The History of the Book in the West: 1800–1914

Volume IV

Stephen Colclough, Alexis Weedon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351888196
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia mondiale

This collection of published papers on the development of the publishing cycle from author to reader includes work by many of the leading authorities on the history of the book in the nineteenth century, including James Barnes, Simon Eliot, Kate Flint, Elizabeth McHenry, Robert Patten, David Vincent and Ronald Zboray. It contains examples of different approaches, reflecting the fact that scholars come from a variety of disciplinary traditions, such as bibliography, typography, literary studies, library studies and the history of science. The introduction provides an overview of both the historical context and recent work on the subject. The volume is divided into five sections: National Publishing Structures in America, France, and Russia; International Trade; Publishing Practices; Distribution; Reading. The collection includes work in the tradition of French book history which has focussed on the systems and structures of the publishing industry and Anglo-American book history characterised by detailed analyses of the publication of a specific title or the practices of an individual reader.

Part I
National Publishing Structures

[1]
The Rise of a National Book Trade System in the United States, 1865–1916

MICHAEL WINSHIP

During the years between the end of the American Civil War (1865) and the outbreak of World War I (1916), a distinctive national book trade system emerged in the United States of America. This was a period of growth for the nation, as well as for the publishing industry. Population nearly tripled, (from 35.7 to 102 thousand, 1865 to 1916), while the annual number of new titles and new editions grew fivefold (from 2,602 to 13,470, 1869 to 1915; but falling to 10,445 in 1916). More generally, the total value of the output of «magazines, newspapers, miscellaneous paper products, etc.» increased an astounding eleven times (from $30.6 to $352.7 million, 1869 to 1916).¹

Trade Organization

Faced with a nation that was expanding both demographically and geographically during these years, the challenge of reaching a national, and extensive, market forced the book trade to organize itself in modern business ways. Many of he major American trade publishers had been founded before the Civil War as family enterprises or limited partnerships and were run on a very much ad hoc basis. As the second, and in a few cases the third, generation of proprietors took charge of these firms, most were expanded and structured in more rational fashion. Growth brought a need for increased capital to what had traditionally been an undercapitalized business, and many firms were reorganized as private corporations during these years: J.B. Lippincott in 1885, the Harper Brothers in 1896 and again in 1900, D. Appleton in 1900, Charles Scribner in 1904, and Houghton Mifflin in 1908. With growth and incorporation, these firms also became structured internally with separate departments overseeing such functions as editorial, production, distribution, and advertising, or such special branches of the trade such as school books. These departments were overseen by a new class of professionals who acted as managers to their specialized staffs.²

Emblematic of this evolution, though hardly typical, was the fate of Harper Brothers, which remained a family firm from its founding in 1817 until century’s end, when it fell itself into financial straits after the Panic of 1893. In 1896 the Harper firm turned to J.P. Morgan & Co., one of the world’s leading financial bankers, for new capital. Morgan insisted on a reorganization of the Harper firm, with his bank holding most of its stock as collateral for loans. When the Harpers were unable to meet interest payments in 1899, Morgan insisted that an outsider be brought in to manage the firm. After negotiations with S.S. McClure, who had made his name as a international syndicator and magazinist, fell through, the Harpers turned to Col. George B. Harvey – a former newspaper editor who was now financing and directing street car companies – and with Morgans approval he was brought in as president and managing director. Harvey proceeded to take the firm through receivership and reorganization along more business-like lines.³

Other developments reflected the growth and increased complexity of the book trade. One was the on-going process of consolidation of the trade in a few East coast cities: predominantly in New York City, which also emerged as the financial capital of the nation, but also in Boston and Philadelphia. In the Midwest, Chicago became an important wholesale center, a result of its position as a node in the growing rail network, and many East coast firms established branch offices there. Many also had regular agents or branches in other cities across the nation. Furthermore, specialized wholesale jobbing firms, such as the American News Company and Baker & Taylor of New York and A.C. McClurg of Chicago, grew in importance during these years. A final significant development was the emergence of Publishers Weekly (1873) and related Bowker publications as semi-official organs of the book trade, providing a systematic record of new publications and a forum for exchange of information and opinion.

These developments did not, however, change what remained a fundamental characteristic of the American book trade, the fact that large trade houses remained general publishers, maintaining varied lists of publications covering a broad range of subjects and genres. A classified list of the publications of Houghton, Mifflin from 1905-1906, for example, divides the firms output into twenty-one categories, from «archaeology» to «household books» to «travel and description», many of which were further divided into numerous subsections.⁴ Although a number of firms did limit their lists – concentrating on such special fields as medicine and science (Lea & Febiger), agriculture (Orange Judd), or drama (Samuel French) – these specialized firms never gained the importance or prominence of the large general trade houses. Different trade houses were also recognized to have specialties – in areas such as novels (Harper Brothers), travel literature (Appleton), or outdoor and nature writing (Houghton, Mifflin) – but none of these firms could have been said to have restricted themselves to a limited number of areas or to have had exclusive control over any of them. Instead, these firms were open to works of all subjects and genres, competing with each other in what often proved to be an oversupplied marketplace. One wonders what J.P. Morgan, the architect of the great steel, rail, and steamship trusts, thought of such a way of managing a business!

Supplementing their book lists, many trade houses also published general interest periodicals, for the most part monthly literary magazines, which allowed publishers to communicate with readers directly. The names of these marines-Appletons Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Harpers Monthly, Lippincotfs Magazine, Putnams Magazine, Scribners Monthly – emphasized the close ties with the parent firms, and these periodicals served not only to showcase a publisher s writers but also, by means of serials, excerpts, reviews, notices, and advertisements, to encourage reader awareness of a firms publications. At century’s end, with the emergence of mass magazines that depended more and more on general advertising rather than subscriptions for support, these literary periodicals lost circulation, but not their cultural prestige, though those that survived eventually became independent of their parent firms.⁵

Trade Publishing and Distribution

Throughout the period, the central issue facing the book trade continued to be distribution. The problem of getting books out to a dispersed population was exacerbated by both national growth and book trade consolidation. First and foremost, trade publishers addressed this problem by relying on wholesale trade system that distributed books to a network of specialized retail book stores in cities and towns across the nation, These were supplied with books, both new publications and those from the backlist, at a discount – forty percent seems to have been standard – and with the right of return for credit should any book remain unsold after an established .period of time. Both the rate of discount and the terms for return were open to negotiation, and discounts particularly became a contentious issue within the book trade.

As the nineteenth century progressed, the book trade followed other United States businesses in shifting the manner in which its wholesale trade was managed. Prior to the Civil War, regular semi-annual or annual trade sales were held in the major publishing centers of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Cincinnati. These were auction sales, strictly limited to members of the trade, that attracted buyers and retailers from around the country to a central location and served not only as an important means of book distribution, but also as a place where credit could be regulated and information exchanged.⁶ Although the «trade sale» system persisted to the very end of the century, increasingly publishers also relied on commercial travelers (traveling salesmen) to visit individual retail bookstores across the country and take orders to be supplied by a firms branch offices and warehouse depots. Travelers were important not only for their role in pushing a publisher’s list directly to the retailer, but also for the information that they gathered on the state of the trade and the taste of book purchasers outside the major publishing centers. Nevertheless, their importance is difficult to assess, as in 1914 even the largest publishing firms employed only four travelers, who then necessarily had extensive territories to cover. Probably of greater importance as agents of distribution were the jobbers or specialized wholesaling firms, which also relied on traveling salesmen, branch offices, and warehouse depots to supply the publications of many publishers to the retail trade.⁷

Although the wholesale trade through specialized retail book shops remained the central means of distribution for trade books, other outlets for books needed to be found in order to reach the growing population. Indeed, although the number of book stores recorded in lists prepared for the trade in 1859 and 1914 grew in absolute terms from 2,090 to 3,501, the growth in population meant that the number of people served on average by each had risen from around 15,000 to 28,000.⁸ In many places, especially those too small to support a specialized book store, books must have only been available for sale as a small part of the stock in a general or department store, or at a newsagent, and again jobbers were consequential as suppliers to such non-specialist merchants. Libraries, both private but increasingly also public, also became significant during this period, a development signaled by the professionalization of librarianship, the formation of the American Library Association in 1876, and the Carnegie Corporations financial support of new free libraries.⁹

The infrastructure of wholesale distribution through book shops depended for its support on a stable discounting system, which was continually being threatened by the effort to reach broader markets by publishers, who often sold their books at a small discount direcdy to individual customers by mail or subscription, thereby competing direcdy with the jobbers and retail book shops that underpinned the distribution system. Department stores and other large retailers also began increasingly to distribute at cutrate prices remainders and books bought at trade sales in large quantities and deep discounts. At the turn of the century, with the formation of the American Publishers’ Association in 1900 and the American Booksellers’ Association the following year, major trade publishers and retailers endeavored to resolve this problem by agreeing to a net-pricing system. This established that certain books were to be designated as «net» books and would only be made available at a uniform retail price across the country, and required that publishers refuse to distribute to retail outlets that would not charge it. Novels were at first largely exempted from the net system, but after 1909 increasingly they too were published as net books. The resulting regularity and stability in prices was good for the book trade, but only at a higher cost to the consumer.

This attempt at price maintenance was quickly challenged by the department stores that maintained large book sections and in particular by R.H. Macy. Already in 1901 Macy, who refused to abide by the net pricing system, found that the publishers were attempting to cut off his supply. In retaliation, Macy sought out jobbers and other suppliers that were willing to provide him with book stock through roundabout means. In turn, publishers attempted to plug the holes in the net system by cutting off these firms, but ultimately the system depended upon voluntary cooperation and was legally unenforceable. Realizing this, in 1902 Macy turned to the courts for relief, and after a series of decisions and appeals in both state and federal jurisdictions, the U.S. Supreme Cou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Series Preface
• Introduction
• Part I National Publishing Structures
• Part II International Trade
• Part III Publishing Practices
• Part IV Distribution
• Part V Reading
• Name Index