pleasure to me) is that the book should be enjoyed by children —and the more in
number, the better’ (Hudson 1954/1976:129). And by 1887 Macmillan felt confident
enough of the book’s selling power to issue a cheap edition at one-third of the original
price.
Often the pricing of a book is crucial to its chances of success. Put very simply, the unit
cost of production decreases as the number of copies goes up, but estimating the print
quantity accurately is difficult, since all the copies must be sold within a set period of
time. Unless this happens, the publisher has no chance of even recouping the costs of
production—the bills for which have to be paid often before the book is on the market. If
the publisher has not reached the point of making a profit, then the cost of keeping
copies in a warehouse (which has to be heated, lit and staffed) will become a drain on
cash resources, and the publisher has the choice of ‘remaindering’ copies (selling off at a
loss) or ‘pulping’ them, that is, turning them back into the paper from which they were
made.
Included in the price, as well as the cost of paper, printing and binding, selling and
distribution, and the bookseller’s discount (which, starting at 35 per cent, fluctuates
according to the quantity of books involved), is a small percentage for promotion. Unlike
adult books, books for children are rarely promoted individually: money will be put into
the production and distribution of a well-annotated, illustrated catalogue, including
backlist titles, or a publicity campaign (posters, competitions, displays of artwork) for a
group of books by the same author or with a similar theme.
The home market for publishers in Britain is self-evidently small: the British Isles
occupy a tiny part of the global map. Again by tradition, the market for books in the
English language was, until the 1970s, divided between those parts of the world that
once made up the British Empire, and the USA and its dependencies. A publisher in
London would have the exclusive right to sell the British edition of a book in the former
territory and lease to an American publisher the right to publish a separate edition in
the latter—and vice versa. Other parts of the world, notably Europe, were regarded as
‘open market’, where both editions could compete.
This agreement was challenged and declared illegal by the US State Department in
1976, as an anti-Trust act, and it has subsequently been eroded by the development of
indigenous publishing in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the Republic of South
Africa—although those markets are still important to British children’s book publishers.
Nevertheless, the inevitable diminution of the export market, where at one time at least
half an edition of a children’s book might be sold, while at home public spending on
books in schools and libraries has been cut back, has meant that publishers have had
to look for other ways to sell their lists —through book clubs, school bookshops or book
fairs, even by electronic transmission direct to the home.
An additional source of revenue for the publisher is the sale of translation rights in
books originated in Britain, and, in the case of picture books printed in colour, the
organising of ‘co-editions’—that is, printing several editions at once, only the text
(printed in black) needing to be changed into another language. As long ago as 1787 a
visitor to the Leipzig Book Fair, L.F.Gedike, wrote:
THE CONTEXT OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE 467