COMMERCIAL LENGTHS

A recent attack on publishers and booksellers by a writer in the New York Herald, on the ground that they handicap true artistic development by insisting on books of about seventy-five thousand words, is partly justified, partly undeserved. For some reason, this particular size must be advantageous to the publisher-either for technical reasons or because the public prefers it and buys it most readily. In the latter case, the publisher is not altogether accountable.

As for the artist himself-there is no obvious reason why his work should end up exactly at seventy-five thousand words-and it is undoubtedly a hardship if the publisher holds out a standardized novel which everyone must imitate. Certainly this provides no stimulus for individual experimentation or for the development of new literary forms. But again, one must remember that experiments may prove costly to the publisher, and that the standardizing of sizes inevitably results in cheaper production and probably works to the public good. How these conflicting interests may be reconciled is not at once apparent.

There is, however, another field in which the demands of the publishers for uniform sizes is diametrically opposed to the best interest of the public, while somewhat favorable to the writers themselves. James Harvey Robinson has complained of the reluctance of publishers to accept works of a scientific or historical nature in the convenient-for the public size of from twenty to forty thousand words. Scientific writers, he notes, are equally reluctant to go to the trouble of condensing and reducing their material to this easily readable size. But a scientific book of seventy-five thousand words is rather a ponderous thing for the public. Of course, many perhaps most scientists write for their colleagues; in so doing they must present a great deal of evidence to absolve them from the drendful accusation of superficiality or chariatanry, but after all, the public deserves some consideration. The average adult is genuinely interested in history, in science, in everything which can be shown to influence him personally. He does not, however, take readily to textbooks, which are written for people who cannot help themselves and not for independent agents who read what interests them.

And the interesting of the general public in the performance of scientists and practical applications of their discoveries is an increasingly important field, too often neglected, and too often made difficult by the inflexibility of the publisher's demands. In this field, then, rather than in the department of fiction, does standardization do real harm. An appreciation by the publishers that a greater profit might be derived from selling a hundred thousand copies at one dollar than from disposing of three thousand at three dollars and a half might assist materially in alleviating the present distress.