since 1915. During this time he has found opportunity to write several books, which have been published by the Penn Publishing Company including "Red Ben, the Fox," "Striped Coat, the Skunk," etc.

The new president entered into his responsibilities at the close of a record year for the company, a condition for which he has a good share of the credit, and he assured the stockholders that the progressive policies that have been developing in all departments would be expected to continue for 1926. Associated with the new head will be the following officers and directors: J. Bertram Lippincott, chairman of the Board.

Bertram Lippincott, secretary.

Walter Lippincott and Alfred C. Balch, vice presidents.

Ellis W. Bacon, treasurer.

Herbert M. Gaskill, William M. Widmer, J. Jefferson Jones and William M. Lednum, directors.

The name of Lippincott is one of the most notable in American publishing, and the business now enters into the third generation. The direct foundation of the business, is, however, even older than that of the Lippincotts, as J. B. Lippincott, the founder, after fourteen years of business on his own account as bookseller and publisher at Fourth Street and Race, bought out the then prominent firm of Grigg & Elliot, the leading imprint of its day in Philadelphia publishing, and the Grigg & Elliot business was the successor of Johnson, Warner & Company, an outstanding firm of Philadelphia booksellers and publishers, founded in 1793. This purchase of the big Grigg & Elliot firm when Joshua B. Lippincott was only thirty-seven years old was considered a tremendous undertaking for a young business man, but he had the energy and imagination to lift the business immediately into even wider areas of activity, and, besides publishing, there was a business of book jobbing, bookselling and the selling of stationery.

At one time when George W. Childs was a member of the firm, the famous Allibone "Dictionary of Authors" was taken over from the firm of Childs & Peterson. So large a part of the business of the firm had been in the south, especially in the field of jobbing, that the firm naturally faced a difficult situation at the out

Street, and, with the war over, this was built thru to Filbert Street, so that one large institution served all branches of the business.

In 1885, the business was incorporated for a million dollars, and, in 1886, on the death of Mr. Lippincott, he was succeeded, as head of the business, by his son Craige Lippincott, who had already joined in the firm's activities, and J. Bertram Lippincott who had entered the firm in '1876.

Some indication of the size and importance of the business built up by the founder is shown in an interview that Mr. Lippincott gave to a New York paper in 1879, at which time there were 2,500 titles on the Lippincott list, and the shipments of the firm consisted of 100,000 packages and 30,000 cases.

The importance of the Lippincott imprint can be seen by a survey of the present catalog. Among the enterprises notable in their fine conception and successful man

agement were Allibone's "Dictionary of Authors" in 5 volumes, taken over by the

New Slant on Books as Prizes

of Lippincott's "Gazeteer," on which fifty thousand dollars were invested before its publication in 1855, the undertaking of a "Biographical Dictionary," edited by Joseph Thomas, who had finished his work on "The Gazeteer," an enterprise that was started by sending Mr. Thomas to the Orient for two years to get together the Far Eastern part of the data needed.

To indicate the high reputation of the printing establishment of the firm of Lippincott, it should be remembered that it was asked to print Schoolcraft's "Book on the Indians" for the government, one of the finest publications of its day.

The firm owned, at one time, the rights to Webster's "Dictionary," but sold these out to G. & C. Merriam Company of Springfield, and then bought from Brewer & Tileston of Boston in 1876 the rights to Worcester's "Dictionaries" which it proceeded to develop further and put into a series of volumes. Chambers's "Encyclopaedia," published jointly with W. & R. Chambers of Edinburgh, is a notable undertaking and is now in a new revision.

Lippincott's Magazine was started in January, 1868. It was a very successful magazine emphasizing fiction. One of its famous successes was Amelie Rives's "Quick or the Dead," and it published many works. of "Ouida," Capt. Charles King and others.

When Phillips, Sampson & Company failed in Boston, the Lippincott Company was the highest bidder for the important rights to Prescott's "Histories," for which it offered a royalty of fifty cents a volume, with a six thousand dollars guarantee per year.

The firm has always been strongly interested in imported books, and in 1875 established a branch in London, which is still continued as are other branches in Montreal and Chicago, In the field of medical books it has also been active as have so many Philadelphia firms.

In 1899 the big building between Filbert and Market Streets was burned out and two years later, or just twenty-five years ago, the business was reestablished in its fine structure now being used and facing on Washington Square, the historic center for Philadelphia publishing.

of cooperation in book promotion is now going on thru the publication by the Charles C. Clark Company, a gift house, of a modern authors series of bridge tallies.

The idea is this:

For social card parties it has been found very desirable to have a systematic plan by which each player plays with every other player instead of moving along with somewhat the same group, and this has been accomplished by providing each guest with a talley which shall give her directions for playing at different tables on a plan so worked out that each person will meet every other if a certain number of games is played. The plan is called "EveryPlayer-Your-Partner System," patented by Charles C. Clark Company.

The connection with books comes in this

way:

The company has issued series of talley cards which bear the names of 12, 16 or 24 modern authors. The person who gets the talley card bearing, let us say, the name of Zona Gale, is Zona Gale for the afternoon, and her instructions on the inside of the talley card are that she is to play game 1 with Henry Van Dyke at table 5, game 2 with Kathleen Norris at table 4, game 3 with Irvin S. Cobb at table 2, etc. By cooperation with four publishers, Appleton, Doran, Doubleday and Scribner, the list contains authors from each of these publishing houses.

Extra connection and a really important connection with bookselling is that the Clark Company is having its salesmen suggest that these should be sold to gift stores with the suggestion that books should be recommended as prizes for card parties and that at the same time the travelers of the four publishers are showing the tallies and suggesting that the bookstore stock them thru the Clark Company and use them as a chance to build an interest in books for prizes.

It can be easily imagined that, when Edith Wharton and Harold Bell Wright are playing Henry Van Dyke and Gene Stratton-Porter, a really good competition may be worked up, with an incidental accompaniment of book chat.

ERHAPS in the larger cities which are visited quite regularly by the publisher's representatives, there is no actual need for the maintenance of a buying calendar even in a crude form. As a rule the salesmen rarely omit to remind the buyer about seasonal items in their respective lines, and even absent-minded purchasing agents are seldom allowed to pass any book for which possible demand may arise. In the smaller towns and cities, however, the buyer must more frequently depend upon his own initiative in the matter of ordering, and under this condition I would suggest that he or she should endeavor to maintain some sort of buying calendar to enable him to anticipate at least the ordi

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nary seasonal demands that will be made upon his store.

The thoroly experienced person may remember all of their little points automatically, but it seems to me that it might well repay anyone to make up some sort of a little memory tickler, either on a desk calendar or in a diary, to prevent any possible slip up in ordinary staple items.

With this in mind I am closing this chapter by appending an example of the sort of calendar that I think might prove useful. I don't wish to convey the idea that it covers every eventuality or phase of purchasing. It is merely a framework that can be adapted to any need and amplified to suit one's particular requirements.

C

Prosperity?

HICAGO had such a good book season that the Associated Press released a story to this effect copied into numerous metropolitan papers. The release said that, in spite of the radio and cabaret, the last six months of 1925 set a book sale record of 15% to 20% over 1924. The reporter had found that book merchants were pleased with the high character of the books being bought, that the sale of poetry and the best grade of juveniles had increased, altho the best selling

names in fiction did not mean as much as they had in previous years.

In printing the press release above referred to, the New York Times, which has lately been a pessimist about the book business, felt called upon to show that Chicago's optimism was misleading. Its editorial page said: "Before deciding just what the change means, it is well to remember that 1925 was notably prosperous and gave an unusual amount of money to spend. Larger purchases of books did not necessarily show improvement of taste, but merely greater ability to gratify old desires. But the sort of folk most likely to want to buy 'serious' books were not those whose resources were appreciably affected by the prosperity of 1925. How were they to buy biographies and the like when it was a poor specimen that did not cost at least $6 and a not very remarkable one that was in two volumes at $5 or more per? The publishers presumably know their business, but it

remains true that just why many of the new books cost so much is a dark mystery to the uninitiate."

That the Times apparently felt as tho the Chicago optimism needed a dousing before printing seems to be due to the need of justifying its own general pessimism on the book situation. New York, like Chicago, has had a record book season, and this must still further disturb the Times in its prophecies of gloom. While the price of books may be "a dark mystery to the uninitiate," it certainly need not be to editorial writers of the Times, who can obtain the figures very easily, and, in fact, have had them presented to them. Book prices have gone up in ten years from 50% to 60%, and the cost of making an individual book is up 75% to 80%. The New York Times has, in ten years, added 100% to its selling price as compared to the book publishers' 55%, and the Times advertising space, which is its chief source of revenue, has gone up by 150%.

The Times can throw still further light on the cost of biography, as it has been an important factor in raising the market value of prominent manuscripts. It paid $30,000 for the serial use of Thomas Marshall's "Reminiscences," and has been a high bidder on most biographical material of this kind, tho underbidder for the important "Diaries" of Colonel House. That is, the Times knows that biographical material is expensive and is willing to send the price higher. It can do this, because it has more than doubled its income, but it would be a little more difficult for the publisher to handle the situation when he has

added only about 55% to his income.

On the same day which saw the Times plaint on the price of books, Adolph S. Ochs, owner of the paper was speaking at the New York Advertising Club. "Existing advertising rates are too low," he said, and tend to cheapen the newspapers themselves. Higher advertising rates would necessarily mean a better content in the newspapers."

Annual Summary Number January 23

Does It Pay to Cut Prices?

TH

HE merchant who has cut the prices of standard merchandise has usually done it on either one of two theories, either with the hope of so increasing the total value of sales that the net result is bettered or to bring people to the store so that profits can be made in other departments. Today's menace in the booktrade comes from the latter type of merchandising, but in the early days of price-cutting it was done on the theory that business could thus be increased.

It is only with better cost keeping and more accurate understanding of business problems that the difficult task of increasing the sales volume sufficiently to offset a price cut has been accomplished. If a dealer in books should have a gross margin of one-third off after paying transportation, he would have to increase his sales by 161⁄2 per cent, in order to make up for the losses in giving a 5 per cent discount; he would have to increase his sales 381⁄2 per cent, in order to offset the losses of a 10 per cent discount; he would have to increase his business 691⁄2 per cent to offset the difference in margin caused by a 15 per cent discount. These figures would give any merchant reason to pause before entering into such an undertaking.

The Publishers' Weekly in this issue carries an interesting article by the president of one of the big New York department stores, who has been successfully developing a large business along modern lines. His frank criticism of "price-cutting for bait" indicates that he has found other merchandising practices of more value in business building.

The booktrade, which is so vitally interested in standard prices, should note that the canvass of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States is now going on and that every chamber in the country is asked to reply by February 1st to a questionnaire on the subject which has been sent out. Booksellers and publishers should not fail to get in touch with their local Chamber of Commerce and see what is being done The questionnaire con

on this matter. sists of five items: First, Should there be Federal legislation to permit the control of resale prices? The answer should be "yes."

Second, If there is such legislation, should it take the form of permitting contracts for the maintenance of resale prices on identified merchandise sold under competitive conditions? The answer should be "yes."

Third, If there is to be such legislation, should the restrictions be those outlined in the previous report of the Chamber of Commerce, dated October 5, 1925? The answer should be "yes."

Fourth, In addition to such legislation, should Congress enact legislation bringing under the law of unfair competition the cutting of declared prices? The answer should be "yes."

Fifth, Instead of such legislation, should Congress enact legislation bringing under the law of unfair competition the cutting of the seller's declared prices which results in misappropriating or injuring good-will attaching to articles identified as to their origin? The answer should be "no."