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J August 25, 1954 Internal Memorandum Publishing - No* 1 W. W. Norton & Company At a recent meeting with Storer Lunt, the head of ¥*¥. Borton & Company, and George Broekway his assistant in charge of books in the economic field, we discussed the publishing problems which will arise in the course of this project* Under ordinary circumstances we might not have sought out Norton, which is one of the smaller firms, but its record in economic publications is good though limited and Mr* Lunt is an old friend who would give us his best advice* The following points of interest emerged: 1* We already have the best of all present day writers on money and banking in the person of Lester Chandler, ffBestM in this sense means best from a publisher's point of view, that is, most popular and recognised academic men* 2* The best economic historian amongst academic men who write text books is Harold Faulkner of Smith College* The books which were mentioned are well known and seem to indicate that Mr* Faulkner is heading in the field of socio-economic history. 3« Biographical volumes and biographic sciences do not sell particularly well* They have a snob value and people claim that they read them, but sales figures do not bear out the claim. Mr. Lunt said that Macmillan had recently published a bankers diary for the 1880fs in two volumes, though expensive and probably subsidized, which bear the name Strong* He assumes that this was a forebearer of Benjamin Strong, but this is the first mention made of it* (La ter^ Donald ¥oodward says these letters were by a George Templeton Strong a lawyerI he knows no connection with Benjamin Strong.) 4.» The Norton Company does not like to publish subsidised books but prefers those that stand on their own feet* They were emphatic in warning us away from Macmillan whose reputation for charging exhaustive subsidies seems to be growing in the haaafc-pi/^lining trade* 5* Mr* Broekway estimates roughly that the cost of a two volume history such as we contemplate, including the necessary charts and tables, might be #7,500, this is exclusive of composition costs. The figure is not an attempt to tell us what subsidy we might have to pay if we were paying a partial subsidy but it covers all publishers costs except composition* It is comparable to figures that Lester Chandler mentioned as given by Harper Brothers.
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