Show stemmHAND 7 BOOKS Trade In Them Has An Enduring Prosperity r THE REVIEWERS PROFITS + THRIFTY ALLIANCES BETWEEN i THEM AND DEALERS + An American Author Who Has Traveled Trav-eled With the Best of the English Young Japanese Authoress In AmericaAuthor of Prisoners of Rope f Special Correspondence New York Dee 101 was talking the other day with a man who is pretty pret-ty familiar with all the mysteries of the secondhand book trade and he told me what was news to me and ti what I fancy will be nes to the public pub-lic at largethat the trade in secondhand second-hand books is generally profitable and often profitable by a large per cent It had rather seemed to me that in the course of years the secondhand bookshop book-shop had taken on a sadder and more struggling aspect and as several well k own and almost historIc establish 1 cents of the kind rere in New York 1 within the last two or three years < 1anged hands and undergone a sort of absorption I was about concluding that ttere was another once important industry passing out of existence under un-der the pressure of new commercial conditions But my authority assures I me that this Is not at all the case I The best part of the business is not I however in the selling of ordinary clothbound books In that one department depart-ment I infer it may have lost ground a little for ordinary books are now to be had of any dealer at prices so much below what was formerly asked in the firsthand shops that the Inducement Induce-ment to resort to the secondhand dealer ismuch less Rare bookssuch as books out of print and early editions and books of fine buildings are the secondhand dealers best commodities In these the margin of profit is always good and often it is large The rare books of course he can secure only now and then but the frequent sales of prIvate librariesgentlemens lIbra riesenable him to maintain a fairly constant stock of books in tIne bindings bind-Ings In no business does prosperity depend more on skill and shrewdness in buying And indeed you dont need to go often into a secondhand bookshop book-shop to discover that the men in the I business themselves understand this I very yell One who has seemed almost i I listless and indifferent In the work of selling may become if you propose to him to buy most alert and interested While rare books and books in fine I bindIngs are of best promise In the general way the secondhand dealer has a few chances In the ordinary books that he prizes above anything else in his trade The best of these Is a connection with some perIodical that maintains a widelyrecognized review department When the dealer can secure se-cure to himself from such a periodical most of the books sent in for review he considers himself almost a made man and I may add that perIodicals now quite often have an agreedupon relation with the secondhand man and send their review copies off to the J secondhand shop at a contracted percentage per-centage off the lIst price the moment they are finIshed with them Thus the tender young poet whose own relation to these things is so beautifully remote from anything commercial may if he will take to his soul the added agony that the reviewer who cuts him up so ruthlessly has the hardihood after pronouncing pro-nouncing his book of no account to carry it out and sell it We are apt to thInk of English authors au-thors as great men to run about anti American authors as great men to stay at home But after all this Is one of the many reflections that the facts when we come to examine them hardly justify I had this brought home to mea me-a few days ago in looking over Mr Hezekiah Butterworths new book on South America We dont especially think of Mr Buttenorth as a great AmerIcan traveler When his name is mentioned we first think of him as the author of New England storiesstones that he had not to fju from home to get his material for anad next we think of him as the man wino for twentyfive rears or more had an editorial connection connec-tion with the Youths Companion that must have been more or less confinIng But after all he has been a diligent and far traveler and hIs journeys have supplied the matter of many of his books Pretty near all parts of the western hemisphere except the tips and no small section of the eastern have at one time and another come under his ere But In spite of It all Mr Butterworth is pretty exclusively a man of New England He was born I In Rhode Island in 1839 he removed rather early in life to Boston and there he has had his home ever since Even the gravitation of the literary center from Boston to New York if it has gravitatedI have no desire to be dogmatic dog-matic on that point added to his fondness fond-ness for travel has not persuaded him to a change of residence A hadvertised title just now is that of The Prisoners of Hope It is borne by a novel recently published in England a novel of contemporary life and it is borne by a novel published In thIs country a novel of VIrginia colonial colo-nial life and between the two If you follow views and publishers announcements an-nouncements with any closeness you become pretty 1il1arwith it in time For myself I never see It wi J outthinking out-thinking of Anthony Hope and the Prisoner of Zenda and I have wondered won-dered whether in the minds of the two ladies who have chosen it for their respective re-spective creations this prevIous association asso-ciation of the 1orl1s Hope and Prisoner Pris-oner had not hwran influence The American Prisoners of Hope is I provIng a dIstinct success Everybody agrees that in it Miss Mary Johnson I the author makts her first appearance before the public with unquestionable distinction She writes if not of her own time at least of her dear native land In wrIting of Virginia She lives there now and shehas lived there most of her life but forquite a while she had her home here in New York Her father fa-ther a descendant of one of the old Virginia families was active here In large business enterprises but he suffered suf-fered reverses fInally and then it was that the family returned to VIrginia Miss Johnson lasalway been I understand un-derstand of a bcolt1sh Inclination with a settled Indifference to social diver ions and It is no surprIse to her friends that she should have taken to writing nor indeed that even her first book should be a notable one A young JlpaeSe woman writing successful stories 01 Japanese life in very good English may I think pass for something of a literary novelty Such a young woman we have among usjin Miss Qnoto atanna She has already I al-ready published stories In wellImown I periodicals and she is announced to i publish others during the coming year How much English Miss Watanna knew lJefore she came here I dont know but her own account of herself Is I that she has had very little school education I edu-cation and she has been in this coun try only something over a yEar In a few weeks she expects to bring out an English book She Is still ngonly 25and as she adds to literary 1 net the Instinct of address I dont set why she should not have a prosperous career ca-reer At present she is living at Chicago Chi-cago Few men have devoted themselves to literary pursuits with more energy and constancy than Mr Rossiter Johnson who placed the reading public under a special debt of gratitude twenty rears ago When he orIgInated the idea of a collection of the best short stories written writ-ten in English and carrIed it out so acceptably In the series of handy low prIced volumes entitled Little Classics Class-ics The work had a novelty then that it would not Have now for since then largely no doubt because the success suc-cess of Mr Johnsons projectsuch series have become common as bargain bar-gain gloves and neckwear It has been largely in compilation and editing that Mr Johnsons talents have been employed In work of this kind there is never much of general fame and yet only a man of rare equipment can do I capably At first he was a newspaper editor beginning the work In his natIve I town of Rochester N Y and contidu ing It at Concord N H But at 30 or I a little past he became associated with George Ripley and Charles A Dana in i editing the new edition of the American Ameri-can Cyclopedia and has held a connection con-nection with that publication ever since having been sInce 1883 the editor of the Annual which is issued at the end of each year as a kind of appendix to the cyclopedia proper Then he has edited no end of other books and aeries ae-ries and if a list were made of all the Important works he has had a share In producing it would be a long one and would testify to a degree of industry and a range and care of Investigation of which any man might well be proud But even all this has not fully occupied occu-pied 1lr Johnson He has In addition wrItten several histories and two or three long stories for young people His Phaeton Rogers everybody knows And even with these his time apparently appar-ently was still not all gone for he is the secretary of the executive council of the Authors club and is the man especially charged with attendIng to the business and affairs of that organization organ-ization There seems to me to be a special fitness In this last relation of Mr Johnson apart from any consideration consider-ation of the skill wIth which he undoubtedly un-doubtedly discharges It He represents in hImself what one may call the two grand dIvisions of literary Workfirst that of Investigating gatherIng and sifting and second that of pure com positIoland therefore in an association asso-ciation of literary men he Is most naturally the man to be looked a1 from all sides to keep the thIng together and I moving The fact of the payment of 2500 for a controlling interest in the English Saturday Review has several points of interest The Saturday Review has changed hands several times within a few years and In addition it has given sIgns in Its pages of findIng the tide rather set against it and of wanting I and not quite knowing how to recover its old place in the swim Moreover it has as property nothing but sheer good will It has no valuable press franchises like many a newspaper and no exclusive hold on a circle of popular authors like some of the magazines and It has no mechanical equipment The purchaser simply buys a namea trade mark This name it is true has been well before the English public for upward of forty years and under Its earlier editors the Review was highly prosperous But In the clear uncertainty uncer-tainty of the position It has held latterly latter-ly the sIze of the purchase price in the I last sale would seem to be indicative rather of the wealth of the buyer than of the real commercial excellence of the property The man of money who I craves the distinction of connection with a periodical is not an unfamiliar type even among us and there has f been good reason to believe that he was i a yet more familiar type in England In neither country however is he quite numerous enough to go round There are still In both lands a few embarrassed embar-rassed editors and publishers who would like to find some one on whom y they could unloadat least I suspect that there are The fact that Dr Samuel Smiles has lately rallled from an illness which all hIs frIends felt that he could not survive shOws from what a good personal per-sonal endowment of tenacity he wrote those books which have made him peculiarly pe-culiarly the prophet of resolute living In a few days now he will be 86 years old He lives in London and his manner man-ner of life is very qUiet and domestic He had already had a long and varied experience of life before he undertook to become the guIde of others by writing writ-ing his famous book SelfHelp Educated Edu-cated for a surgeon he practiced that professIon for some years then became editor of a newspaper at Leeds and then the secretary of a railroad company com-pany It was when he was 46 or 41 years old and after he had been no railroad rail-road manager for four OI five years that he wrote SelfHelp Like many another successful book It had to begat beg-at first for a publisher WithIn no year 20000 copIes of It were sold and literally liter-ally hundreds or thousands of copies have been sold since and It has been translated Into something like twenty languages Since Dr Smiles furnish the model any number of writers have tried to repeat hIs achIevement with books of practical advice on the conduct con-duct of life enlivened by anecdotes from eminent bIography but none of them has really suceeeded SelfHelp stands alone there Is no second of Its kind E C MARTIN |