Page:Cheap Book Production In The United States, 1870-1891 - Raymond Howard Shove (1937).djvu/16

viii of showing this development that the years immediately preceding 1877 are included in the following account.

After the period 1842-1845 there gradually grew up among publishers a gentlemen's agreement, known as "trade courtesy." The purpose of this agreement was to eliminate as far as possible the issuing of competing editions which in most cases, because of the lower price at which each succeeding edition was issued, and because of the smaller sale  for each edition was likely to be without profit to  any of the competing publishers. Under this agreement the publisher who first brought out a foreign author's book or signified his intention of doing so,  was not bothered by a competing edition. If a publisher introduced a new author into this country, he was considered as having an informal option on his  following works, though if the author turned out to  be a very popular one, the publisher's rights were not always respected. Despite occasional lapses the system worked out pretty well all around; publishers were able to increase both the quality and the price of books by foreign authors, the authors received  larger payments than they probably would have received without the system, and American authors were  benefited since the price of foreign books and  American books were kept more nearly at the same  level. The public was offered better made books than would have been possible under a system of unrestricted reprinting, but at a considerably higher price. New books generally sold at from one dollar to one dollar and fifty cents, but the more popular  older books such as those of Scott and Cooper could  be had in satisfactory paper covered editions at  twenty-five and fifty cents a volume. Under trade courtesy such publishing firms as Lippincotts, Harpers, and Appletons, were able to build lists of  publications which were doubtless very tempting to  adventurous printers or to young publishers trying to get a start.