1. WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO? Answer: To act as The Literary Guild's recognized subscription agent. 2. WHAT COMMISSION WILL YOU ALLOW? Answer: Twenty-five per cent or $4.50 on each individual subscription. This is larger by nearly 10% than the commission allowed other Guild agents. 3. THAT IS LESS THAN I GET ON SINGLE COPY SALES! 4. 5. Answer: It is a larger net than you now make on any other $18.00 sale. You make no investment; pay no transportation or handling charges; you run no risk of loss; you stock no books; you do not add a cent to your overhead. Our twenty-five per cent is clear profit. WILL I GET A COMMISSION ON RENEWALS? Answer: Yes, as long as you take subscriptions for the Guild you will receive a commission on each annual renewal even though sent us direct. WHAT WILL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION PLAN DO TO MY REGULAR SALES? Answer: It will greatly increase the sale of all books in your store and especially the trade editions of the particular books on the Guild list. It will form book-reading habits among people in your community and thus greatly increase your customers. 6. HOW WILL THE GUILD PLAN INCREASE BOOK READERS? Answer: Through its campaign of national advertising (on a scale that has never before been done for books) and through intensive selling it will greatly increase book-reading habits. It fosters the habit of book-buying and establishing home libraries. It will do for books what subscription selling has done for magazinesgreatly increase the sale of single copies over the counter. 7. HOW DOES THE SUBSCRIBER PAY? Answer: We have two plans of payment: The Subscriber may pay $18.00 in full or $1.00 down and $3.00 a month for six months. Your commission is the same on either order. We make all collections. 8. HOW DO I GET PAID? Answer: We send you our check for $4.50 at once on the cash subscription and as soon as the first month's payment is made on the time subscription. 9. HOW WILL YOU HELP ME TO MAKE SALES? Answer: By sending distinguished literary people into your community to lecture before clubs and organizations; by supplying you with prospectuses and other literature which you can mail or hand out to your customers; by supplying you with posters and other display material for your store. Write for full details to THE LITERARY GUILD OF AMERICA 55 Fifth Avenue New York City The Scopes Trial Bryan and the Fundamentalists Clarence Darrow and the Modernists Women Evangelists Religious Questionnaires The time is just ripe for SINCLAIR LEWIS'S new novel ELMER CANTRY A great book about a group of people (To be published early in March.) :: $2.50 HARCOURT, BRACE & COMPANY 383 MADISON AVENUE, NEW YORK The Danish Book Trade Scandinavians Read Much More Than Americans Do. And They Have a Much More Highly Perfected System of Distribution. Iver Jespersen, the Son of One of the Most Prominent Danish Publishers, Is Over Here Now Studying American Booktrade Methods Iver Jespersen HE yearly production of books and pamphlets in Denmark numbers about four thousand, of which one thousand are belles-lettres. These books are sold not only in Denmark with its population of 3,000,000, but also in Norway with a population of 2,500,000. Formerly it was figured that one-fifth of the edition of a novel was sold to Norway, but this sale is rapidly declining owing to the strong movement for an independent Norwegian language; this is specially so with regard to children's books, because teachers object to confusing the child with two languages. Scandinavians read much more than Americans do. If a "best-seller" is sold in Denmark in 40,000 copies, it is bought by one out of every seventy-five inhabitants, while a sale of 100,000 copies in U. S. means one to eleven hundred only. So big sales are attained mostly by very popular English and American novels in translations; literary, or "high-brow" works, if successful, sell from 5,000 to 10,000 copies, but the average book of this type only from 2,000 to 3,000 copies. There is a marked difference, not known in this country, between the popular "best sellers" and the books of real literary merit by foreign or Danish authors. The popular novels sell at kroner 2.50-3.00 ($1.25-$1.50 according to the purchasing power of the Danish krone, actually 60c-75c), while the high-brow stuff costs 6-7-8 kroner ($3$3.50-$4); the practice of reprinting a work of the later type in a cheaper edition is practically unknown-at least, until it has become a classic-and enters a series of such. They all come in paper covers, but the best can be had in leather bindings also; textbooks generally in cloth, children's books both in paper covers and cloth. Popular books and juveniles have a colored picture on the cover, while the better-class works generally have decorative ornaments and borders only. There are about thirty-five publishers in Denmark, but only some fifteen of them are of any importance. Far ahead of all the others stands Gyldendal, who has all the classics, most of the important non-fiction and a very great part of the living standard authors. It had until a few years ago branches in Oslo, London, Berlin and New York; the foreign branches are now taken over by some publisher of the respective countries, and the Oslo branch is an independent Norwegian firm, owned and con |