Dammit, I smelled a ruse but you STILL suckered me. First Pick-up, now this!
Charlie.
-------------------
charliewilliams.net
--- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Allan Guthrie" <allan@...> wrote:
>
> 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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