ABSTRACT
People had bought expecting to find something as popular as the advertising copy appeared to make it. Instead they found in the books a subtle and beautiful style for which they cared nothing. There is no doubt that the book buying public in the United States has increased very much in the last few years. But this increase has been very small compared to the increase in the users of other luxuries—for instance, the users of fine silk stockings, good perfumes, automobiles. It is preposterous to think that in this country to-day there are only about 30,000 who buy the works of the three English novelists, who, with one exception, are perhaps the greatest living writers in the world. There were a great many failures among these publishers and the book business was quiescent for a number of years.
