Came across a newspaper article today, entitled TOO MANY BOOKS, that ties in
with some of the topics we've been discussing here recently. I'll quote from
it:
"Many English publishers and booksellers take the view that the constantly
increasing production of books will bring about a crisis in the trade, which
will result in the bankrupcy of a number of firms, and a reduction of output
on the part of those publishing firms which survive the crisis."
The article then goes on to say:
"The English [UK] edition of a bestseller may reach a sale of 100,000
copies. Such a total is rare, though it is often exceeded in the United
States, where the reading public and the population are much larger than in
Great Britain, but sales of 50,000 are by no means uncommon in Great
Britain, and even sales of 10,000 will return the publisher and author very
satisfactory profits. Most books, and novels in particular, do not reach a
sale of 2,000, and many of them are below 1,000."
There's a quote from Faber and Faber that reads thus:
"Publishers survive by their education and specialised books, by their
possession of valuable backlists built up in healthier times, or by reprints
of established classics, or by the sale of cheap reprinted fiction to
holiday makers. Without the best-seller, it is safe to say that the
publisher in these days cannot possibly survive, if the main part of his
business is the supply of new general literature."
The full article is scanned here.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=HDkTAAAAIBAJ&sjid=K5cDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6588,1695497&dq=publishing+best-seller
Oh, yeah, it's from The Age, an Australian national, from January 1938.
Al
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