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cutting down royalties or by the limitation of sales by
rte lines, the most competent authors will not find it
'orth while to write school books, and we shall be limited
the use of books prepared by mediocre or inferior tal-
l^tnt. If the state creates a monopoly of school book
^making so as to destroy a reasonable publisher's profit,
f- the publishers will leave the field and we shall be deprived
t'.of the improvements that necessarily come through com-
:,' petitive private effort.
Book publishing includes much more than merely print-
ing and binding. It is an intricate business in which train-
ing, constructive imagination, experience, and business and
professional ambition are large factors. Excellence in
product comes only through expertness in the worker,
and expertness comes only through years of training.
To know educational conditions and needs, to know what
has been done in the world of book making, to have a
wide acquaintance with authors, to know what constitutes
a good and attractive book, mechanically considered, and
how to make it at reasonable cost, to devise methods that
represent the best modern psychology and I)edagogy, to
have the foresight and constructive genius to plan a book
that will sell well because it meets existing needs better
than any other book — these are some of the problems
that confront author and publisher. How successfully
they have solved them and how much they have contributed
to modem educational progress is known only to those
who have given the matter careful consideration.
