the price of books: a word to book reviewers

The Price of Books: A Word to Book ReviewersAuthor(s): Gloria RoseSource: Notes, Second Series, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Sep., 1967), pp. 5-8Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/894775 .

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THE PRICE OF BOOKS: A WORD TO BOOK REVIEWERS

By GLORIA ROSE

4.

Two common fallacies that find their way into book reviews are that a new book would sell many more copies if it were less expensive, and that a new book could or should be less expensive than it is priced.

The first of these fallacies is based on a mistaken idea of the relation between the price and the sales of a book. When a publisher undertakes to publish a book, one of his first and most difficult tasks is to estimate the sales of the book. Once this estimate has been made, the publisher will decide how many copies of the book to print. He will then, in accordance with the size of the printing and the cost of production, assign a retail price to the book.

For each book there is a certain market. And although this market can be reached, it cannot be expanded indefinitely. (This is why advertising directed to the general public does not, by itself, sell books.) If a pros- pective buyer is not interested in a book, he will not buy it, no matter how low it may be priced. If he is interested, he will be influenced by the price of the book, but not so much as one might expect.

A slightly lower price does not lead to greatly increased sales of a book. Only a substantially lower price will increase sales, and this lower price is normally made possible only by a larger printing of the book, in the expectation of selling it. The most familiar example of this occurs when a book is reprinted in paperback form. It is not the paper covers, but the large printing, which accounts for the low price of paperbacks. From the publisher's point of view, the paperback reprint of a book is a very different proposition from the original book. The initial high costs of production and promotion were spent when the book was first published, and the chief risk has already been taken.

This brings us to the second fallacy-that a new book could or should be less expensive than it is priced. On the contrary, the cost of producing and distributing new books (as opposed to reprints) is so high that it commonly leaves little or no profit for the publisher. If a book has been costly to produce, it must bear a high price. The book may contain a large number of music examples, which required expensive blocks; it may include expensive plates; it may have presented special problems of typography; it may have been printed on high-quality, expensive paper.

The author lives in Iowa City, where her husband, Robert Donington, is a member of the music faculty of the University of Iowa. She has been Music Librarian at Wellesley College (in succession to Miss Helen Joy Sleeper), an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh, and a senior staff member of the National Book League in London.

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Publishing a book is a complicated affair, calling for the skills of many experts. The production staff of a publishing house may remain anony- mous to the general reading public, but the quality of their work is apparent in every book. Publishers themselves have made no secret of their profession. The classic account by Sir Stanley Unwin-The Truth About Publishing (7th ed., London: Allen & Unwin, 1960; first published in 1926)-was neither the first nor the last.1

Contrary to the general belief, publishers by and large do not make the price of a book any higher than they can help. This is not from altruism. Publishers think it is in their own best interests to keep the price of books low. Indeed, it has been argued that the price of books is kept too low for the good of the book trade.2 For publishers and booksellers, there is not enough margin to set against their inevitable losses. For authors, there is nothing approaching a fair return for their work. Nevertheless, publishers are reluctant to raise prices; they are only too anxious not to price their books out of the market, as they conceive it.

I should emphasize that I have been referring to new and general books, issued by trade book publishers. Scholarly books, in this country at least, are so uneconomic a proposition that they must be published predominantly by university presses. These presses cannot even cover their costs on many of the books they issue; they are able to exist only because they are subsidized by philanthropic foundations, universities, and individuals.3

Facsimile editions are another matter. The publishers of these do not have to pay royalties to authors. They pay nominal fees to editors, or no fees if the facsimiles are wholly unedited. The publishers of facsimiles do not have to pay printers for setting up type (except for Introductions), although they have other costs of production to pay. The publishers of facsimiles are not risking their money on totally unknown quantities, since they are issuing books which have at least once been successful. In these conditions, when some of the normal expenses in publishing have been reduced or eliminated, we may indeed wonder if the prices of some facsimiles are not unduly high. But facsimile editions do not attain a very large market and must often be produced in extremely small quantities, perhaps in editions of not more than a few hundred.

'Among the most interesting and informative are those by Sir Geoffrey Faber, A Publisher Speaking (London: Faber & Faber, 1934) and by Michael Joseph, The Adventure of Publishing (London: Allan Wingate, 1949). There is a particularly lucid and readable chapter on book production by David Bland in The Book World Today, ed. John Hampden (London: Allen & Unwin, 1957), pp. 106-19.

2See, for instance, Michael Joseph, "The Price of Books," in Books Are Essential (London: Andre Deutsch, 1951), pp. 39-53.

sSee the gloomy but significant Report by Rush Welter, Problems of Scholarly Publication in the Humanities and Social Sciences (New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 1959). Cf. also the vivid explanation, by David Home of the Harvard University Press, of how books are priced: Scholarly Books in America, VIII (April 1967), pp. 2-3.

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The manufacture of "prestige" facsimiles is contrary to the interest of scholars.4 Facsimiles are not originals; they have an honest purpose of their own, and they should not be glamorized by unnecessarily expensive and meretricious settings. At present, facsimiles range in value and use- fulness from the foolishly prepared, $350 edition of Maldeghem's Tresor musical5 to the exemplary and moderately priced editions prepared by Erwin R. Jacobi.

Primary sources are usually worth reproducing, and at worst can do no harm. The reprinting of secondary sources raises issues which are only beginning to be recognized. Scholarly books written fifty or so years ago are inevitably in need of revision, except in the case of a few classics which we are glad to have reprinted as they stand. But if there is to be revision, the main questions are how much to revise, how to incorporate the re- visions, and how to remunerate the revisers. Publishers have made some doubtful and unfortunate choices, with a widely varying sense of their responsibilities to scholarship. Questions are bound to arise about their policies of book selection. The reprinting of an earlier book, well known, but perhaps quite faulty and out-of-date, may seriously discourage both authors and publishers from undertaking a new and better treatment of the same subject.6

The book trade is full of economic paradoxes. Publishers derive less profit from publishing new books than from reprinting older books and

selling subsidiary rights. General booksellers can seldom make a profit only by selling new books. And authors, upon whom the entire book trade ultimately depends, can only in the rarest instances make a living by writing books. Thus none of the three groups is able to survive by serving its primary function alone.7

4See the criticism by Owen Jander in Notes, 23 (March 1967), p. 507. 6See the review by Michael Ochs in Notes, 23 (Sept. 1966), p. 145. 6Ochs, loc cit.: "What was needed was not a reprint but a new edition of those pieces not

elsewhere available, done from the sources by modern standards.... but with the publication of this reprint, the incentive may have been lost." Cf. Stanley Sadie, at the end of his very fine review of another reprint, in The Musical Times, 108 (April 1967), p. 331: "But it is not the book it should have been. I hope its publication will not inhibit anyone else from writing, or publishing, the study of his music which is now more than ever needed."

On the questions of book selection and revision, see also the reviews by William S. Newman, Notes, 23 (March 1967), p. 525; by John Stevens, Musical Times, 108 (March 1967), p. 234; and by Mother Thomas More, Musical Times, 108 (Feb. 1967), p. 139.

7The general economic picture is well presented by F. D. Sanders, "The Structure of the Book Trade," in The Book World Today, ed. John Hampden (London: Allen & Unwin, 1957), pp. 38-50; W. G. Taylor, "General Publishing," ibid., pp. 51-84; and George P. Brockway, "Business Management and Accounting," in What Happens in Book Publishing, ed. Chandler B. Grannis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), pp. 225-40.

The word "chaotic," with reference to nearly all operations in the book trade, recurs throughout O. H. Cheney, Economic Survey of the Book Industry, 1930-1931 (New York: National Association of Book Publishers, 1931). The 1960 reprint of this Survey (New York: R. R. Bowker) contains a new introduction by Robert W. Frase, who points out that although many changes have occurred in the American book trade, "the book publishing and distributing industries have retained much of their essential character."

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The book trade differs in many respects from other industries. A genuine bookseller, for instance, will carry a certain stock of what he considers to be good books, although there may be little or no local demand for them. A bookseller will place a special order for even one

copy of a cheap book which a customer may require. (How many retailers in other lines will do this even for expensive items?) On the other hand, when a book is sold, a much larger share of the selling price goes to the bookseller than to the author.

In view of these considerations, book reviewers should think twice before attacking the price of a book. Certainly there are books which do not seem on any grounds to justify their high prices. It is worth remem-

bering, however, that only the publishers know what it has cost to produce a book, and what other factors have governed its price. And no one knows, although the publishers have had to estimate, how many copies a book will sell. It is also worth remembering that books, both for what they cost to produce, and for what they have to offer, are among the cheapest goods in modern life.

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the price of books: a word to book reviewers

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