ABSTRACT
The Net Book Agreement (NBA) was the principal support upon which the whole structure of the British publishing industry rested for almost the whole of the twentieth century. Macmillan’s concept was a good one for its day and achieved precisely the objective for which it was designed: the stabilisation of prices and the de facto regulation of profit margins to guarantee a reasonable income to both publisher and bookseller (see above, pp. 101-3). It is important to recognise that it was always a voluntary agreement. Publishers were not obliged to put a net price on their books, and it was always doubtful whether the Agreement was enforceable in the courts. Whatever legal force it might have had derived from the fact that it was embedded in the contract between publisher and bookseller. Net books were sold to booksellers subject to, in the usual phrase, ‘the standard conditions of sale of net books’. If a bookseller then broke the rules, by selling at less than the net price, publishers would not supply that bookseller on trade terms. This was critical, for it was the trade terms – a discount of between 30 and 40 per cent on the net retail price – which made it possible for the bookseller to make a profit.
