 booksellers within 12 m. of the London General Post Office signed a stringent agreement not to sell below a certain price. This agreement was broken almost immediately. Another attempt was made in 1852 ; but at a meeting of distinguished men of letters resolutions were adopted declaring that the principles of the Booksellers' Associa tion of that period were opposed to free trade, and were tyrannical and vexatious in their operations. The Times took an active part in defending and enforcing the conclusions which they sanctioned. The question was eventually referred to a commission, consisting of Lord Campbell, Dean Milman and George Grote, which de cided that the regulations were unreasonable and inexpedient, and contrary to the freedom which ought to prevail in commercial transactions. An attempt was also made in 1869 to impose restric tions upon the retail bookseller; but that also failed, mainly by reason of the ineffective organization which the publishers then had at command.

Feeling their hands greatly strengthened by the establishment of their association, the publishers were emboldened to make another effort to put an end to reductions in the selling price of books. After much discussion between authors, publishers and booksellers, a new scheme was launched on Jan. 1, 1900. Books began to be issued at net prices, from which no bookseller was permitted to make any deduction whatever. This decree was en forced by the refusal of all the publishers included in the asso ciation to supply books to any bookseller who should dare to infringe it in the case of a book published by any one of them.

The "Net System..

With the question of the "net system" of publishing books is connected that of their fixed price, and both have been hotly contested. An earlier encyclopaedist, writ ing on the matter, put the case strongly against the fixed price. "The cast-iron retail price," he said, "is economically wrong. A bookseller with a large turn-over in the midst of a dense popula tion can afford to sell at a small profit. He finds his reward in increased sales. His action is good for the public, for the author, and for the publisher himself, were he enlightened enough to see it. But a small bookseller in a remote country town cannot afford to sell at an equally low profit, because he has not access to a public large enough to yield correspondingly increased sales. Yet both are arbitrarily compelled to sell only at a uniform price fixed by the publisher. What makes the matter worse is that there is no cast-iron wholesale price. The small bookseller has to pay more for his books than the large one who buys in dozens of copies. Carriage on his small parcels often eats up what profit is left to him. As he is not allowed to have books 'on sale or return,' he has no chance whatever; and as a distributing agency the small bookseller has become negligible." It has been said, on the other hand, that, "whatever one may think of the Net Book agreement, its function is not to protect the publisher against the bookseller, but to protect the retail trade by forcing the public to pay high prices for books. It is exactly on a par with any other industrial protection; by solidarity the trade is able to exact what it considers its fair prices from the community, and this reacts in favour of all engaged in the trade—authors, publishers, printers, paper-makers, booksellers." The booksellers, we may add, admit that they gained materially by the net system, in bringing which about two publishers, the late J. M. Dent and Sir Frederick Macmillan, were the active pioneers.