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Happy New Year!

HE day after Christmas, the day when the Publishers' Weekly will reach most of its readers, is a day peculiar to itself in the year's business. For a while it seems impossible that the aisles can be so free from crowds, that there is no pressure for immediate deliveries, no hasty telegrams for new supplies, no urgent telephone calls from last moment purchasers. And yet, almost before the quiet is noticed, there comes again the steady hum of the demands of the year-round customers, some of whom have held back their own individual shopping until after the gift-giving days have passed.

It is now just one week from New Years when every business man looks at his totals and compares them with those of the years before, and, if we are not mistaken, the totals for the year will prove to be of not unsatisfactory character, surprisingly so for a year, which, in American business in general, has not been marked by any great

progress.

The Publishers' Weekly has its own reason to express its appreciation of the many evidences of approval that have come to it from its steadily widening circle of readers. Year by year this circle has grown, and, as the weekly contents is planned to touch upon the broadening as

pects of American book distribution, we hope we help to interpret the unity of purpose which animates the trade and express that confidence which all feel in the future. May the confidence be registered year by year in the actual records of this most interesting of all businesses.

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Not Price Cutting?

HE current number of the Atlantic's Bookshelf carries an article on The Literary Guild of America by its president, Samuel Craig.

There are many points, of course, in his arguments as to the beneficent effects of the Guild on which other observers of booktrade developments will disagree, but the Publishers' Weekly especially points to the disagreement between one of Mr. Craig's statements and the general run of the Guild's advertising.

Writes Mr. Craig: "The Literary Guild is not a price cutting organization." A selection from the Guild's advertising campaigns reads as follows:

"The twelve books chosen will be sold

by regular publishers thru the bookstores at the usual prices from $2.00 to $10.00 each."

"You get 12 carefully selected books for the price of 6 haphazard ones."

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Ring Out the Old!

HE American booktrade has had several years of unquestioned optimism. Year by year sales of books have gone ahead until by the estimates of the government census the consumption of books has doubled in the United States since 1919. The competition of radio has not halted the developments. New types of bookstores have developed and old stores have enlarged. There has been experimentation of all kinds going forward. A promotion. campaign of the publishers has been of vast influence. European countries have begun to discuss our methods and copy them. Bookselling education is making progress. New publishers have developed rapidly while the old houses have shown notable development.

The booktrade might suffer, however, if it became too optimistic or ceased to continue to labor for more and better book service for all books to all potential buyers. To keep ourselves humble it may be well to re-read the analysis of trade conditions. as published by The Literary Guild. This new doctrine is going out to hundreds of thousands of readers and tho the Publishers' Weekly does not subscribe to its conclusions it ventures to reprint herewith typical excerpts of Guild advertising.

The Literary Guild Pays Its Compliments to Publishers and Bookstores "The guild book will always be as good as the regular edition, often better."

"The distribution and selling of books has stood still for hundreds of years."

"People who live in the bright sunlight of modern life do not care to stay in the dark ages of book buying."

"The book publishing business is the most conservative of any major industry in the United States."

"In the sale of books there is still the old cumbersome machinery. That is why you have to pay from $2.00 to $10.00 for a new book."

"What are you going to read this year— the first stray books that will come along or books of real merit."

"THE OLD WAY. Thousands of books all equally touted and praised. Small editions small sales-risks-losses. Bad distribution, etc. Results 1-High price you have to pay for new books. 2-Waste involved in buying books you don't care to keep. THE NEW WAY. Books carefully selected. Large editions, large sales -no risks, no losses, etc. Results 1-Half price you now pay for contemporary books. 2-You obtain only books you want to keep."

"Down with the Wall Between Writer and Reader."

"The city bookstore with its mountains of books spread before the bewildered readers."

"The price of books is so high that the average man cannot risk buying many bad ones to find an occasional good one.'

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QUARTER of a century ago the American booktrade, then in a period of chaos, decided to adopt the program which had been found effective in other book-producing countries, that of using a net price system as a better basis on which to build for sound American book conditions. Bookstores at that time had been disappearing rapidly or turning to the stationery business. Few new bookstores were appearing, and young men who might make the good merchants

of the future were advised by their elders to stay out of this confusion. After a long and difficult campaign directed by farsighted men of the industry, a measure of stability was reached.

It was due to the long fight by the department store of R. H. Macy & Company of New York that this program, so necessary to establishing a steady flow of books to all parts of the country, failed of complete acceptance. Suits in the New York State Courts were in favor of the

publishers' right to object to the pricecutting practice insofar as copyrighted books were concerned, but the Macy Company appealed to the Federal Supreme Court, which decided that the copyright statutes did not authorize the old Publishers' Association to combine in restraint of trade.

In spite of this decision, a vast amount of good was accomplished that might be said to have justified the great expense. A new spirit in large store merchandising became opposed to the use of books as bait, and, the menace of such cut-throat methods largely removed, many new stores went into the business and in the last decade the growth of bookstores has been rapid. In spite of the new increase in book interest, it is certain that the sales totals of the present-day could not have been reached without this new stability, and, as book prices must depend a good deal on the quantities printed, the public has been the gainer by these new conditions.

For a long time the closer competitors of Macy did not worry about the ten percent and penny discounts of that company and Macy had the advantage of the only possible benefit that can come from pricecutting, that of being the only one in the field. When all begin to cut nobody gets increased turnover. Macy's desire to be alone in the field has been many times evidenced, and on one occasion they even approached the publishers to ask their aid. in eliminating competitive price-cutting in a special field.

In the last few years the competitors of Macy have shown a restlessness under the continuance of this condition, and on two or three different occasions nearby firms, J. L. Hearn & Co. and Stern Brothers of New York, Abraham & Straus in Brooklyn, Bamberger's of Newark, and more recently Gimbel Brothers in New York and Philadelphia, have taken to the same practice with the feeling that failure to meet all competition would affect their general business. All have had equal reluctance in entering this competitive game, but the merchandise heads of the houses have decided that the general reputation of their business made it necessary.

Other firms have decided that the public would not be influenced by this penny-bypenny reduction and that they would do

better by resting on their established reputation as merchants who gave sound value. That the firm of John Wanamaker's with two large stores is selling at list prices is undoubtedly due to its feeling that its recognized initiative in giving the public good values and its standing in the field of American book distribution justifies it in keeping out of this petty competition and that perhaps its customers are too experienced in book values to be influenced.

The Macy Company makes every day claims in its advertising copy that its prices are always and in everything six per-cent lower than competitors' prices. No one experienced in retail matters believes this to be the case, as its main explanation of how this could be true in a competitive market is that it does only a cash business. Such reasoning does not carry full value with business men, as the cost of carrying charge accounts has been well established by the published figures of large firms.

The whole situation is of vital importance to the continued progress of American book distribution and calls for sober consideration. The more firms there are that use books as a means of furthering their other general business, the fewer people there will be who will handle books, thereby hurting the general market for books in the United States. The recent increase in price-cutting advertisements by mailorder clubs and firms has aggravated the situation by giving department stores more reason to turn to this method, but the trade as a whole believes that reason and better business practice will prevail. The fight of twenty-five years ago is too fresh in people's minds, and should be sufficiently clear in the public mind, to allow

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recurrence of those conditions. The way of progress in books as in life insurance or railroad fares is in the direction. of fair prices, the same prices to all. If general price-cutting starts such as existed thirty years ago, discounts must increase in order that bookstores may find a way to live, list prices must increase in order to make them possible, and all the old evils are upon us with loss alike to publisher, bookseller and public. Stabilized prices mean wider and better distribution of books. All book-using countries agree on this.