From 1825 to 1840 the number of American publications show an aggregate of 1,115. Of these 623 were original and 492 were reprints from foreign works. The population of the United States in that year was about 17,000,000. In 1853, 733 new works were pub lished in the United States, of which 278 were reprints of English works, 35 were translations of foreign authors and the remainder were orig inal American works. The population of the United States had reached about 25,000,000, an increase of 50 per cent compared with 1840. The original American works published in 1853, compared with the 15 years ending in 1840, show an increase of about 800 per cent in less than 20 years. In other words, the original American publications of the book trade seem to have advanced about 15 times as fast as the population. In 1880, with a population of 50,000,000, the new books published during that year amounted to about 2,000 — nearly three times more than in 1853, whereas the population had only doubled. The total number of new books published according to the records of the Publishers' Weekly, for the years given below, is as follows: It will be observed that there is a heavy falling off for 1915, due to abnormal conditions brought about by the war. While the number in other classes was unusually small, books of history numbered 758, as compared to 581 in 1914, the increase being due to the many pub lications on the war.
As an illustration of nprmal conditions in the book trade the figures for 1914 are of more value. Of the total number of titles pub lished during this period, 10,175 were new books and 1,835 were new editions. Imported books, editions printed abroad, but bound in this country, numbered 2,852. Of the various classes fiction leads. The output for 1904 may be compared to that of 1914 by the chief classes, showing the change in public demand within the past 10 years: Considering only the books of American authorship for 1914, it will be seen that there is some change in the relative proportion of classes. Books on sociology and economics take the lead, fiction coming second almost 200 titles behind.
Popular In 1903 there were 1,700 book publishers in the United States. While Boston and Philadelphia remain true to their earlier reputations as leading book centres, New York has become the largest book mart and the leading factor in the manufacture of books. Chicago too has assumed an important place in the book trade, while some hundreds of books are published annually in Cincinnati, San Fran cisco, Cleveland and other smaller cities. The majority of American books are published by 100 firms in New York, Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia. During 1902 and 1903 the his torical novels enjoyed widespread popularity, and nine books of this class circulated to the extent of 1,400,000 copies. This enormous out
put, however, did not lessen the sale of older and more standard books. These were largely reprints. A Popular work 75 years after its first publication is often found to have been reprinted 20 times by as many different pub lishers. Of the world's great standards, hun dreds, and in some cases thousands, of editions have appeared. There is, nevertheless, a dis tinction to be made between the manufacturer of books who takes old works and reprints them, and the publisher who issues entirely fresh and original matter. Among early suc cessful books Mrs. Stowe's Tom's Cabin' had a phenomenal sale, 500,000 copies being sold in less than five years in the United States, and by April 1852 more than 1,000,000 had been reprinted in Great Britain. Of Longfellow's poems, without taking into account unauthor ized English reprints, the American sales in 1839-57 amounted to 325,550; from the latter date till 1901, 220,000.
School No small factor in book making during the 19th century was the phe nomenalproduction of school and college text books. In 1902 the reports showed a list of 433 educational works, while in 1904 this was increased to 628, though there has since been a marked decline in the production of this class. Of books for use in the public schools editions of 500,000 copies, intended for one year's con sumption, are not an unusual event. Messrs. D. Appleton and Company for many years sold over 1,000,000 copies of Webster's 'Speller' every year; and W. B. Smith and Company of Cincinnati, sold over 1,000,000 copies of the Eclectic Series during each year. The electrotype plates of schoolbooks, Bibles, prayer-books and hymnbooks, are very rarely changed and enormous quantities are sold every year.
Miscellaneous In the United States many encyclopedias, dictionaries, the com plete works of standard authors in definitive editions, anthologies of literature, etc., are sold by subscription; and the initial expense of such books being enormous, before a single copy of the book is made, the sales must be enormous also. Then there are many °books which are not books" — such as city directories, which are usually published by a company devoted ex clusively to the publication of this one book; State directories, list of dealers in each business and commercial agency reports (each of these agencies makes four revised editions of its books each year, each book measuring about 11 by 13 inches, and containing about 2,500 pages of matter in close print). There are also innumerable genealogies, indexes, catalogs, to gether with many other productions which are truly books, but which cannot be called literature.