et the salesman start out with a
second book by this author: the bookseller, with few exceptions, will
go the limit on quantity. Unfortunately, it frequently happens that
the public--which is a discriminating public or not, as you chance to
look at it--does not seem possessed of the same blind confidence, and
the result is a monument of unsold copies.

The trade, I think, is coming more and more to be guided by the advice
of such salesmen as have proved to be the possessors of judgment and
honesty. By judgment is meant not merely the opinion that one forms of
the literary value of a book, but that commercial estimate that a good
salesman is able to make. The literary adviser can state in terms of
literary criticism the reasons why the Ms. is worthy of publication;
but the traveller, if he happens to be more than a mere peddler, can,
after reading the Ms., take pencil and paper and figure out how many
copies he can place. Publishers are growing to appreciate this quality
in a salesman and are seeking his advice before accepting a Ms. Some
go further and ask his assistance in the make-up of a book; for a good
cover covers a multitude of sins.

In former years it was considered the salesman's first duty to "load"
the customer; that is, sell him all he could, regardless of the merits
of the books. In those days a denial of the good old doctrine that the
imprint could do no wrong was rank heresy. Such salesmen are no longer
categorised with Caesar's wife, and the new salesmanship is having its
day. Its members are men of reading and intelligence, who have taken
the trouble to learn something about the wares they are selling, and
who have found that it pays to be honest. It doesn't seem to pay the
first year; but if the salesman's judgment of books is discriminating
and he hangs on, the booksellers soon realize that they can trust him.
As they know little of the new books he is offering, they are inclined
to be guided by his advice; should they find that this pays, they will
repose more confidence in him. A traveller who, in lieu of personal
imagination and the power of persuasion, was forced to depend upon
hard work and the common, or garden, kind of honesty for what success
he had on the road, was giving up his work to take an indoor position.
On his final trip he had a "first" book by a "first" author; it was an
unusual book and had in it possibilities of a really great sale. The
firm publishing the book was in the hands