"CHO* 
 
THE WAR IN THE 
 BOOK WORLD 
 
 FOUR LETTERS, FROM THE AUTHORS' 
 
 POINT OF VIEW, WRITTEN TO THE 
 
 NEWSPAPER PRESS 
 
 BY 
 
 HALL CAINE 
 
 
 LONDON 
 PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 STORY OF THE BOOK WAR . . 5 
 
 WHAT HARM is THE " TIMES" DOING? 14 
 ARE BOOKS TOO DEAR? 
 
 NEW LAMPS FOR OLD ... 29 
 
 M179653 
 
FIRST LETTER 
 
 STORY OF THE BOOK WAR 
 
 IT has come to the knowledge of the public that an in- 
 teresting and important struggle is taking place between 
 the publishers and booksellers on the one side and the 
 Times Book Club on the other with regard to the con- 
 ditions under which books are lent and sold. So far as 
 I can see, the public look upon this struggle as a trade 
 difference in which they are in no way concerned. The 
 matter is, however, of the utmost importance to the 
 public, inasmuch as it concerns the price at which books 
 are to be sold to them. In the same way, authors appear 
 to think that the matter in dispute is not an author's 
 question, but I venture to express the opinion that it is 
 an author's question first of all, being heavily weighted 
 with the fate of authorship as a profession and with the 
 general interests of literature. Indeed, I hold that in 
 this controversy the publishers and the Times Book Club 
 are wrangling over the property of another person. That 
 person is the author. 
 
 Permit me, then, as one who for twenty-five years has 
 earned his living by writing books, to place the subject 
 of this controversy before the public from an author's 
 point of view. In doing so it will be necessary for me to 
 go over ground that has already been covered in order to 
 make clear to those who know the subject only from the 
 outside what precisely are the differences that constitute 
 the question at issue. 
 
 AUTHOES AND PUBLIC ONLY PARTIES TO CONTEACT. 
 
 A book is an article of joint manufacture produced for 
 the purpose of sale by a writer and a publisher. The 
 
THE WAR IN THE BOOK WORLD 
 
 valise and " only begetter " of a book is the author, 
 and the law ratifies his copyright in the work he creates, 
 giving him, according to the decision of the most 
 eminent judges, property in what he writes at Common 
 Law and according to the eternal rules of justice, so that 
 no one can print it or re-print it without his permission. 
 Being thus the absolute possessor of a book, he wishes to 
 sell it to the public. These two, therefore, the author 
 and the public, are the only parties to the contract which 
 constitutes the business in books. The interest of the 
 author is to sell his book for the largest possible sum, 
 while the interest of the public is to buy it for the 
 smallest sum. But inasmuch as the sum-total of the 
 author's earnings is often largest where the price of the 
 book is smallest and the sale greatest, the interest of the 
 author is to sell his book as cheaply as he can, while the 
 interest of the public is to buy it as cheaply as it may. 
 Thus the interest of the author and the interest of the 
 public as to the price of the book become eventually the 
 same. 
 
 POSITION OF THE MIDDLEMEN 
 
 But the author cannot distribute his book for himself. 
 He must employ middlemen in order to reach the 
 general consumer. In old days these middlemen were 
 booksellers alone, and authors talked of " writing for the 
 booksellers." Now there are many middlemen between 
 the author and the consumer. First, there is usually 
 the author's agent, who passes the book on to the 
 publisher ; then the wholesale distributing agent, who 
 buys from the publisher ; and, finally, the retail book- 
 seller, who sells to the public. Thus four middlemen 
 have to handle a book in its passage from author to 
 public, but as two of these four may be considered to be 
 allied to the other two the author's agent to the author, 
 and the wholesale agent to the bookseller the middle- 
 men may be described as two, the publisher and book- 
 
STORY OF THE BOOK WAR 7 
 
 seller, and each of these has to derive his profit out of a 
 book before it reaches the consumer. 
 
 A book, like nearly all other articles of commerce, has 
 two prices : the price at which the publisher sells it to 
 the bookseller and the price at which the bookseller 
 sells it to the public. Practically, if not by direct legis- 
 lative action, the publisher fixes both of these prices. 
 Thus a novel of which the published price is 6s. may be 
 sold to the wholesale bookseller or to the retailer at 
 prices ranging from 3s. 4d. to 4s. 2d.. with the condition 
 that the retail bookseller shall not sell it to the public 
 for less than 4s. 6d. under pain of his account being 
 stopped, and therefore his means of livelihood being 
 taken away. 
 
 THE PUBLISHER'S RELATION TO THE BOOKSELLER 
 
 Now, why does the publisher claim the right of fixing 
 not only the wholesale but the retail price, and of dicta- 
 ting the conditions of business to those whose stock-in- 
 trade he supplies ? The answer is that the publisher, 
 not being a bookseller, and therefore not being able to 
 reach the public for himself, is intimately concerned in 
 the maintenance of the class that does reach them. The 
 booksellers reach the public by thousands of shops 
 scattered all over the kingdom, each with its own 
 window and counter to display its wares, each with its 
 own group of regular customers. These shops are more 
 effectual and far-reaching for the sale of books than any 
 advertisements the publisher can afford to issue. There- 
 fore, it is necessary to the publisher to maintain and 
 protect the class of middlemen who are doing that work 
 for him which he cannot do for himself. 
 
 The publisher has another reason for protecting the 
 bookseller. In a very important measure the booksellers 
 share the publisher's risk. They do not merely sell books 
 as books are ordered from them ; they speculate in 
 books ; they buy books in advance of publication at prices 
 reduced from the ordinary trade terms. Therefore they 
 
THE WAR IN THE BOOK WORLD 
 
 sre the publisher's fellow capitalists, and it becomes the 
 publisher's duty to protect his partners from injury both 
 from within and from without. 
 
 Thus, in stipulating that the book he sells to the book- 
 seller at 3s. 8d. shall be sold to the public at not less 
 than 4s. 6d. he is protecting the bookselling class from 
 possible injury at the hands of undersellers among them- 
 selves. These undersellers he regards as upstarts who 
 endeavour to attract customers by accepting lower profits 
 on a larger scale, and he can foresee no result of this 
 practice but the destruction of hundreds of existing 
 booksellers' shops and the substitution of a few monster 
 monopolies, and consequently a very serious diminution 
 in the prosperity of the book trade as a whole and a 
 grave discouragement to literature in general. 
 
 A COURT OF ARBITRATION 
 
 For fifty odd years the publishers have been fighting 
 this battle on behalf of themselves and their partners the 
 booksellers. They are still fighting it. Somewhere about 
 the year 1850 a number of booksellers in the heart of 
 London began to sell new books at a greater discount 
 than the publishers allowed. They had an enormous 
 success because they made a large business on a rapid 
 turnover. But the heart of London was practically the 
 only scene for such an enterprise. To the country book- 
 seller or the small bookseller the terms of the discount 
 houses were impossible. He could not sell at the same 
 price and keep a roof over his head. His customers 
 demanded the discount on pain of leaving him, and in 
 some cases he gave it, and so died hard. Many of his 
 class were thus crushed out of life, but not until they 
 had inflicted a heavy blow on the great discount houses 
 in London. These houses in their turn suffered severely 
 in exterminating the small and the country booksellers. 
 Seeing, therefore, the danger that the book trade ran of 
 serious injury and possible extermination, the .publishers 
 
STORY OF THE BOOK WAR 
 
 in the year 1852, adopted measures of attack upon the 
 discount houses, which they on their part strenuously 
 resisted. The result was a court of arbitration called to 
 try the broad general question whether free trade or 
 protection should be established as the governing principle 
 of the commerce in books. The verdict was against the 
 publishers. The attempt to establish the alleged excep- 
 tional nature of the book trade failed : the claim of the 
 publisher to dictate the terms on which the retail book- 
 seller should deal in his own shop was disallowed, and 
 entire freedom in the transactions between the publishers 
 and the retail booksellers was then established. 
 
 DECLINE OF THE BOOK TRADE 
 
 But if the publishers lost in the court of arbitration 
 they won in the court of Time. The years that followed 
 between 1852 and, say, 1895, proved conclusively that 
 by abolishing the protective principle in the sale of books 
 and by establishing unlimited competition the number of 
 retail shops was sensibly diminished. Whereas there 
 had been some twelve hundred book shops in London 
 and within a few miles of it, the number declined to 
 about one hundred and fifty, and even these few altered 
 the character of then- business. They were 110 longer 
 book shops pure and simple, but small-ware, stationery, 
 and fancy goods shops first, and book shops afterwards. 
 No longer did books line the walls, cover the counters, 
 and fill the windows. Children's dolls and air-balls, 
 ladies' purses and hand-bags, inkstands, and Japanese fans 
 usurped the places which knew books no more. The 
 bookseller was not to blame. He would rather have sold 
 books than knick-knacks if he had been able to do so 
 and live. It was not from choice that he had descended 
 from the estate of bookseller to that of keeper of a little 
 Moorish bazaar ; but he would tell you that as a dealer 
 in new books he could not exist, and that he was com- 
 
10 THE WAR IN THE BOOK WORLD 
 
 pelled to supplement his bookselling business with these 
 humbler auxiliary aids. 
 
 ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NET SYSTEM 
 
 Now, rightly or wrongly, the publisher attributed this 
 decline in the bookselling trade to the under-selling of 
 the discount houses. His remedy was the establishment 
 of a new principle called the " net book system," meaning 
 by that the publication of a book which had apparently 
 only one price instead of two, but was subject to discount 
 allowed to the trade. Thus a book published at 10s. was 
 ostensibly sold to the bookseller at 10s. to be sold to the 
 public in turn at 10s., the profit of the bookseller being 
 made out of the discount which was allowed to him by 
 the publisher. The publisher said in effect : 
 
 " I will sell you a book at 8s., but only on condition 
 that you sell it to the public at 10s. If you sell it for 
 less within a period which I shall prescribe, I reserve to 
 myself the right of not selling any more to you at lower 
 than the retail price of 10s." 
 
 Whatever may be thought of the validity of this 
 bargain between the publisher and tbe bookseller, there 
 can hardly be a doubt that under the new system the 
 bookselling business during the past ten years has revived. 
 More booksellers have come into existence, a greater 
 general prosperity has been maintained, and the smaller 
 booksellers and the country booksellers have been able 
 to live. 
 
 ATTACK OF THE " TIMES " BOOK CLUB 
 
 But now (in 1 905) enters the new factor, the Times Book 
 Club, which virtually repudiates the net book principle, 
 and harking back to the judgment of the old court of 
 arbitration in 1852 claims the right of almost absolute 
 free trade in the commerce in books. The character of 
 the Book Club is, first of all, that of a lending library. 
 It offers to lend books for nothing to persons who sub- 
 
STORY OF THE BOOK WAR 11 
 
 scribe to the Times newspaper, but it has a secondary 
 character as a bookseller and undertakes to sell books 
 second-hand at reduced prices at any time to be deter- 
 mined by itself. Thus the Times say in effect : 
 
 "That having bought a book it has become our 
 property, and we claim the right to lend it for nothing, 
 to sell it at what price we please, or to give it away if 
 we choose to do so." 
 
 " That any attempt on the part of the publisher to 
 decide what we shall do with the property we have 
 purchased is an unwarrantable intrusion on the principles 
 of free trade." 
 
 " That it is a preposterous injustice to bind the book- 
 seller who, being able to sell in large numbers, is willing 
 to sell at a small profit, to the disposal of his wares on 
 the larger profits that are necessary to the bookseller who 
 can sell only in small numbers." 
 
 "That books are in general too dear, the retail price 
 being out of all proportion to the cost of production, and 
 therefore the public has a right to have them 
 cheaper." 
 
 " That your net book system is an equivocation, in so 
 far as it conveys the idea that the retailer is deriving 
 more profit (since he often spends the difference in 
 advertising and circularising your books) ; an injury to 
 the public in the degree in which it denies them the 
 advantages of legitimate trade competition ; and, finally, 
 a grave injustice to the author, whose circulation is 
 limited in order to keep up a protective price." 
 
 Against this the publishers, the librarians, and the 
 booksellers have something to say. 
 
 The publisher argues as follows : 
 
 " Your Times Book Club does not exist either for the 
 good of the public or for the good of the author, but 
 merely to advance the interests of the Times news- 
 paper. 
 
 " You care not one jot about the book trade and you 
 are ruining it in order to advertise your paper" 
 
 A3 
 
12 THE WAR IN THE BOOK WORLD 
 
 PUBLISHERS' POINT OF VIEW 
 
 " We do not think that free trade principles are at all 
 applicable to the bookselling business. The author and 
 the publisher fix unalterably their own price, and thus 
 they are protectionists in the fullest sense of the word. 
 If, therefore, authors have protection, so ought those who 
 circulate their works. 
 
 " If your wild underselling is allowed to go on the 
 result will be the destruction of hundreds of retail book- 
 sellers from Land's End to John o' Groat's. We are 
 satisfied that it is quite impossible for you to carry on 
 your business of the Times Book Club upon a commercial 
 basis, and the only result of your attempt to carve out 
 for your newspaper a short road to opulence will be that 
 of reducing the number of books published, and of 
 paralysing the prosperity of the few that appear. We, 
 as publishers, will not trust you because we believe that 
 your profits are not such as can keep your head above 
 water in any legitimate way of business. 
 
 " Therefore, in justice to ourselves and our partners, 
 the booksellers, we shall be compelled to use every 
 proper means to put you down." 
 
 The librarians on their part argue in this way : 
 
 ' By offering to lend books for nothing to persons sub- 
 scribing to the Times newspaper, you are depriving us of 
 all those subscribers to our libraries who now read the 
 Times. 
 
 11 You are in the same way depriving us of all possi- 
 bility of obtaining subscriptions to our libraries from 
 persons willing to subscribe to the Times, in order to 
 obtain the advantages of free books. 
 
 " You are utterly disorganising and demoralising the 
 business in books by telling the people who have hitherto 
 paid for the use of them that they may obtain their 
 reading for nothing." 
 
 Then the booksellers, in their turn, have their objec- 
 tion, which is : 
 
STORY OF THE BOOK WAR 13 
 
 " That persons wishing for the Times and accustomed 
 to buy new books have to a certain extent ceased to do 
 so, and begun to content themselves with borrowing 
 books or buying them at second-hand. 
 
 " As a consequence of this, the trade in books has 
 never been so bad within the past ten years as during the 
 period in which the Times Book Club has been in 
 operation." 
 
 Such, then, are the arguments which constitute the 
 question at issue. Permit me, in a second letter, to 
 examine them in the light of everyday logic, and then, in 
 the face of the facts as I find them, after careful inquiry 
 from representative members of all the classes concerned. 
 
 POSTSCRIPT 
 
 I find it is objected fco the opening postulate of my first letter 
 (that this is, first of all, an author's question) that publishers are 
 sometimes the sole owners of the copyright on the books they 
 publish. It would never have occurred to me to answer this 
 argument in advance, because I thought it was long since dead 
 and buried. The fact is that the character in which a publisher 
 holds a copyright is not his character as publisher, but his char- 
 acter as author's representative. Copyright law recognises no 
 owner of copyright in a book, except the author of it, or the 
 person to whom the author assigns it. If that person happens 
 to be the publisher, he must not (any more than if the owner 
 were the publisher's aunt) confuse his risks as author's repre- 
 sentative with his risks as publisher, or make a single claim that 
 is based on both. 
 
SECOND LETTER 
 
 WHAT HARM IS THE " TIMES " DOING ? 
 
 IT is undoubtedly reasonable to expect that the lending 
 library should suffer in some degree from the scheme of 
 the Book Club, and that the present subscriber to the 
 Times should say to his librarian : " Why should I con- 
 tinue to pay two guineas a year to you for the loan oi 
 four books, when I can obtain the loan of three books 
 from the Times without paying anything more than I 
 now pay for the newspaper ? " 
 
 It is also reasonable to think that the libraries may 
 suffer in degree as persons may wish to subscribe to the 
 Times with the two-fold object of reading the paper and 
 borrowing the books, and perhaps buying them second- 
 hand. It is no less reasonable to think that the book 
 trade may suffer in the persons of those customers who, 
 having hitherto been accustomed to buy new books, are 
 content for the future to borrow them or to buy them 
 second-hand, because they wish also to subscribe to the 
 Times. Further, it is reasonable to think that the book 
 trade has been injured in the degree in which the Times 
 has sold second-hand books to the public cheaper than 
 the booksellers can sell new ones. 
 
 But it is not reasonable to suppose that the Book Club 
 can injure the libraries among those who do not wish to 
 subscribe to the Times, because such persons must 
 always find it cheaper to pay two guineas to Mr. Mudie 
 for the loan of four books rather than 3 18s. to the 
 Times for three books plus a newspaper they do not 
 want. Neither is it reasonable to suppose that the Book 
 Club can injure the sale of books among those who 
 
WHAT HARM IS THE "TIMES" DOING? 15 
 
 merely wish to buy second-hand books cheaper than they 
 have hitherto bought new books, inasmuch as they must 
 begin their operations by paying 3 18s. as a subscrip- 
 tion to the Times, a supercharge which makes the Book 
 Club a dearer and not a cheaper market. 
 
 THE INJURY MUST BE LIMITED 
 
 Thus the whole injury to the publishers, librarians, and 
 the booksellers would appear to be bounded, north, south, 
 east, and west by the desire of the public to subscribe to 
 the Times. Only that part of the public that is willing 
 to subscribe to the Times can read their books for nothing 
 or buy them second-hand at reduced prices. Such, at 
 all events, is the theory of the Times Book Club, and if 
 there has been any departure in practice, it can only be 
 described either as an accident or as an act of dishonesty; 
 and neither of these enters into my calculation or affects 
 my judgment of the principle of trade. 
 
 The injury inflicted by the Times Book Club must, 
 therefore, be limited by the appeal of a paper of that 
 character and price to the public who buy and borrow 
 books. If the appeal of the Times covered everybody 
 who wants to read books, the injury might be such as to 
 annihilate the booksellers. But is it ? The question 
 requires no answer. The scheme of the Times Book 
 Club (as long as the subscription to the Times is of the 
 essence of it) can never inflict a lasting injury on the 
 book trade, and if it is not founded on a basis of legiti- 
 mate commerce, the harm done must be both short 
 and slight. 
 
 But without inflicting a deep or lasting injury, the 
 Book Club has indeed done something. What has it 
 done ? It has undoubtedly injured the libraries in 
 respect of old subscribers to the Times and of persons 
 willing to subscribe to it. By injuring the libraries it 
 created a class of persons (the old subscribers to the 
 Times) who think they ought to get their reading for 
 -nothing, and it has enlarged the number of those (the 
 
16 THE WAR IN THE BOOK WORLD 
 
 new subscribers) who borrow books instead of buying 
 them. But I see no evidence that it has disorganised the 
 book trade by reckless underselling. I have heard of the 
 " slump " in certain new books, and, having carefully 
 inquired into the facts, I am satisfied that if the book 
 trade has been " struck " with the two books oftenest 
 quoted in this connection it is assuredly not because the 
 Times Book Club has undersold them in large numbers. 
 
 THE " TIMES" FIGURES 
 
 It would not have occurred to me as fair or right to 
 publish in proof of this statement figures that were given 
 in confidence at the office of the Times] but as the 
 Manager of the Book Club has now published those 
 figures for himself, anybody is justified in drawing what- 
 ever deductions seem necessary in order to make the 
 situation clear. The Times Manager is a singularly able 
 and enlightened man, but I confess that I do not think 
 it " clever " on the part of his colleague to publish such 
 figures as enable the public to see that, notwithstanding 
 endless and most costly advertisements, he has only been 
 able to sell second-hand copies of the most popular books 
 of the hour in numbers that are ridiculously small. 
 However, he knows his own business much better than I 
 do, and will not complain if I argue, from the facts as he 
 has published them, that so far as the decline of the 
 book business is attributed to the competition of the 
 second-hand book of the Times Club the publishers and 
 booksellers have made a great deal of cry over very little 
 wool. Indeed, I am satisfied, after inquiry all round, 
 that you have to look elsewhere than to the sales of the 
 Times Book Club for the undoubted slackness in the 
 book trade at this moment. 
 
 SCARB CREATED BY " TIMES" ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 Unhappily, you have not to look far. What the 
 Times Book Club has indeed done is, as far as I can see. 
 to scare the public from the buying of new book* by 
 
WHAT HARM IS THE "TIMES" DOING? 17 
 
 repeated statements that books are published too dear. 
 This is, in my opinion, the cause of the existing de- 
 pression in the book trade. The advertisements of the 
 Times have not so much sold books second-hand at 
 cheap prices as prevented new books from being sold at 
 all. It seems to me, from the author's point of view, 
 that one might properly say to the Times : " You are not 
 reaching the greater part of the public with your books, 
 but only with your voice, and your voice has frightened 
 them." 
 
 Now, it is just here that the interest of the author 
 strongly asserts itself, just here that he realises the im- 
 portance of the issue to his own profession. 
 
 AUTHOR'S PARTNERSHIP WITH BOOKSELLER 
 
 When an author arranges with his publisher for the 
 publication of a book, he usually makes it a condition 
 that part of the purchase price shall be paid to him in 
 advance. He claims this condition for one sufficient 
 reason namely, that his partner, the publisher, ought 
 to have a stake in the book that shall be equal to his 
 own stake (in the time he has spent and the expense he 
 has been put to in producing it), and not be tempted to 
 let the book drop when it has brought him a profit on 
 his own much smaller outlay in print and paper. The 
 author's payment takes the form of " advance on royal- 
 ties," and is often calculated on the basis of the number 
 of copies which the bookseller will speculate in before the 
 book appears. Thus the publisher shares his risk, as I 
 have shown, with the booksellers, and the booksellers 
 become (even more directly than the publisher himself) 
 the author's partners in the fortunes of his book. 
 
 Say, then, that in the case of a novelist of much 
 popularity the " subscription " of the booksellers is ex- 
 pected to be 20,000 copies, the advance payment made 
 to the author will probably be something like 1500, 
 and the booksellers of the United Kingdom have become 
 
18 THE WAR IN THE BOOK WORLD 
 
 his partners to that amount. There may be several 
 thousands of them, and his duty is the same to all the 
 duty of seeing that they have equal opportunities of 
 disposing of the goods he has given them. If from fault 
 of the book or fault of the publisher, from accident of the 
 hour or the unexpected domination of the public mind 
 by other interests, the goods do not " go," the author has 
 the unhappy certainty that his partners have lost while 
 he has gained, and that (other things being the same) 
 they will probably square accounts with him to his dis- 
 advantage when he comes along again. 
 
 Is THE " TIMES " PLAYING DOG IN THE MANGER ? 
 
 Apply this condition of partnership between author 
 and bookseller to the action of the Times Book Club, and 
 we see where the author now stands. If his partner, the 
 Times, by virtue of its new methods, its advertising, its 
 lending, and its under-selling, should be able to dispose 
 of the entire sum of the books to be subscribed, the 
 author's position would be undisturbed. He might be 
 sorry that many booksellers had been deprived of part of 
 the business by which they live, but his own earnings 
 would be the same. Instead of this, however, suppose 
 (what is much more probable) that of the 20,000 copies 
 of his book subscribed by his bookselling partners his 
 partner of the Times Book Club in London takes 2000 
 copies, leaving 18,000 copies to be disposed of by his 
 other partners throughout the length and breadth of the 
 land ; and suppose that by one means or another (right 
 or wrong, wise or foolish, fair or unfair) his partner of 
 the Times, without niching the customers of his co- 
 partners, scares away the public from his co-partners' 
 shops : What is the consequence to the author ? The 
 consequence is that his other partners, having lost their 
 outlay on the 18,000 copies they bought in advance, will 
 take one of two courses with the author. They will say 
 to him when he comes again : 
 
 " Either you must see that your partner the Times 
 
WHAT HARM IS THE "TIMES" DOING? 19 
 
 does not ruin our business, or we will buy no more ot 
 your books in advance of publication." 
 
 The latter course being the easier one, the booksellers 
 cease to subscribe for the author's book and order it only 
 as it is ordered from them, with the result that the 
 author loses his payment in advance of royalties, loses 
 the guarantee that payment gives him that his book will 
 not be dropped by his publisher, and loses the accidental 
 sales which come of the exhibition of a book on the 
 counters and in the windows of thousands of booksellers. 
 
 WOULD THE " TIMES " SCHEME KILL COPYRIGHT ? 
 
 There is another effect of the action of the Times Book 
 Club which shows still more conclusively how absolutely 
 the present struggle is an author's question I mean the 
 effect on copyright. The law which gives an author the 
 right to say that no one shall print or reprint his book 
 without his permission has points of difference from the 
 law which protects an individual in the possession of 
 ordinary property. Common law says to pirates in 
 general : 
 
 " You shall not take a man's watch and sell it as if it were your 
 own, but there is no reason why you should not make a watch for 
 yourself that shall be identical in all respects and sell it in the 
 open market." 
 
 Copyright law goes much further. It says : 
 
 " You shall not take a man's book out of his control and use it 
 for your own gain and to his loss. He shall be the only judge 
 of how his book shall be published and what earnings he shall 
 receive from it when it is sold." 
 
 Regarded from this point of view, what is the natural 
 seqi el to the operations of any trade firm which claims 
 the right to judge for itself of the price at which a book 
 shall be sold ? The sequel surely is that the author is 
 no longer master of the rights given to him by Copyright 
 law. When the Times Book Club reduces the retail 
 price charged to the public, it claims only to be curtailing 
 
20 THE WAR IN THE BOOK WORLD 
 
 the middlemen's profits, and if that were so in every case 
 the author would have no reason of his own to complain. 
 But the injury inflicted upon the publisher and book- 
 seller must, under the present system, be pushed on if 
 possible to the original producer, with the result that the 
 author will be compelled to accept a smaller royalty for 
 the book because it is sold to the public for a smaller 
 price. 
 
 ULTIMATE RESULT FOR AUTHORS 
 
 There is no escape from this inevitable consequence 
 except that of so altering the copyright law as to estab- 
 lish a uniform royalty based on the published price ; a 
 method beset with difficulties, as I had reason to find 
 when I had the honour to be sent to Canada to adjust 
 the Copyright law of the Dominion to that of the Mother 
 Country. But without some such regulation the action 
 of the Times in reducing the price of books on its 
 own initiative and at its own time can only result in 
 diminishing the control of the author over the value 
 of his copyright, inasmuch as he will have to accept 
 not what he would but what he must, until in the end 
 copyright ceases to be a right with any tangible value. 
 Hence, I see no escape from the conclusion that, if Copy- 
 right law is to be a realLy, not merely a name, the author 
 must be in a position to dictate not only the terms that 
 he is to receive from the publisher, but those which the 
 bookseller is to receive from the public. 
 
 TRUTH ON THE SIDE OF THE " TIMES" 
 
 Such will, I think, unquestionably be the ultimate 
 consequences of the operation of the Times Book system ; 
 and such in my view are already the results of the scare 
 which the Times advertisements have created. But there 
 is another side to the facts, another facet to the argument. 
 
 How does it come to pass that the advertisements of 
 the Times have scared the public and therefore injured 
 the sale of books ? There is only one answer for me 
 
WHAT HARM IS THE "TIMES" DOING? 21 
 
 because that part of them which says that books are too 
 dear has impressed the public with the sense of truth. 
 How do we know it has so impressed them ? We know 
 it by many signs of the time, and I must ask my 
 readers to permit me to describe them in a further 
 letter. 
 
THIRD LETTER 
 
 ARE BOOKS TOO DEAR ? 
 
 WE know the public has realised that books are 
 too dear by the ever-increasing number of libraries 
 (whether free libraries or subscription libraries) through- 
 out the kingdom. As Mr. Gladstone said : " You go into 
 the houses of your friends, and unless they happen to be 
 persons of extraordinary wealth, you do not find copies 
 of new publications upon their tables purchased for them- 
 selves, but something from the circulating library or from 
 the book club. What are these book clubs and circulating 
 libraries ? They are the expedients which under the 
 pressure of necessity men have adopted to mitigate the 
 monstrous evil they experience from the enormously high 
 price of books." 
 
 This was said in 1851, and if it was true at that time 
 it is doubly true now, when subscription libraries are to 
 be found in every large town, when almost every munici- 
 pality has adopted the Free Library Act, and when the 
 benefactions of Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Passmore Edwards 
 have resulted in the building of free libraries in almost 
 every village. Two theories there may be about the 
 effect of the Library movement on the commerce in 
 books: (1) That the more books are borrowed, the 
 less they will be bought. (2) That where the Free 
 Library movement is most active, there the book trade 
 is most prosperous and that the appetite for reading grows 
 by what it feeds upon. But if that is so, the argument 
 must operate in favour of the Times, and be set over 
 against the arguments that go against it. 
 
ARE BOOKS TOO DEAR ? 23 
 
 SMALLNESS OF BOOK SALES 
 
 Next we know that books are too dear by the dis- 
 graceful smallness of the number of English books sold 
 in relation to the population to which they are offered. 
 For the sale of new books the publishers of London have 
 perhaps the finest position of any publishers in the 
 world, not even excepting the publishers of New York. 
 They are at the centre of communication and the head 
 of intelligence for forty millions of people, and in imme- 
 diate touch with the many millions more in the numerous 
 colonies under our rule and using our own language. 
 What, then, is the proportion of books sold in relation to 
 the extent of this vast public ? Of the more popular of 
 high-priced books, that is to say, of books sold from a 
 guinea upwards, the sale of two thousand copies would 
 usually be large. Of books sold at ten shillings, the sale 
 of five thousand copies would be exceptional ; and even 
 of novels sold at six shillings, published price, the sale of 
 twenty-five thousand copies would in a general way be 
 enormous. Isolated instances of great sales of fifty, 
 seventy, even a hundred, or a hundred-and-twenty-five 
 thousand copies for a single book must be regarded as 
 phenomenal, and therefore outside the range of calcula- 
 tion. Thus it would appear that the proportion of any 
 single book sold in the United Kingdom, making no 
 allowances for the Colonies, ranges from one copy to 
 twenty thousand persons up to one copy to sixteen 
 hundred persons. Is it necessary to say more in order 
 to justify Mr. Gladstone's statement that the state of the 
 book market in England, except in so far that it is partly 
 mitigated by what are called " cheap publications," is a 
 disgrace to the present state of civilisation ? 
 
 WHO BUY THE SIX-SHILLING NOVEL? 
 
 It is always difficult and often dangerous for the man 
 who lives by writing books to talk of the commercial 
 aspect of Literature, but I will risk the possibility of 
 
24 THE WAR IN THE BOOK WORLD 
 
 giving offence in order to show that the class of book 
 which I know best is sold at a price that is too dear for 
 the public. I think it is well within the truth to say that 
 I had as much to do with the first " making " of the six- 
 shilling novel as any publisher whatever. And yet now 
 I do not know who buy this class of book or where the 
 undoubtedly large editions of some of them go to when 
 they leave the booksellers' shops. Going into the houses 
 of friends, I no longer see the six-shilling novel that has 
 been bought for home use, but find instead a book 
 bearing a library label. Going on a railway journey, I 
 no longer see the novel with the latest vogue in the 
 hands of travellers, but I see the old sixpenny reprints, 
 the current sixpenny magazines, and the sixpenny 
 journals. Only on going into the subscription library or 
 the free library do I find a new six-shilling novel, and 
 there I am told of a few copies bought and countless 
 applicants waiting to read them. 
 
 I cannot blame the public. What the public in 
 general does I do myself. Although immediately inter- 
 ested in the work of my fellow novelists, I rarely buy a 
 six-shilling novel, except when the name of the author or 
 the announcement of his subject has arrested special 
 attention. Where these attractions are not sufficient to 
 draw me I find the six-shilling novel too dear as a 
 speculative purchase. The public assuredly finds it so, 
 for the sale of 15,000 copies of a six-shilling novel 
 among a population of forty millions is now an event 
 of consequence. 
 
 So it comes to pass that though I am by way of being 
 in some sort the literary father of the six-shilling novel, 
 I hold that, except in isolated cases of great popularity, 
 it is now, as an article of commerce, nearly as dead as a 
 door-nail. Indeed, it would not wrong the truth too 
 much to say that it is worse than dead, since in the great 
 majority of instances it perpetuates a ghostly existence 
 on a sale of perhaps one copy to every forty thousand 
 possible readers in the United Kingdom. 
 
ARE BOOKS TOO DEAR ? 25 
 
 WHO BUY THE EXPENSIVE BOOKS? 
 
 The position in relation to the more expensive book is 
 by many degrees worse. Of the countless thousands who 
 could have wished to read Mr. Morley's " Life of Glad- 
 stone " when it appeared, how few were able to buy 
 it out and out ! And if the statement of the Manager of 
 the Times Book Club is to be accepted as indicative of 
 the general sale of Mr. Winston Churchill's Life of his 
 father, how very few of the great numbers who could 
 have wished to read that brilliant book were in a position 
 to purchase it for themselves ! I make no such charge 
 of " unbridled greed " against the publishers of either ot 
 the books I have named as a fellow author once urged 
 against authors in general by way of explanation of the 
 depression in the book trade. It is conceivable that, so 
 far from deriving a profit they may have incurred a loss, 
 but if that is so I should be disposed, without further 
 knowledge of the fact, to attribute the disaster to the 
 mistaken policy of publishing books that have a wide 
 appeal at a price which the public cannot afford to pay. 
 
 SUCCESS OF CHEAP EDITIONS 
 
 Of course it is argued that the success of the cheap 
 publications is no evidence of an unsatisfied desire on 
 the part of the public to read the good literature that is 
 published at higher prices. But I will hazard the 
 estimate that the best sales of cheap publications during 
 the past five years have been gained by the best books, 
 and that the non-copyright reprints of the great writers, 
 from Shakespeare down to Scott and Dickens, head the 
 sales in cheap editions. It is the sign- manual of the 
 man who waddles in the backwater of his century to 
 despise the taste of the people, to deplore the encroach- 
 ment of journalism into the realm of books, to say that 
 the classes who have only just been taught to read are 
 not yet educated beyond the enjoyment of the snippets 
 
26 THE WAR IN THE BOOK WORLD 
 
 and scraps which are always trifling, often worthless and 
 not infrequently pernicious But the facts are all against 
 these superior persons, and there is no fact more palpable 
 than that the small sales of new books is due entirely, 
 not to the want af appetite for good literature, but to the 
 high price that is charged for it. 
 
 Here, then, we come to the bed-rock of the effect pro- 
 duced by the Times advertisements. Why have those 
 advertisements injured the sales of books ? Because the 
 substance of their general contention is true, whatever 
 the errors of their details. I know nothing about the 
 high-priced books and shall not pretend to discuss them 
 as articles of commerce, but I do claim to know some- 
 thing about the book with which for many years I have 
 been intimately concerned the six-shilling novel and 
 I say without any hesitation whatever, that the price 
 asked for it from the public is out of all proportion to 
 its cost. 
 
 THE COST OF THE OKDINARY NOVEL 
 
 This book costs on an average, taking great and small 
 editions together, something like ninepence a copy to 
 produce. To advertise a successful novel a publisher 
 may spend twopence a copy, but where he knows his 
 business and the sales are in twenties of thousands he 
 does not usually spend so much. The author's royalties 
 on a six-shilling novel vary from 15 per cent, to 
 25 per cent., and in only one or two known instances 
 have novelists received more. This royalty is on the 
 published price, but usually with the condition that 
 thirteen copies count as twelve. Thus the payment of 
 the most highly paid of English novelists is about 
 Is. 4^d. per copy, so that the writing, printing, binding 
 and advertising of a popular novel has cost about 2s. 3^-d. 
 per copy. That is the gross outlay. Now for this book 
 the public pays 4s. 6d. a copy, the difference between 
 
ARE BOOKS TOO DEAR? 27 
 
 2s. 3jd. and 4s. 6d. being the profits divided among the 
 middlemen. 
 
 In this calculation I make no deduction from the 
 publisher's profits in respect of his office expenses, just 
 as I make no deduction from the author's earnings in 
 respect of the money he has spent in secretarial work, 
 and perhaps travel, in the preparation of his book. 
 These expenses in no way affect my argument, which is, 
 that a book costing 2s. 3^-d. to write, print, bind and 
 advertise is too dear when offered to the public at 4s. 6d. 
 
 I do not at this moment stop to inquire how these 
 profits of 2s. 2^d. are apportioned whether the pub- 
 lisher gets an undue share and the retail bookseller too 
 little. But I do say that this is the situation in which 
 the Times Book Club has found its opportunity, and here 
 the publishers must expect to find that the public is 
 with the Times. 
 
 The Times Book Club has thus far been impeded by 
 the high price of the newspaper that is coupled with its 
 enterprise, and it always will be so impeded, But if, 
 instead of the Times asking 13 18s. for the advantages 
 it offers, a halfpenny paper, asking 13s., had been able 
 to offer similar advantages, what would have been the 
 consequence ? Or suppose that any newspaper of great 
 circulation and low price, finding the Times scheme 
 impossible to its conditions, were so to alter the plan as 
 to step over the heads of the publishers and to eliminate 
 them, taking the place of both publishers and wholesale 
 dealers, and were to publish books at cheaper prices, 
 employing the booksellers throughout the kingdom as 
 their distributing agents, liberating them from the 
 responsibilities of partnership and the anomalous neces- 
 sity of buying a book as " a pig in a poke," and asking 
 them instead merely to sell books as they sell newspapers 
 on the principle of " sale or return " (that is to say, pay 
 for what they sell and send back what they cannot 
 dispose of), what would be the result ? The result, I 
 venture to think, would be that the newspaper, with its 
 
28 THE WAR IN THE BOOK WORLD 
 
 power of speaking to an enormous public every morning 
 of life, would become a gigantic Book Trust and com- 
 mand the whole of the profitable part of the English 
 book trade. 
 
 Well, what then ? Would the new condition be 
 better or worse for the author ? I must ask my letter 
 to follow me through another and concluding letter in 
 order that I may answer this most important question 
 of all. 
 
FOURTH LETTER 
 
 NEW LAMPS FOR OLD 
 
 WHETHEK it would be better or worse for the author that 
 a great Book Trust should be established depends, in the 
 first instance, on whether more books would be sold by 
 the Trust than are now sold by the booksellers. What 
 are the probabilities ? The probabilities are strongly in 
 favour of the Trust. To realise this it is only necessary 
 to compare the methods of the publishers with those of 
 the Times Book Club. 
 
 In order that a book may be sold it is the duty of the 
 publisher to speak to the public. What are his methods 
 of doing so ? The first of his methods is that of the ordinary 
 publisher's advertisement, and it needs no argument to 
 show that this has long ceased to be effective. It may 
 be dignified, it is assuredly not arresting. The grouping 
 together of a number of book-titles in what is called the 
 " Publishers' List " has apparently ceased to have any real 
 interest for the public. The best that can be said of it 
 is that it continues to be useful as a booksellers' and 
 librarians' catalogue. As a means of speaking to the 
 people, of telling the character of the work offered for 
 sale, it is generally a thing of nought, a channel of reckless 
 expenditure and a vehicle for the display of appalling 
 journalistic incapacity. 
 
 THE METHODS OF THE PUBLISHER 
 
 The next of the publisher's methods is that of his trade 
 traveller. The traveller speaks to the bookseller, who in 
 turn is expected to speak to his customers. But the 
 
30 THE WAR IN THE BOOK WORLD 
 
 traveller is usually no more than a walking circular, 
 without any further knowledge of the article he offers for 
 sale than familiarity with the sign-manual of the producer, 
 the ledger value of the author's name. And the bookseller 
 to whom the traveller speaks is (taken broadly) in hardly a 
 better position as a medium of intelligence for the public. 
 His shop has long since ceased to be the centre of literary 
 interest it once was. when the doctor and the clergyman, 
 the tradesman and the gentleman-at-ease, came to look 
 at the books that were hot from the press, to handle 
 them, to dip into them, and to buy them. In former times 
 the bookseller was an adviser to his own circle ,a guide to 
 his customers. Now he is usually nothing but a trades- 
 man on whose counters books are exposed for sale. The 
 demand for his books has to be created outside his book- 
 shop, the interest in the public mind which secures the 
 sale of books has to be generated elsewhere. 
 
 The third and last of the publisher's means of speaking to 
 the public is through the medium of reviews. By sending out 
 copies to the journals the publisher secures an expression 
 of opinion which if favourable is expected to promote the 
 sale, but if unfavourable to retard it, and as reviews from 
 one cause and another, are far from a calculable quantity, 
 it follows that a book may be injured in its sale before it 
 has any opportunity of speaking to the public directly 
 and for itself. 
 
 Such are the means by which the author, " the party 
 of the one part," approaches the public, " the party of 
 the other part," in the general contract of the commerce 
 in books. 
 
 THE METHODS OF THE NEWSPAPER 
 
 Now look at the methods that would be under the 
 control of a great newspaper Book Trust for every book 
 that it would put forth. Going into every household to 
 which its enormous circulation takes it, the newspaper 
 would speak as no advertisements, no travellers, no 
 
NEW LAMPS FOR OLD 31 
 
 booksellers, and no reviews could attempt to speak, 
 directly and, of course, always sympathetically, to the 
 public that buys books. There is, naturally, the obvious 
 objection that this might lead to the success of unworthy 
 publications and rob literature of the distinction and 
 dignity which is supposed to be secured by disinterested 
 criticism. It may easily be said that an unworthy book 
 might thereby be " puffed " into notoriety and secure a 
 sale which it might not deserve ; that the flamboyant 
 methods of the newspaper Trust would lead to sham 
 reputations and false prosperity. 
 
 While recognising the importance of the objection, I 
 am not at present concerned in discussing that aspect of 
 the question, but only the tangible aspect, the financial 
 aspect, the aspect of sales, and taking this view alone for 
 the moment, I can have no uncertainty as to which of 
 these methods would succeed best in selling books ? 
 We know the astounding success of the Daily Mail's 
 publication of its " part-book," " With the Flag to 
 Pretoria." We also know the amazing results of the 
 Times issue of the " Encyclopedia Britannica." There- 
 fore we cannot doubt that the newspaper Book Trust, if 
 once established, would sell more books than can possibly 
 be sold under the present publisher's system, and that 
 thus far the author's advantage would be consulted. 
 
 RESULTS OF A BOOK TRUST 
 
 But this advantage has its obvious limitations. The 
 newspaper Book Trust would become a great monopoly, 
 and after crushing the publisher it would seem to be in 
 a position to control the author also. The author would 
 then have only one market where now he has many. 
 He would be required to publish through one channel or 
 not publish at all. His only remedy and salvation would 
 be that of promoting a rival newspaper Book Trust, and 
 the strength of the rival trust weuld largely depend upon 
 the strength of the newspapers at the back of it. 
 
32 THE WAR IN THE BOOK \\ORLD 
 
 Against this there is an easy answer. First, that it 
 would be folly to kill the goose that lays the golden 
 eggs, and therefore the successful author, at all events, 
 would have nothing to fear but much to gain by the 
 establishment of a great book trust. Next, that an 
 author of great popularity, published by a newspaper of 
 moderate circulation, would bring his personal appeal to 
 the public to outweigh the disadvantages of his publishing 
 medium, and therefore he would always be master of his 
 own position by the strength of his support from the 
 public. Finally, that even if one of the results of the 
 establishment of a great book trust proved to be the 
 annihilation of the less successful authors, it would be 
 useless and foolish to ask the public to support a system 
 that is based on calculations of the welfare of the writers 
 they do not want. In short, it must be clear that, 
 whether the successful author would be doing right or 
 wrong to encourage a development of trade that would 
 annihilate his less fortunate brethren, the end would be 
 the same, namely, that he would secure an immensely 
 increased popularity, and that the public would get the 
 books they wanted at the price they wished to pay. 
 
 THE ONLY INTEREST OF THE PUBLIC 
 
 Now the promoters of the Times will certainly say that 
 such a development of their book club is outside their 
 scheme, beyond their desires, and beyond the reach of 
 practical things. But I hold that it is just here that 
 the strength of their appeal to the public is greatest. 
 For the publishers and booksellers to appeal to the 
 public for the maintenance of the profession of letters 
 as a whole is a useless effort. The only interest of the 
 public is to get the books they want at the cheapest 
 price they may pay. Nothing else can be expected to 
 enter into their calculation. No far-reaching view of 
 ultimate results to literature, no estimate of the loss 
 to learning, will weigh with them for a moment when 
 
NEW LAMPS FOR OLD 33 
 
 they are brought to the practical test of being required 
 to put their hands deeper into their pockets than would 
 otherwise be necessary, in order that books which in the 
 nature of things cannot have a great sale may be written 
 and published. 
 
 Neither is it a hopeful enterprise to appeal to the public 
 for the maintenance of a class if it is not absolutely 
 required. The great newspaper Book Trust, if it is ever 
 established, will assuredly eliminate one of the two 
 middlemen that go between the author and the public. 
 The extermination of a class is no light matter, and it is 
 not without consideration that I say that if books are to 
 be cheapened in any sensible degree and sales are to be 
 greatly increased, and if newspaper book trusts are the 
 best means the public can find to attain this end, it will 
 be the publisher who will have to go. 
 
 THE PUBLISHER A MODERN CREATION 
 
 The publisher as we know him now is a modern 
 creation ; he did not exist as such in England as recently 
 as the days of Dr. Johnson. Far be it for me to say that 
 since those days the publisher has not justified his 
 existence; that he has not done and is not still 
 doing excellent service to literature and the trade 
 of bookselling. He has suggested and fostered many 
 noble literary enterprises ; he has helped many worthy 
 authors to recognition and recompense ; and he has, 
 by wise and merciful methods of business, promoted 
 the growth of the bookselling industry in many 
 places. We must not undervalue the work of the 
 real publisher who through many years, perhaps many 
 generations, has gathered about his house a vast 
 machinery of book distribution, and is in some sort of 
 touch with the public and the press. But where the 
 question of the cheapening of books arises the public has 
 no use for that kind of publisher who, sitting in his 
 office, neither handles nor sees the books he distributes, 
 but merely permits them to emerge and stops a part of 
 
34 THE WAR IN THE BOOK WORLD 
 
 the proceeds midway between the producer and the 
 consumer, 
 
 THE LESSON OF THE BOOK WAR. 
 
 I take it, then, that the lesson of this war in the book 
 world is that books are at present too dear. Though the 
 Times should be beaten in the struggle to cheapen them 
 (whether for its own interests or from a desire to serve 
 the public), some other newspaper enterprise will surely 
 arise (less hampered by price) and it will succeed. If 
 the Publishers' Association wish to save themselves from 
 possible extermination they will promptly go to work and 
 cheapen books so as to bring them within the possibili- 
 ties of purchase by the immense population of our 
 kingdom and colonies, who are now borrowing books out 
 of libraries or not reading books at all. 
 
 In the pursuit of this task I venture to think they will 
 do well to drop once for all the undignified, unwise and 
 not altogether unequivocal note of their manifesto, with 
 its poor sneers at the Americanism which is supposed 
 to inspire the Times book scheme. They will also do well 
 to make themselves more familiar than they seem to be 
 at present with the conditions of publishing in that great 
 country with which they have such close business rela- 
 tions, where they have so many honoured colleagues, and 
 where the war in which they are now engaged has already 
 been fought out. The story of the struggle over the 
 departmental stores of America will provide them with 
 an admirable object-lesson, the moral of which ought to 
 be clear to every one, namely, that in spite of all pro- 
 tective corporations, what the public want they will most 
 assuredly get. 
 
 WHY NOT ARBITRATE ? 
 
 Meantime, this quarrel between the publishers and 
 booksellers and the Times Book Club is surely one for 
 arbitration. Let a Court of Arbitration be appointed 
 with some one at its head who has knowledge of books 
 
NEW LAMPS FOR OLD 35 
 
 and familiarity with the conditions of the book trade. 
 Lord Rosebery, for example, would be a very fit person 
 to preside. Let this Court of Arbitration discuss the 
 principle of protection on which the Publishers' Associa- 
 tion have founded their system of net books. Let it 
 say if there is anything peculiar in the commerce in 
 books that gives it an exceptional character. Let it see 
 what has happened since Lord Campbell's judgment in 
 1852 to make a change in the system of the book trade 
 necessary. And, finally, let it ask the authors to offer 
 an opinion as to where their interests lie ; whether with 
 high-priced books and the protection of the bookselling 
 business by the net system, or with the cheapening of 
 books and the adoption of new methods of reaching the 
 public. 
 
 HALL CA.INE. 
 
YC177459 
 
 C3 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY