But even if financial conditions were such that these lending-library patrons could obtain their reading materials in bookstores, some serious considerations would still speak against this. Can a reader satisfy his own needs by ordering something from the bookstore every day, as he can from the library? Perhaps, but only if he were sure to get something decent; at the lending library, unsuitable books can be returned an hour later. The need for reading materials is simply too enormous – and once books are purchased, where should the whole lot of them end up? Only rarely is a book read twice here; one reads it in the first place to learn what’s inside it, or to be able to fall asleep. Besides, one can encounter the “Meyer family” described by Franzos* in countless instances here. Perhaps this will change over time; perhaps at some point in the future it will be a fashionable to buy novels just like paintings and sculptures.
Thus, on the one hand, the transformation of our social conditions has had an impact on the sales of novels; on the other hand, German publishers have also contributed substantially to destroying them. The price reductions that have become common since the early 1850s have thoroughly destroyed any illusion the reading public may have had about the monetary value of a novel. In the past, one regarded a private library collected over time as saved capital that, while not accruing interest, would keep its value, which might then be converted into cash in an emergency, or left to heirs. Moreover, in those days, novels often fetched better prices at estate auctions than they did at the original time of purchase. To put it briefly, one did not run the risk of seeing one’s possessions devalued overnight, and therefore, as we experienced, it could happen that an honorable cabinetmaker would buy the novels of Paul de Kock, little by little, initially intending them for entertainment and then, as he said, bequeathing them to his children.
The big question is whether the publisher of old, who sold his remaining stocks to the spoilage dealer after tearing out the title page and first sheet, was not acting far more in his own well-understood best interest than today’s publisher, who either throws these leftovers onto the market himself or via an export bookstore at knockdown prices. In doing so, the publisher has thoroughly destroyed an area of sales for his new publications, just as he is now partly ready to close himself off to sales to lending libraries by using paper of inferior quality.
* The article in question is probably: “Autorrecht und Leihbibliothek” [“Author’s Rights and Lending Library”] by Karl Emil Franzos, Börsenblatt für den deutschen Buchhandel, 1884, pp. 179-80, 217-19.
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