No other form of literary manufactory is so active as book-making for young people
of all grades and classes. Every Leipzig Summer and Winter Fair throws up a
countless number of books of this kind like a flooding tide.
Muir 1954:67In the second half of the twentieth century the Children’s Book Fair in Bologna, usually
held in April, became the chief marketplace for the buying and selling of rights, although
many children’s book publishers also visit the Frankfurt Book Fair in the latter half of
the year. While publishers in Germany and Scandinavia once depended on British
authors for a regular supply of fiction, this has changed. In 1994 it was reported that
Western Europe was no longer the rich source of partners for co-productions, and the
countries of Eastern Europe, Taiwan and South Korea had become the ‘growth markets’.
Until the final decade of the twentieth century, children’s books, like adult books,
were published at ‘net prices’: that is, the publisher stipulated the price below which the
book could not be sold. The Net Book Agreement of 1900 (revised in 1957) was devised
to ensure that booksellers who kept a wide range of books were not put out of business
by price-cutting of a limited number of fast-moving titles. Partly as a result of a trade
recession, this Agreement was abandoned in October 1995. School textbooks, by
contrast, were issued at ‘non-net prices’ because, in 1920, when the practice began,
such books were normally bought in bulk (one for each pupil in a class) and the risk to
the bookseller of holding large stocks was reduced. The bookseller or distributor was
able to vary the price in proportion to the costs involved, which varied with the quantity
ordered.
The ‘new’ trade of textbook publishing dates back to the 1870s, when primary
education in England became universal. Publishing of this kind—to meet a specific need
—could be very lucrative. Among others, Edward Arnold set up his own business in
1890, starting with nine English and arithmetic textbooks. Once a book was adopted in
schools, its sales were predictable for any number of years and the profit generated
could help subsidise other, more risky projects. For example, in the 1920s Basil
Blackwell in Oxford published a history series for elementary schools. Within two years,
the series was selling at the phenomenal rate of 1,000 copies per week and this enabled
the firm to publish children’s books of entertainment, including the children’s annual
Joy Street, to which Hilaire Belloc, G.K.Chesterton and A.A.Milne were contributors.
As methods of teaching began to change in the second half of the twentieth century,
so the pattern of educational publishing changed. Books of information— so-called
‘children’s books’ written to stimulate curiosity rather than teach by rote —became the
stock of the new school libraries which provided a source of reference for project work as
well as fiction to promote the enjoyment of reading.
Although children’s books for the most part are bought by adults rather than their
ultimate readers, two developments in the twentieth century brought books within the
reach of children’s own spending power. Book tokens, devised by the publisher Harold
Raymond in 1932, became a popular form of birthday and Christmas present.
Paperback editions, of which the first were Puffin Picture Books, edited by Noel
Carrington, and Puffin Story Books, edited by Eleanor Graham, were initiated by Allen
Lane in 1941. Chosen with care, and produced at pocket-money prices (6d, or 2.5p),
468 CHILDREN’S BOOK PUBLISHING IN BRITAIN