Books: Book Fair

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Public. Why a highly literate nation buys so few books is a problem that has baffled others besides publishers. In their classic studies of Middletown and Middletown in Transition, the Lynds noted that Muncie had no bookstore, no rental library except the new-book shelf at the public library; that while the circulation of library books doubled during the Depression, new books in general encountered ''creeping apathy." A possible explanation is that Americans love brightly-colored automobiles, flowers, bright clothing, scandals, fast-moving cinema, more than they like books. But the sale of novels like Gone With the Wind, which has now sold one copy for every hundred U. S. citizens, suggests that Americans will buy books under certain conditions. Another answer is the difficulty most people have in finding a bookstore where they can get the books they want when they want them. Although there are 4,000 U. S. bookstores, only 500 carry full stocks and buy directly from publishers. If all regular bookbuyers were organized into a club, it would be high-hat in the Deep South, slightly less in the Middle West, not exclusive in California, downright common in Boston and a mass organization in New York, where booksellers, publishers, authors, reviewers and readers are concentrated. The aggressive price-cutting department of R. H. Macy's department store does almost five per cent of the U. S. retail book business, ten per cent of New York's retail business. Boston's historic Old Corner Bookshop does about one per cent of the nation's retail book business and most of Boston's.

Third great reason for small U. S. book sales is the price of books. If a popular magazine is worth five cents, a novel's reading matter must be markedly superior to justify paying 50 times as much for it. In England the sensationally successful Penguin Books, started two years ago with a capital of $500 and a small order from Woolworth's, selling paper-covered books for sixpence, has sold nearly 10,000,000 books. In the U. S. attempts to sell new books for less than $1 have come to grief in the past, and the newest and biggest cheap book venture, Modern Age Books, offering well-printed, well-edited new volumes on labor subjects, politics, economics, novels with a social slant and detective stories at 35¢ to 75¢, is now being watched by old-line publishers to see if it can duplicate Penguin's success.