Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/471

Rh think of the kind specially to be encouraged, amounting to between twenty and thirty already published, and potentially to a much larger number, which would not have existed at all had there been in force the arrangement proposed; inasmuch as the publisher affirms that he would not have offered such terms, and I can testify that, in the absence of terms as tempting as those, authors would not have agreed to coöperate.

Q. (Sir H. Holland). Was Mr. King made aware that there would be a limited time within which each volume would be protected?

A. Yes, three years. He did not count upon anything like adequate return in that time. He says, "We are a long way off profit as yet on the series" (I think it is nearly five years since it commenced), "although I am convinced that ultimately we and the authors, too, will be well satisfied."

Q. That would raise the question which I wanted to put, whether in a case like that it would have been possible to publish a cheaper edition than the one now published?

A. Yes, in the absence of the author's twenty per cent.

Q. In the case which you have brought to our notice, may we assume that the cheapest form of edition was published consistently with fair profit to the author and publisher?

A. I think, certainly, with anything like a tolerable mode of getting up. Of course, you may bring down a thing to rubbishing type and straw paper; but I was speaking of a presentable book. They are very cheap for presentable books.

Q. That, perhaps, would be one of the evils arising from a system of royalty, that you would get extremely bad and incorrect editions published of a book, even in the first instance?

A. Very likely.

Q. Because it would be the publisher's object, if that system were thoroughly established, to publish such an edition that another publisher could not underbid him at the end of the three years; that would be, would it not, the general object of the publisher?

A. Yes.

Q. In this case I understand you to say that he could not, consistently with fair profits to the author and publisher, and consistently with its being a properly printed work, without which a work of that kind would be of very little value, have published a cheaper edition?

A. He could not.

Q. And yet he would not have been able to publish such an edition if he had to run the risk of being underbid?

A. Certainly not. He says, "I confess my idea, in proposing such terms as those of the 'International Scientific Series,' looked forward to a yearly increasing interest in scientific literature, and an ever-enlarging circle of readers able to appreciate books of a high class." So he was looking for a distant effect.