The Building of a Book

Part 1

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THE BUILDING OF A BOOK

A SERIES OF PRACTICAL ARTICLES WRITTEN BY EXPERTS IN THE VARIOUS DEPARTMENTS OF BOOK MAKING AND DISTRIBUTING

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THEODORE L. DE VINNE

EDITED BY FREDERICK H. HITCHCOCK

THE GRAFTON PRESS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Copyright, 1906, By THE GRAFTON PRESS. Published December, 1906.

DEDICATED TO READERS AND LOVERS OF BOOKS THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY

FOREWORD

"The Building of a Book" had its origin in the wish to give practical, non-technical information to readers and lovers of books. I hope it will also be interesting and valuable to those persons who are actually engaged in book making and selling.

All of the contributors are experts in their respective departments, and hence write with authority. I am exceedingly grateful to them for their very generous efforts to make the book a success.

THE EDITOR.

ARTICLES AND CONTRIBUTORS

Page

INTRODUCTION 1 By THEODORE L. DE VINNE, of Theodore L. De Vinne & Company, Printers, New York.

THE AUTHOR 4 By GEORGE W. CABLE, Author of "Grandissimes," "The Cavalier," and other books. Resident of Northampton, Massachusetts.

THE LITERARY AGENT 9 By PAUL R. REYNOLDS, Literary Agent, New York, representing several English publishing houses and American authors.

THE LITERARY ADVISER 16 By FRANCIS W. HALSEY, formerly Editor of the New York Times Saturday Review of Books, and literary adviser for D. Appleton & Company. Now literary adviser for Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York.

THE MANUFACTURING DEPARTMENT 25 By LAWTON L. WALTON, in charge of the manufacturing department of The Macmillan Company, Publishers, New York.

THE MAKING OF TYPE 31 By L. BOYD BENTON, Mechanical Manager of the Jersey City factory of the American Type Founders' Company.

HAND COMPOSITION AND ELECTROTYPING 41 By J. STEARNS CUSHING, of J. S. Cushing & Company, Norwood, Massachusetts, one of the three concerns forming the Norwood Press.

COMPOSITION BY THE LINOTYPE MACHINE 53 By FREDERICK J. WARBURTON, Treasurer of the Mergenthaler Linotype Machine Company.

COMPOSITION BY THE MONOTYPE MACHINE 66 By PAUL NATHAN, a member of Wood & Nathan, New York, selling agents for the Lanston Monotype Machine.

PROOF-READING 77 By GEORGE L. MILLER, with the Charles Francis Press, New York.

PAPER MAKING 89 By HERBERT W. MASON, of S. D. Warren & Company, Paper Makers, Boston, Massachusetts.

PRESSWORK 99 By WALTER J. BERWICK, of Berwick & Smith Company, Norwood, Massachusetts, one of the three concerns constituting the Norwood Press.

THE PRINTING PRESS 112 By OTTO L. RAABE, with R. Hoe & Company, New York, Printing Press Manufacturers.

PRINTING INK 139 By JAMES A. ULLMAN, of Sigmund Ullman Company, Ink Makers, New York.

Part 2

THE PRINTER'S ROLLER 144 By ALBERT S. BURLINGHAM, President of the National Roller Company, New York.

THE ILLUSTRATOR 154 By CHARLES D. WILLIAMS, Artist, New York.

HALF-TONE, LINE, AND COLOR PLATES 164 By EMLYN M. GILL, President of the Gill Engraving Company, New York.

THE WAX PROCESS 176 By ROBERT D. SERVOSS, Engraver of maps, etc., by the wax process, New York.

MAKING INTAGLIO PLATES 180 By ELMER LATHAM, Manager of the mechanical department of M. Kramer & Company, Photogravure Makers, Brooklyn, New York.

PRINTING INTAGLIO PLATES 190 By GEORGE W. H. RITCHIE, Printer of photogravure plates, etchings, etc., New York.

THE GELATINE PROCESS 198 By EMIL JACOBI, Manager of the factory of the Campbell Art Company, New York, and Elizabeth, New Jersey.

LITHOGRAPHY 204 By CHARLES WILHELMS, late of Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographing and Printing Company, Brooklyn, New York.

COVER DESIGNING 216 By AMY RICHARDS, Artist, New York, her specialty being cover designs.

THE COVER STAMPS 221 By GEORGE BECKER, of Becker Brothers Company, Die Cutters, New York.

BOOK CLOTHS 226 By HENRY P. KENDALL, of the Holliston Mills, Book Cloth Manufacturers, Norwood, Massachusetts.

BOOK LEATHERS 234 By ELLERY C. BARTLETT, of Louis Dejonge & Company, Dressers and Importers of Book Leathers, New York.

THE BINDING 237 By JESSE FELLOWES TAPLEY, President of J. F. Tapley Company, Binders, New York.

SPECIAL BINDINGS 248 By HENRY BLACKWELL, Fine Binder, New York.

COPYRIGHTING 257 By FREDERICK H. HITCHCOCK, Member of the New York Bar; President of The Grafton Press, Publishers, New York.

PUBLICITY 269 By VIVIAN BURNETT, formerly in charge of the Publicity Department of McClure, Phillips & Company, Publishers, New York.

REVIEWING AND CRITICISING 292 By WALTER LITTLEFIELD, a Member of the Staff of the New York Times Saturday Review of Books, and literary correspondent of the Chicago Record-Herald, and other papers.

THE TRAVELLING SALESMAN 303 By HARRY A. THOMPSON, formerly representing John Lane, and Small, Maynard & Company, Publishers. Now one of the Associate Editors of the Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia.

SELLING AT WHOLESALE 320 By JOSEPH E. BRAY, formerly with A. C. McClurg & Company, Wholesalers, Chicago. Now with the Outing Publishing Company, New York.

SELLING AT RETAIL 328 By WARREN SNYDER, Manager of the Book Stores of John Wanamaker, Philadelphia and New York.

SELLING BY SUBSCRIPTION 339 By CHARLES S. OLCOTT, Manager of the Subscription Department of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Company, New York.

SELLING AT AUCTION 350 By JOHN ANDERSON, Jr., President of the Anderson Auction Company, New York.

SELECTING FOR A PUBLIC LIBRARY 362 By ARTHUR E. BOSTWICK, Chief of the Circulation Department of the New York Public Library.

RARE AND SECOND-HAND BOOKS 370 By CHARLES E. GOODSPEED, Dealer in Rare and Second-hand Books, Boston.

THE BUILDING OF A BOOK

INTRODUCTION

By Theodore L. De Vinne.

To the hasty observer printing seems the simplest of arts or crafts. The small boy who has been taught to spell can readily arrange lettered blocks of wood in readable words, and that arrangement is rated by many as the great feature of printing. With his toy printing-press he can stamp paper upon inked type in so deft a manner that admiring friends may say the print is good enough for anybody. The elementary processes of printing are indeed so simple that they might have justified Dogberry in adding typography to the accomplishments of the "reading and writing that come by nature." With this delusion comes the desire for amateur performance. Men who would not undertake to make a coat or a pair of shoes are confident of their ability to make or to direct the making of a book.

Part 3

In real practice this apparent simplicity disappears. Commercial printing is never done quickly or cheaply by amateur methods. The printing-house that undertakes to print miscellaneous books for publishers must be provided with tons of type of different faces and sizes. It needs type-making and type-setting machines of great complexity, printing-presses of great size and cost, and much curious machinery in the departments of electrotyping and bookbinding; but these machines, intended to relieve the drudgery of monotonous manual labor, do not supplant the necessity for a higher skill in craftsmanship. They really make that craftsmanship more difficult.

The difficulty of good book-making is greater now than ever. Improvements made during the last century in processes of engraving and the making of ink and paper and the increasing exactions of critical readers and reviewers, compel a closer attention to the petty detail of manufacture. The novice soon finds that some of the methods recently introduced are incompatible with other methods. For the production of a superior book practical experience and theoretical study of all processes are needed to harmonize their antagonisms. One has but to read over the headlines of the foregoing table of contents to note how many different arts, crafts, and sciences are required in the construction of a well-made book. A reading of these articles makes one understand the scope and limitations of each art and the necessity for its proper adjustment in its relation to the workmanship of other crafts with which it may be associated.

For this purpose this book has been prepared. It is believed that a compilation of the experience of men eminent in their respective departments will be a useful guide to the amateur in authorship or the novice in publication.

THE AUTHOR

By George W. Cable.

In a certain fine and true sense books of imaginative writing--and the present writer cannot undertake to speak of any others--are not built, but born. Nevertheless, there has always been an unlucky tendency on the part both of writers and readers to overstate this non-mechanical nature of poetic works, whether in prose or verse, and to give the processes of this production that air of mystery--not to say miracle--in which art is always tempted to veil its methods. There is an anatomy of the book, which is not its life, but is just as real as its life, and only less essential. There is an architecture awaiting the book while it is still in its author's brain; and for want of due regard to this architecture's laws, for want of a sound and shapely anatomy, many a book misses the success--not commercial only, but spiritual as well--which the amount of toil and talent spent on it ought to earn. And now that reading has become so democratic that the fortunes of a book of the imagination are largely in the hands of the Crowd, which cares nothing and feels nothing as to grace of form and tone in what it reads, the commercial risk in the physical deformities of a book is not so great as the risk of its spiritual failure. Now, too, that the magazines have made it so very desirable to the author that his work should be printed first in them, their mechanical limitations, which are legion, bear upon the author and often seem to him (and his personal friends) to bear cruelly. This difficulty is not a flattering or gentle discipline, nor are its discriminations always good or always bad. It works almost as crudely as that of the stage works on the theatrical dramatist. A cunning subservience to it covers a multitude of sins, and often achieves for the literary craftsman place and preference over the truer artist, if he overlooks the need of being also a craftsman. Yet it is the hard demand, not of the magazines alone, but of every highest interest, that the cure for this injustice be found in the truest artist making himself also the cunningest craftsman. "He that would be first among you let him be the servant of all."

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