Word: traded
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Random House chairman might call a cerfit of riches, the U.S. Government has stepped in to boost business even higher. Over the next five years, the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 will provide $500 million to school libraries for the purchase of printed materials and trade books-the term that differentiates general books from texts and reference works...
...Trade books make up the third and most uncertain domain of the publishing landscape. Still, 250-odd firms are now in this field-perhaps because it offers by far the most intellectual excitement, perhaps because it is so easy to enter. Anyone with a manuscript and a few thousand dollars can do it. In 1951, the Witkower Press, a one-man, one-book publishing house in Hartford, Conn., brought out Arthritis and Common Sense, and has since sold over 250,000 copies...
...Most trade publishers are of modest size. Grossman Publishers, for instance, tackled the market last year with only 13 titles, five in paperback. New Directions, another Lilliputian publisher, brought out 16. Even an established firm
...last year, Doubleday & Co. 650, Harper & Row 633, Prentice-Hall 449, Holt, Rinehart & Winston 345 and Random House 421. They all print text-and reference books, as well as children's books, which are dependable moneymakers. Their profitable textbook and paperback operations enable them to gamble on adult trade books-which as a rule lose money. Random House President Robert Bernstein estimates that 60% of adult trade books end up in the red, another 36% break even, and only 4% turn a decent profit...
Slow Route. Bestsellers are about as rare as the publisher's ability to pick them. Most trade books still get printed in runs of 5,000 copies or under, sell a few thousand copies over a period of three months, and then quietly die. The surplus is remaindered-sent back to the publisher, who is lucky to get 300 a copy from the remainder bookstores, which deal in such wrong guesses. Multiplied many times over, this is the true picture of the adult book business which, except for the appearance of the paperback, has not changed its ways appreciably...