1940: Book Publishing

The most interesting fact about the American book trade during the past year was the lack of startling developments of any kind. Despite the war in Europe and despite the American presidential election, an event in itself likely to upset business, the book trade had what can only be described as an entirely normal year. Business was as usual, with definite, if not huge, increases in both publishing and retail bookselling branches of the trade.

Several developments which had been predicted as inevitable results of the war failed to materialize to any appreciable extent. For one thing, the public showed no greater interest than during the preceding year in books of specifically topical interest — works analyzing and interpreting the war and current events. Such books found a market, but there was no pronounced trend toward this type of publication. And anticipated increases in the cost of paper and other materials used in the manufacture of books proved not to be serious.

It has been said the war in Europe had little effect on the book trade; and this is largely true. Although there was a good deal of discouragement among retail booksellers in May, following the invasion of the Low Countries, actual reports from both publishers and retail booksellers revealed that this trend, if indeed there was an adverse trend, did not last long. The sales manager of one of the largest trade book publishers in the country expressed the opinion that booksellers presenting a black picture of business were consulting their own ideas of what the reactions of business should be, rather than examining their own sales records. Reports from the dealers bore him out, for it was almost amusing to hear from one retailer after the other. 'If I didn't look at the record of sales for May, I would say that the war had eliminated to a large extent people's interest in books. Our records, however, show an increase for May of almost 10 per cent. I don't understand it.' Whatever pessimism existed, however, was dissipated by the time the fall season came around.

There is a deplorable lack of accurate sales statistics for the book trade, but it is possible to formulate fairly significant guesses, which indicate that in general both publishers and booksellers wound up the year with substantial, if not spectacular increases, in business.

Statistics.

American trade book publishers during 1940 issued a total of 11,328 new books, exclusive of pamphlets. The largest previous figure for any year since 1900 was 13,770 titles published in 1910, but that figure includes an unspecified number of pamphlets. Consequently the figure for 1940 may very well be the largest number of titles ever recorded in this country. Production for 1940 indicates an increase of about 6½ per cent over the figure for 1930. The largest increases were in technical books, which rose 5½ per cent, poetry and drama, which advanced 13 per cent, and fiction, which was up by 12 per cent. Children's books picked up, too, after a drop during 1939, though the production of children's books was still below the high point of 1938 when there were 1,041 titles. The main losses were in the classifications of science, domestic economy, games and sports, geography and travel and general literature, the last being a division covering many kinds of books not otherwise easily classified.

'Best Sellers.'

It was interesting that sales of fiction led sales of all other kinds of books during 1940, the first year in some time in which this situation has obtained. It is true that in 1939 the fastest selling book was a novel, John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath,' but in general non-fiction has held the top place in sales for several years. The novels of 1940, however, outsold the non-fiction best sellers. This is true although some of the leading novels of the year came out late. The two most spectacular novels, from the standpoint of quick sales, that the book trade has seen in some time, were Ernest Hemingway's story of the Spanish civil war, 'For Whom the Bell Tolls,' which came out on Oct. 21, and Kenneth Roberts' historical novel of the American Revolution, 'Oliver Wiswell,' published on Nov. 22, or just about a month before Christmas. Of the Hemingway book, 440,000, including book club copies, were printed before the end of the year. More than 300,000 copies of the Roberts novel were printed, and this book did not have the benefit of book club distribution. Other successful novels included Richard Llewellyn's 'escape' Welsh story, 'How Green Was My Valley,' sales of which totaled 176,280 copies; Jan Struther's novel of an average English woman, 'Mrs. Miniver,' which sold through bookstores 92,000 copies, plus about 150,000 copies distributed by the Book-of-the-Month Club; 'The Family,' by a newcomer, a White Russian pseudonymously named Nina Fedorova; 'Stars on the Sea,' an historical novel, also of early America, by Van Wyck Mason; 'Night in Bombay,' by Louis Bromfield; Christopher Morley's 'Kitty Foyle'; 'The Nazarene,' by Sholem Asch; and Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath.' The latter three were also best sellers during 1939.

The non-fiction list was headed by Osa Johnson's 'I Married Adventure,' a book of straight, romantic adventure, which sold over 200,000, including a large number of book club copies. The range of American reading interests is somewhat indicated by the other non-fiction best sellers. Only three of them had much to do with current events, 'Days of Our Years,' by Pierre van Paassen, carried over from the previous year; 'Country Squire in the White House,' by John T. Flynn, a little volume brought into being by the presidential campaign; and 'American White Paper,' by Joseph Alsop and Robert Kintner, which was typical of a marked tendency to issue timely material in large pamphlet form. Otherwise Americans were reading, in the non-fiction field: 'How To Read a Book,' by Mortimer Adler; 'A Smattering of Ignorance,' by the radio favorite, Oscar Levant; 'Land Below the Wind,' a book about Borneo, by Agnes Newton Keith; and others, including 'Bet It's a Boy,' an obstetrical novelty told entirely in pictures, by Betty Bacon Blunt.

The trade as a whole was more interested than usual in various plans whose purpose was to enlarge the general market for books in the United States. The one which attracted most attention called for the formation of an American Book Council, similar to the organization which has been prominent in the British book trade, and for a cooperative campaign of publicity for books in general, the campaign to be financed by all branches of the book business. None of these plans came to anything during 1940. See also LITERARURE, AMERICAN.