Page:Cheap Book Production In The United States, 1870-1891 - Raymond Howard Shove (1937).djvu/15

Rh cents. The sale of these "Extras," most of which were foreign novels, was large for that time, twenty  to thirty thousand copies of a title often distributed by one publisher in two or three weeks. The regular book publishers, led by the Harpers, soon lowered their own prices, and offered handier sized  books at little more than the cost of the ungainly  quartos. With such competition the popularity of the quartos waned and two or three years later they were  discontinued.

Following the unsuccessful attempt of the literary newspapers to provide cheap literature, there was a gradual rise of book prices from the low  level existing from 1842 to 1845. Between this time and the 1870's there were only a few attempts to  publish good books at very low prices, none of which met with success.

The years from 1870 to 1891, with which this study is primarily concerned, represent a unique period in the history of publishing in the United States. During this period great quantities of books, mostly foreign fiction, were published in cheap editions at very low prices, generally without payment to the authors. The period so characterized closed in 1891 with the passage of the international copyright law: in this study the beginning of the period  has been set, perhaps arbitrarily, at 1870, although  the year 1877 marks the first great outburst of pirated books. Unrestricted publication of cheap pirated books did not come about without a more or less gradual beginning, however, and it is for the purpose