expert in all matters pertaining to publishing and to the book market. He takes the author's business affairs entirely into his hands; utilizes the competition among publishers to sell the author's work to the highest bidder; checks accounts, estimates and sales; keeps the author's accounts for him; and charges a commission upon the proceeds. Here we have the author fighting as of old for his own hand. The only difference is that he does his fighting by proxy, hiring a stronger man than himself to deal the blows on his account. There is no question whatever of solidarity with his fellow-authors, and the whole system is a direct negation of the principle upon which the Society of Authors was founded.
On the other hand, both publishers and booksellers have long had the disposition, and to some extent the ability, to co-operate, and the efforts of both sets of men have unfortunately been in the direction of maintaining, if not raising, the price of books to the public. Since the formation of the Publishers' Association in 1896 the publishing trade has been strongly organized on the trade-union pattern, and its operations have been assisted by the less powerful Booksellers' Association. Books, like many other articles, are sold by the makers at list prices, and the retailer's profit is furnished by discounts off these prices. Under such a system competition among retailers takes the form of the sacrifice by the more enterprising of a portion of their discount. They prefer a large sale at a low profit to a small sale at a high profit. It is always the desire of the less enterprising to put an end to this competition by artificial regulations compelling all to sell at the same price.
Many attempts have been made to destroy freedom of dealing in books. In July 1850 twelve hundred booksellers within 12 m. of the London General Post Office signed a stringent agreement not to sell below a certain price. This agreement was broken almost immediately. Another attempt was made in 1852; but at a meeting of distinguished men of letters resolutions were adopted declaring that the principles of the Booksellers' Association of that period were opposed to free trade, and were tyrannical and vexatious in their operations. The Times took an active part in defending and enforcing the conclusions which they sanctioned. The question was eventually referred to a commission, consisting of Lord Campbell, Dean Milman and George Grote, which decided that the regulations were unreasonable and inexpedient, and contrary to the freedom which ought to prevail in commercial transactions. An attempt was also made in 1869 to impose restrictions upon the retail bookseller; but that also failed, mainly by reason of the ineffective organization which the publishers then had at command.
Feeling their hands greatly strengthened by the establishment of their Association, the publishers were emboldened to make another effort to put an end to reductions in the selling price of books. After much discussion between authors, publishers and booksellers, a new scheme was launched on the 1st of January 1900. Books began to be issued at net prices, from which no bookseller was permitted to make any deduction whatever. This decree was enforced by the refusal of all the publishers included in the Association to supply books to any bookseller who should dare to infringe it in the case of a book published by any one of them. In other words, a bookseller offending against one publisher was boycotted by all. Thus, what is known as the “net system” depended absolutely upon the close trade union into which the publishers had organized themselves. The Booksellers' Association signed an agreement to charge the full published price for every net book, but that body had no real power to impose its will upon recalcitrant booksellers. Its assent to the terms of the publishers merely relieved them of the fear of active opposition on the part of the wholesale booksellers and the large retail booksellers, mainly located in London.
All books were not issued at net prices even in 1910, though the practice had extended enormously since it began in 1900. But the principle was applied all round. In the case of such books as six-shilling novels the discount price of four shillings and sixpence was treated as the net price, and the usual penalty was inflicted upon those who dared to sell at any lower price, at all events within twelve months of the date of publication.
Owing to the fact that the net system was gradually introduced, net books and discount books being issued side by side with discount books in the majority, the full effect of the innovation was not immediately apparent. But the establishment of The Times Book Club in 1905 brought the system to the test. That Club aimed at giving to the readers of The Times a much more prompt and copious supply of new books than could be obtained from the circulating libraries. The scheme was at first very favourably received by the publishers, who saw in it the promise of largely increased orders for their goods. They obtained these orders, but then something else happened which they had not foreseen. Of the books they issued the vast majority were of only ephemeral interest. For a few weeks, sometimes only for a few days, everybody wanted to glance at them, and then the public interest dwindled and died. As the copies ceased to be in demand for circulation the Book Club naturally tried to take advantage of the buying demand, which always exists, though it is always repressed by the very high prices charged by publishers in Great Britain. The Book Club sold its surplus copies at reduced prices, and was obliged to do so, since otherwise it would have been swamped with waste paper. But the authors and publishers now rose in arms. Forgetting that they had been paid the full trade price for every copy, they said that the Book Club was spoiling the market, and that a wholesale buyer had no right to sell at the best price he could get. Hence arose what came to be known as the Book War, between The Times and the associated publishers and booksellers, the publishers withdrawing their advertisements from The Times and doing their best to refuse books to the Book Club. The conflict made a considerable commotion, and the arguments on both sides were hotly contested. It did not, however, alter the fact that the public will not pay high prices for books having no permanent value.
The Booksellers' Association, dominated by the large booksellers in London and a few great towns, made common cause with the Publishers' Association. Their interests were not affected by the net system, and they saw in the Book Club an energetic competitor. The small booksellers up and down the country are injuriously affected, because it is more difficult than ever for them to stock books on which there is a very small margin of profit, and the sale of which they cannot any longer push by the offer of a discount. Formerly, if a book did not sell at the full price, they could sacrifice their profit and even part of what they paid for it, thus saving at least part of their invested capital. Now if a book does not sell at the net price they have to keep it so long that it is probably unsaleable at any price and forms a dead loss. Hence they cannot afford to stock books at all, and that channel of distribution is blocked.
The cast-iron retail price is economically wrong. A bookseller with a large turn-over in the midst of a dense population can afford to sell at a small profit. He finds his reward in increased sales. His action is good for the public, for the author, and for the publisher himself, were he enlightened enough to see it. But a small bookseller in a remote country town cannot afford to sell at an equally low profit, because he has not access to a public large enough to yield correspondingly increased sales. Yet both are arbitrarily compelled to sell only at a uniform price fixed by the publisher. What makes the matter worse is that there is no cast-iron wholesale price. The small bookseller has to pay more for his books than the large one who buys in dozens of copies. Carriage on his small parcels often eats up what profit is left to him. As he is not allowed to have books “on sale or return,” he has no chance whatever; and as a distributing agency the small bookseller has become negligible.
It is not a necessary consequence of the net system that new books should cost the public more than before. If it has become the practice to sell a ten-shilling book for seven shillings and sixpence, and if that practice be thought objectionable, the obvious remedy, supposing publishers to have no other end in view, is to publish the book at the price for which it is sold. But the net system has been used to enforce the sale of the book
