And Of This Advantage The Americans Have Not Been Slow To Avail
Themselves.
As consumers of literature they are certainly the most
conspicuous people on the earth.
Where an English publisher
contents himself with thousands of copies, an American publisher
deals with ten thousand. The sale of a new book, which in numbers
would amount to a considerable success with us, would with them be a
lamentable failure. This of course is accounted for, as regards the
author and the publisher, by the difference of price at which the
book is produced. One thousand in England will give perhaps as good
a return as the ten thousand in America. But as regards the readers
there can be no such equalization: the thousand copies cannot spread
themselves as do the ten thousand. The one book at a guinea cannot
multiply itself, let Mr. Mudie do what he will, as do the ten books
at a dollar. Ultimately there remain the ten books against the one;
and if there be not the ten readers against the one, there are five,
or four, or three. Everybody in the States has books about his
house. "And so has everybody in England," will say my English
reader, mindful of the libraries, or book-rooms, or book-crowded
drawing-rooms of his friends and acquaintances. But has my English
reader who so replies examined the libraries of many English cabmen,
of ticket porters, of warehousemen, and of agricultural laborers? I
cannot take upon myself to say that I have done so with any close
search in the States; but when it has been in my power I have done
so, and I have always found books in such houses as I have entered.
The amount or printed matter which is poured forth in streams from
the printing presses of the great American publishers is, however, a
better proof of the truth of what I say than anything that I can
have seen myself.
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