Publishing

The increasing vogue of the reprint is remarkable. During the war a new taste for reading grew up among the soldiers who had leisure days to pass in hospital or at the base. Some millions of volumes were collected and sent over to the army huts under the auspices of various societies organized for the purpose, or under the seal of the Red Triangle. The editor of one popular series supervised the collection in London and the dispatch to France of over 2,000,000 volumes, new and old, obtained from a house to-house canvass of the metropolis. This popularizing of litera ture at large helped to increase the available reading public. But certain classes of books did not maintain their hold on the public when peace came again. In technology, for instance, whose manu als were specially required while the ex-soldiers were seeking work in the skilled trades, the demand fell off noticeably in the succeeding years. The analysis of books in The English Catalogue for 1923-24 marks a decrease in the latter year of over ioo published works in technology. In science the decrease was not very far short of that figure. History, medicine and geography also showed a decrease; on the other hand, fiction—easily first— biography, travel and guide books, including what we may call picturesque topography, poetry and the drama, religious books, sports and games and sociology all showed an increase of cir culation.

A Ten-year Survey.

If we take a ten years' survey, we dis cover some curious fluctuations in the returns. In 1914 fiction came first, religion second and science third. Sociology and tech nology followed close. Poetry, juvenile literature, travel and topography, literature and criticism, history, biography and finally naval and military books, complete the list of a dozen sections, named in the order of their relative popularity. In 1924 fiction was still at the head. Juvenile literature had advanced from the seventh to the second place in the list. Religion was third. Science had fallen from the third to the seventh place. Poetry had ad vanced while technology had lost a point. Biography, thanks in part to the interest in characters and personalities who had come into prominence during the war, or because of some new reaction to its sharp stimulus, had gained markedly. It is harder to explain why, in that case, history books should have dropped in the comparative scale. Books of travel and books dealing directly or indirectly with literature had also declined slightly.

It would be easy to make too much of these differences. As between one year, or one publishing season, to another, it is necessary to allow a margin for accidental delays owing to strikes, as in the winter season of 1925-26, when the packers caused a serious break in the ordinary supply of books and periodicals, or for diversions of the public interest, as at the time of political excitement or of general elections. On the whole the yearly average in every class of book offers a very fair test of popularity. But as we note the startling preponderance of the first of those classes—fiction, especially the novel—we are driven to consider again how deceptive are the signs of success, and to recognize the notorious discrepancy between the seasonal and the permanent result.

The Publishing of Novels.

We have it on the authority of one large firm of London publishers, that nine out of every ten novels published are comparative failures; that is, they show no decided profit to author or publisher. Another firm put the percentage of failures still higher, and it has been estimated that the average life of a market novel is no more than a month, and that very few survive the year of their birth. In an essay written

by Andrew Lang on "The Last Fashionable Novel," he lamented that the type of story in which lords and ladies were favourite characters as during the Victorian vogue, has ceased to exist. That fall from favour serves to remind us that the novel, whether viewed as one of a group or as a single product, is the most per ishable of all quasi-literary commodities, and that the producers of such books are tempted to inflate their selling value artificially. It was so when the three-volume novel was given the absurd price of 31s. 6d. It is so when the novel is put upon the market at a net price of 7s. 6d.

Two comments by a successful American fiction publisher, on the market success of the novel may be added :—"To sell a novel that has the mysterious quality of popularity in it is not difficult. Properly launched, it sells itself. To sell a novel that lacks the inherent quality of popularity—that is almost impossible. Appar ently it has sometimes been done, but nobody can be sure whether the result after all was due to the book or the salesman. Every publisher has proved, over and over again, to his disgust, that he cannot make the people buy a novel that they do not want ; and when a novel appears (no better novel) that they do want, the novel readers find it out by some free-masonry and would buy it if the publishers tried to prevent them.

"Nobody has discovered a rule—to say nothing of a principle— whereby the popularity of a novel by a new writer may be determined. If it be a really great, strong book, of course it is easy to understand that it will sell; but whether it will sell Io,000 copies or Ioo,000 nobody knows. If it be a slap-dash dime novel, full of action, it is easy to guess that it will sell, but whether 5,000 or soo,000 nobody knows. Sometimes a book of the sheerest com monplace happens to hit the public mood at the happy angle and sells beyond all expectation. The truth is, every new novel by an unknown writer presents a problem peculiar to itself ; and in advertising it and offering it for sale, every book's peculiar prob lem must be studied by itself." Great Britain and the United States: a Comparison.— The trade organ in New York that corresponds to The Pub lishers' Circular in London, namely, The Publishers' Weekly, does a like service in collecting annually the returns of new books and reprints that are issued from the press. In 1924 the number of new books published in the United States—or "new titles," as the register more precisely terms them—written by American authors, was 6,380. In addition, over 600 English and foreign works were printed and manufactured in America, and over 1,700 were imported. Roughly summarized, the American pro duction, that is so far as it is comprised in the New York returns for the whole book trade, is compared with that of Great Britain in the ratio of eight to six. More to our present purpose is the comparison instituted in the Publishers' Weekly between the book returns for 1923-24 in America with a further recast to the year 191o. There was effectively a 2% increase in 1924 over 1923, but the new titles registered in 1924 were only on a par with those of 20 years before-19o4. Six years later, in 191o, the num ber of new titles was 11,671, or nearly double that of 1924.