Annotations for Speaker: Hilda Livingston

Thank you, Mr. Collins. I'm going to sound a rather low commercial note in the discussion tonight because I'm going to talk about money, and I'm going to talk about readers. And I'm going to talk about who reads books and why they read them. And now that I've defined my terms, I will start.

What I want to talk about is a kind of revolution in merchandising that has induced a cultural revolution in reading in this country. And if you think this sounds pretentious, I hope I can convince you by the time I'm finished that it is, in effect, something that we're all experiencing and something of the utmost importance to everyone who wants to write or to everyone who reads.

The mass audience for books, for paper bound books, is an enormous one. But the mass audience itself is no new phenomenon in this country. Paper bound books have existed as early as 1800 in one form or another. Dime novels were paper bound books of their own that had tremendous vogue.

National magazines in the late 19th century and early 20th century brought the works of a great many very, very talented writers to a very wide audience, and newspaper syndication and book clubs have also brought books to a very wide audience. But the new and important aspects of paper bound distribution is that it has immensely multiplied the size of this audience and enormously varied the kinds of books available.

Paper bound book publishing as a kind of marriage of book publishing and magazine distribution, and I thought I'd tell you a little bit about how it works so that we can follow one another. Paper bound books are distributed like magazines. They are sold at 100,000 retail outlets throughout the country.

And as Mr. Collins said, this includes newsstands, drugstores, railroad terminals, supermarkets, and we even have a couple of funeral parlors on our list. Everywhere you find magazines and practically everywhere you find people, you'll find paper bound books. In 1952, 250 million copies of paper bound books were sold, and this represented about 1,000 titles-- 1,000 new titles.

Because of our discussion this morning, which painted a rather bleak view for new writers, particularly writers who were unfortunate enough to be aspiring novelists, I thought I would tell you that from where we sit in the paper bound book industry the news is very cheering indeed because as an industry, we published and sold last year almost 200 million copies of new novels.

And by new, I may be stretching a point. They were reprints, but they were contemporary novels that had been published within the past two or three years so that certainly a vast new audience has been built up for fiction in book form, and it's an audience of the most varied and catholic taste.

To describe the kinds of books that are available in paper bound editions would be a directory of the leading writers of the 20th century, as well as a great many of the older writers of our time. Fiction ranges from Louis Bromfield to Tennessee Williams. European writers include George Simenon, Moravia, Flaubert.

The nonfiction title in the paper bond industry is steadily increasing in importance. Nonfiction and paper bound books includes history, science, anthropology, philosophy, Shakespeare, the classics, et cetera. I don't want to sound too commercial, but the New American Library, which publishes mentor books which are entirely nonfiction of a rather high order, has sold 10 million copies of nonfiction in the past six years.

These were 35 cent books that people walked up to newsstands to buy, and the two most popular titles in this series are Patterns of Culture by Ruth Benedict, which has sold a half a million copies, and the W.H.D. Rouse translation of Homer's Odyssey.

But what does this all mean? These figures are impressive and substantial, but what does it mean to the writer particularly and to the reader? The thing that it means to me most precisely is a refutation that I long to make this afternoon when I listened to Mr. Little who talked about the aristocracy of art.

I'm perfectly willing to admit the aristocracy of art in the minds of the creators because talent is confined to a very elect few, but our whole publishing experience has proved quite conclusively that there is no limitation on the aristocracy who responds to good books.

We have had the most-- and all reprint published shows have had the most-- extraordinary success with truly good books at low prices. William Faulkner has sold over 6 million copies in 25 cent editions in the past five years. And this can be reflected in a whole stream of other authors of absolutely first rate-- James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Ralph Ellison, and George Simenon, and a great many others.

The fact is that although you hear a good deal about the so-called mass audience and the so-called class audience, I don't believe there is any such animal. The mass audience in this country, the audience that's serviced by paper bound books, are people who have the same curiosities, the same aspirations, and the same interests in their world as the people who can afford to spend $3 for books.

But there are two things that separate them. First, they only have a quarter to spend instead of $3. And secondly, they live in places where there are no bookstores and where most of the books available are available only through paper bound editions.

This brings me, again, to the housekeeping of book publishing, but it's something you have to understand to realize the significance of this revolution in reading. There are something like 2,000 honest to God bookstores in this whole country, and there are many, many substantial cities where you could hunt very, very hard and couldn't find a bookstore.

I had an experience like this in Youngstown, Ohio, about two years ago. I was kept waiting for two hours by a gentleman. This never happens, but it did that night. And so I decided I would case the bookstore situation. And there were two department stores in Youngstown that sold books. There is no bookstore.

And I went to the department store whose slogan was, "The Greatest department Store in Youngstown," because I thought I'd start at the top. And I asked for the book department, and it was in the third floor. So I went to the third floor, and I couldn't find it.

And they said, oh, it's in the gift shop. So I went to the gift shop, and they had six tables of books. Five of them were children's books. They had the best assortment of the Honey Bunch series that I've ever seen under one roof, and they had a wonderful collection of paper books, linen books, that infants can eat without serious after effects.

They had one table of illustrated books that could be easily given to anyone who couldn't read. They were art books, cookbooks, and the sort of book you might give a hostess whose tastes you weren't very sure of. So I said to the clerk, well, where's the current fiction and nonfiction? She said, oh, we don't get much call for that sort of thing.

So I said, well, what happens if someone in Youngstown wants to read a new novel? She said, well, they go to Cleveland. It's only 20 miles away.

Well, this is a very sad story if you're a writer, incidentally, and the only happy note in the whole thing is that the independent magazine wholesaler in Youngstown who distributes about 70% of the paper bond books available sold 700,000 paper bound books that year. So the people in Youngstown are reading books. They're just reading them at a quarter and not at $3, but they never read them at $3.

Mr. Sloane was absolutely right this morning when he said that the market for fiction has increased enormously in the past 25 years. It may have increased in different ways. The big emphasis may be now in paper bound books, but it's a very, very broadening category of people who are reading books.

Well, what does this vast mass audience have to offer a writer-- a writer of fiction, especially? First, an audience. It's my hunch that most writers write to be read. And in the mass audience, he finds this happy condition most immediately.

As you know, the average first printing of a novel, especially a new novel by an unknown author, may be as low as 5,000 copies. Well, the average first printing of a paper bound novel is at least 200,000 copies and sometimes goes as high as 500,000, so the immediate distribution of a book is far more penetrating in a paper bound edition than it is in a trade edition.

Secondly, it offers him an audience with a highly spontaneous response to what the writer has to say. It's an audience that's completely or almost completely uncluttered by literary cliches, conversational fads, bestseller lists, or what looks good on a coffee table.

Paper bound books really don't lend much social prestige to the people who has them in his hand. If you get a paper bound book the chances are you read it because there's really very little other aclad to be achieved by parting with a quarter.

And the third thing that it offers the writer is a burgeoning audience for the writer's future books. Many people have been seduced into reading books as a result of paper bound editions.

There are not only a great lack of bookstores in this country, but the whole convention of selling books-- and I do hope there are no booksellers in the audience, because if there are, this doesn't apply to Cambridge-- is one that is hedged around with restrictions.

Many bookstores resembles cathedrals of higher education. And for a person of little literary sophistication to enter such a place is frequently a rather trying experience. Well, this doesn't happen on a newsstand. You go to a newsstand for a pack of cigarettes, and you buy it. And something attracts you on the book rack, and maybe you pick it up.

You go down to get your favorite magazine, and it's all sold out. And you want very much to read something because it's raining, so you pick up a book instead. And once you have read a book and find out that it doesn't bite back, the chances are you're much more fair game for future books.

I promised not to tell this story because it wasn't very intellectual, but I think I'll tell it anyway because it demonstrates this point. We got a letter from a man in Tennessee, which has been used extensively and will sound like a handout. But it really happened and I read it. And I have a copy at home.

It said, "Just read The Odyssey. Boy, that guy Homer sure can write. Do you have any other books by him?" So I sat down and wrote him a long note about The Iliad. But this is a very, very interesting example of people who stumble on to reading in paper bound editions and are captivated and go on reading other books.

I have another example that's more significant, and that is Patterns of Culture had been out of print in the Houghton Mifflin edition for several years when we released it as a mentor edition. And a year after it had been available at $0.35, Houghton Mifflin went back to press with the second printing.

And they took a large ad in The Publishers Weekly to say that the only thing new added to this book's history in this year had been the paper bound edition, which apparently had attracted enough people to the book so that they were willing, after sort of sampling it at $0.35, to go out and buy it at $3.

Because I'd be deceiving you if I told you that the paper bound edition is as durable as a 35 cent edition or as easy to read or as attractive in many cases. So the paper bound edition has had in a large variety of instances a very salubrious effect on the same title at a higher price and more immediately on the author's future sales on future books.

Well, who reads paper bound books? I think I know, but I wanted to make sure, so I did a little research today. I went to Jordan Marsh to see Mr. Brame who's a very knowledgeable bookseller. And I said, who reads paper bound books? Can you pick a paper bound book customer when they come to the Jordan Marsh book department?

He said, well, maybe you could have eight years ago, but you can't today. So either books are getting better or people are getting worse. But anyway, everybody is reading paper bound books today. College students read them in great numbers. About 180 of our 450 titles a year is required reading in schools and colleges.

They're enormously used by the Army, the Navy, the State Department, housewives, college professors, businessmen-- there's as diverse an audience for paper bound books as there is for trade books. And what's the special appeal of the paper bound book to the so-called new reader of books?

First, I think the availability is probably the most important aspect. You can get a paper bound book as easily as you can a pack of cigarettes or a magazine. Secondly, it's a low price, which puts it in the reach of many people who have never been able to afford to buy all the books they wanted to.

And then, as I mentioned before, the extremely high attraction of the self-service operation, which makes it very easy for a person to look at a book get some idea of what's in it, and if he doesn't like it, reject it with the least loss of face. I heard something very interesting in this connection from a librarian in Washington just yesterday before I came down.

Libraries are using increasingly more paper bound books because it gives them a good deal more money to spend for reference books and nonfiction. But I meant they're using a great many more paper bound editions in fiction, particularly light fiction entertainment and that sort of thing.

Well, this librarian told me they have two copies of Daisy Miller in their circulating shelves, and that just for the fun of it, she thought she'd check the circulations on the two editions. They have a trade edition, and they have a paper bound edition.

In the past year, the trade edition, which is the cloth bound big book, went out twice. It was borrowed twice, and the paper bound edition was borrowed 19 times, so that, in a sense, the appeal and the kind cozy familiarity of a paper bound edition is almost as potent in a library as it is on a newsstand.

I would be doing you all an injustice if I pretended that the format which has helped spur the sales of paper bound books has not also been a hindrance. Paper bound books, because they sell themselves, have to contain their own selling story.

As you all know, paper bound books have pictures on their covers, and they usually have descriptions of what's in the book on the front cover and on the back cover. And we all know of the ghastly abuses of the artwork and copy which has appeared on paper bound books.

I think this has been brought out by sales figures, that not only are publishers taking a much more stringent attitude for these lapses in good taste, but in the long run, the reader who reads solely for the promise of sensation on a cover and fails to find it within the book doesn't respond quite so visibly to this misleading bait in the future.

As I said, one of the big excitements of the paper bound field is that it has proved in publishing something that has not yet been demonstrated as widely in other mass media, such as movies, radio, and television, and that is there is no such thing as a six-year-old audience.

The most extraordinarily profound books sell well, and the most trivial books sell well. But there is no kind of formula for success in fiction in paper editions. And if you think so, you are misguiding yourselves.

The amount and variety of offerings in the paper bound book field is infinite. It ranges from Mickey Spillane to William Faulkner. And Spillane sells well, and so does Faulkner. And sometimes, the same people read them both. And one is art and one is not. But this is not--

I haven't used a big word, and I've been here two days, so I thought I'd get art in, too. But this doesn't matter. The fact is they're both available, and people respond to both of them in vast quantities. And in the long run, the substantial endures, and the freakish expires. It makes a lot of noise, but when it ends, it's very dead.

This brings us to the problem of a reprint editor and his function and how he does it. Reprint editors select about 1,000 titles annually from the 10,000 that are published. They read titles and manuscripts. They read titles in galleys. They read advance copies. They read out of print copies. They frequently read books in foreign languages, which have to be translated.

And then based on their own publishing policies, they select the books that we will publish. The average reprint publishes between 80 and 100 books a year, so it's a very, very selective process to winnow down from the 10,000 books available the 80 or 100 you choose to distribute to this mass audience.

And what does the reprint editor look for? Again, I repeat there's no formula. There's no way of picking a book that will do well.

And I suspect it's very close to what Mr. Sloane may tell you about the trade editors' problem in what to publish because the big search in the reprint editor's mind when he reads all of these books is for the book that communicates to a reader-- not so much in terms of style, not in terms of format, not in terms of allegory or novel, but a book that has something pertinent to say that a reader will understand.

And it has been this true communication that has established the most substantial successes in the paper bound field. And that's why I think that it's so important for new writers or writers of novels to realize that art is good, but other things will also suffice a conviction, the genuineness of experience which Mr. Ellison has mentioned so eloquently.

And something to say that people reciprocate and respond to is what, in our experience, determines success in a very wide audience. There has been a good deal of experimentation in paper bound editions. I'm sure you've all seen New World Writing, Discovery, New Voices, The Partisan Review Reader, and there are probably many more.

These are books which tend to do what the little magazine does, but on a much larger scale. They offer literary hospitality to the new writer of talent, the novelist, the short story, writer, and the poet. And they use the vehicle of mass distribution to bring these people to a very wide audience because one of the enchanting things about this audience is that it doesn't matter whether the writer is well known or unknown or whether the book is new or old.

If they haven't read it before, it's new, and they're much more concerned about the author has to say than what is said about him. You'll hear a lot-- and if you are a writer, you may have even said a lot-- about the influence of the success of reprint fiction, on the kind of fiction that is published in trade editions.

Mr. Sloane could tell you much more about this than I can because he's a trade editor. But we have found this to be a much more minor note than is generally suspected. Certainly, there are prefabricated novels. The pulp writer has always existed in one form or another. Many of these formula novels may have a temporary one shot success.

But as I said before and the big thing that I would like to leave with you is that the enduring success is the Faulkner. It's the Caldwell. It's the Farrell. It's the Simenon and the Ellison and the writers of genuine conviction who write from experience who succeed in the long haul.

In the long run, magazine distribution, colorful covers, exciting blurbs, and low prices are all devices that bring many books to many readers. But what makes these books stay with the readers and what makes them win millions of other readers is what's in the book itself.

There's a phrase in publishing I can't stand because publishers always use it to describe something they can't analyze. It's called word of mouth. When a very peculiar book suddenly runs away and sells a million copies, they say, well, word of mouth did it. And when a very good book that gets a good deal of advertising promotion lays a big egg, they say, well, we didn't get the word of mouth started.

Well, I'm afraid I have to use it again in paper bound books because it's true-- it exists-- that all of the techniques that I've described rather briefly this evening that tend to package a book and bring it to the attention of the potential reader are just techniques. What makes the book a success and a real success is what's in the book itself.

And what's in the book itself can be an infinite variety of messages and experiences that can range from voice operas to tall stories. It can range from anthropology and philosophy to Alberto Moravia.

But it is essentially what is in the book that has developed-- wins friends for the book and that wins the friends for the author. And this, I think, is the important thing to remember about writers and paper bound books because it's perfectly true.

You can't sort of fool people, and the vast audiences that have been won for paper bound books in the past 13 years-- and this is a rather adolescent industry with lots of goosebumps still on it-- have been won because of the genuine merit of the majority of titles offered in this field.

When paper bound books first appeared on the American scene in 1939, they were a lot different than they are today. The early lists, if you look back on them, were largely mysteries and Westerns and popular bestsellers. There was very little experimentation done with new writers. There were almost none of the foreign writers, and there was entirely no nonfiction, except for the imported Penguin editions.

The character of the industry has changed enormously in the past 13 years because as of last year, 20% of the titles offered in paper bound editions were nonfiction-- serious nonfiction-- and they are substantial categories of plays, poems, short stories, humor, et cetera.

I'm sorry to belabor Mr. Liddell because I think he's so charming, but I do want to say that the aristocracy in art in the mass audience rests in the communion between the writer and the reader, and this is a communion in which we have the utmost faith for the future.

Now I finished my talk, and I want to tell you a newsflash that I should have started off with. We, as a company and as an industry and writers as a whole, won a great victory today. Six months ago, the chief of police in Youngstown, Ohio, banned 335 books from the newsstands because he said they were obscene.

I don't have the complete list with me, but they were a very representative selection of the best contemporary writing-- Faulkner, Steinbeck, Farrell, Moravia, Dos Passos, Simenon, and many, many others.

And just a few minutes ago before I got here, my office called me. The New American Library brought suit against the police chief. There were 11 of our titles on this list. We objected to a police officer taking this power of censorship into his own hands.

Our position was that the courts are the place to try the obscenity of books, and we don't think that police chiefs or ladies clubs or other well-intended people should take this rather important function to their own bosoms, so we brought suit. And it's been going on for six months.

And it was a great hazard because, as many people pointed out, we could lose. But I'm delighted to say that we won. And I think this is a great blow for freedom. Thank you.

I think I said today, Mr. Chairman, that I entirely accepted Mr. Lytle's view of the aristocracy. I just want the aristocracy to be as wide as possible. I say the whole tone behind this implies that you're not really interested in an aristocracy.

And I pointed out that the reading public for the 19th century novel was the whole middle class. It was a huge reading public. But it left out a great many people. I don't complain about that at all. I say society was fully representative society.

Well, should I talk into that? This? First of all, I want to apologize to Mr. Lytle. I didn't mean to take your name in vain. And is it right now, Lytle?

I'm glad we agree on the strict form of art as being superior. I certainly agree with you. And what I was trying to say was that in our experience, it is not only superior, but it is the one that endures the longest, which is an interesting influence in this mass distribution. But now I have so many notes from Mr. O'Connor that I'm not sure I'm going to get them all.

Well, I would like to disabuse you of my starry-eyed idealism. And I'm rather touched by it. It's a quality that's diminishing rapidly as old age overtakes me. And I'm glad we met tonight. Now your concluding remark, Mr. O'Connor, was something about a representative audience. I've never written a book. So I can say this with absolute impunity.

If I had spent seven years of my life or even one year of my life writing a book, which to me was a very valid experience and communication, I would not feel that an audience of 5,000 or 4,000 readers was a representative audience. And that, unfortunately, is the fate of many truly fine first novels that are published in this country today. We talk about defining terms a good deal during this conference. So I want to define a term that I think we should all accept or reject before we go much further.

I talked about paper bound reprints tonight. And a reprint, as you know, is simply a word-for-word rendition of a book that's originally been published at a higher price by a low capitalization publisher of good taste and high instincts. The only difference is it's cheaper. It's only a quarter instead of $3. And you can buy at a cigar store instead of Brentano's.

Now this particular revolution, if you like, in merchandising doesn't alarm me nearly as much as it does you because I have a good deal more faith in the judgment of more than 5,000 people. There's one thing that's always puzzled me in relationship to the discussion. Faulkner's name, I guess, has been mentioned more commonly than any other contemporary writers in the course of this novel conference.

And we all seem to be unanimously agreed that Faulkner at $3 is art. But Faulkner at a quarter is very, very dangerous. Well, I just can't accept that in a Democratic society and certainly not at Harvard University.

It seems to me that whole point of view, Mr. O'Connor, and I don't mean this at all personally, represents the kind of closed shop attitude toward art that has made it so difficult for the artist or at least the writer to survive successfully in our society. I don't think that Faulkner has been particularly corrupted by having made some money out of our editions. A matter of fact, he got the Nobel Prize after we had sold about 5 million. That may have had a corrupting influence. But he seems to be holding it pretty well.

You said something about, you're afraid that the people are going to get destroyed as writers because they sell a million copies or 6 million copies. A writer reads to be read by as many people as is written. Beethoven is no more vulgar today because millions of people listen to him on Sunday afternoons than he was 50 years ago when only a few people had gramophones. Art doesn't become corrupt because it's shared with more and more people because more and more people appreciate it.

This is a point of view that I'm a little confused about. And I very much appreciate enlightenment. Then you talked about the fact that you're afraid authors might get corrupted by money. Well, I'm afraid this is likely.

But authors have been corrupted before. They were corrupted by Hollywood. They were corrupted by the Book-of-the-Month clubs. They were corrupted by the slick magazines. I guess every time an author looks around, he's tempted. But in the long run, I think--

There will always be some authors who are not going to sell out. And they're not going to sell out because they're being appreciated by people with only a quarter to spend any more than they would have because they were appreciated by a handful with $3 to spend. I conclude.

Well, as you probably know, there are only two substantial original publishers now in paper bound editions. Others are trickling in. One is Gold Medal books and the other is Ballantine Books. And in effect, they cancel one another out pretty well because Ballantine Books have started out with an avowed, rather high-minded editorial purpose. And Gold Medal books have made no bones about the fact that they were packaging pulp in book form.

And I honestly don't know the answer to that question, Mr. Frohock. I wish we all did because it's one of the questions that are perplexing publishers and reprinters and authors the most these days. As Mr. Sloane has indicated and as I have said, there's a real problem in publishing fiction originally these days. The trade publisher takes an enormous risk. The author invests his time. And the sales are frequently frightfully disappointing.

There seems to be something rather unfair about a system that pays such dim rewards frequently for so much labor. On the other hand, the combination of trade publishing with reprints seems to have worked very, very well in most cases. But that's only 1,000 out of the 10,000 books that are published annually.

I haven't the vaguest idea of what the future will be. I do know that as of the moment, originals in paper bound editions have tended to be much more of the pre-fabricated book. And I'm sure this is idealism. And I know that it's very unpopular, particularly at literary conclaves.

But it's true that the poor books drive themselves out of the market because the poor books are read by people for whom the reading experience is a different thing from the person who relishes and is rewarded by a good book. And I would think that the best control we have in original publishing at paper is the same we have in reprint publishing at paper, the public who responds to the books.

One of the most fascinating books on our list, and this isn't a precise answer to a question, is Susanne Langer's book, Philosophy in a New Key, which had been published-- well, I think it had been imported in this country. It was published in Oxford, 1,500 sheets we imported. No, excuse me, there was a Harvard University press book. And heavens, in a first printing of 1,500 copies. And we did it as A Mentor Book in a very small first printing, 50,000.

We have sold about 220,000 copies of this very difficult book on philosophy. And no one would have thought that that book would have had that vogue or that success in a paper edition. But it had. And I think for every Gold Medal book, you find an equally encouraging example on the other side of the fence. But I think the future is a great mystery to me. How about you, Bill?