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Chapter 5 ("Book Production: Manufacture and Bookkeeping"), part 6, of the author's Pegasus in Harness: Victorian Publishing and W. M. Thackeray, which University Press of Virginia published in 1992. It has been included in the Victorian Web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.
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[Decorated initial by W. M. Thackeray's for Vanity Fair]
n 1857 Smith knew he was not making the money he could for himself or his author with this valuable dormant property. Bradbury and Evans was reprinting Thackeray's early magazine pieces in the Miscellanies; successful cheap editions of Vanity Fair and Pendennis were out, and The Newcomes had already proven to be a substantial money-maker. Smith was ready to work the property and took his cue from Bradbury and Evans.
The cheap edition of Esmond in one volume has 464 pages of text and 16 pages of preliminaries. It is composed of thirty octavo gatherings (eight leaves, sixteen pages per gathering). The book was printed on paper large enough to accommodate two octavo sheets (sixteen pages) at a time. It took 300 reams of long primer paper or double octavo (both terms appear in the record) to produce 10,000 copies of the book. Either of two methods of printing could have been used: work and turn with both forms of one gathering or with the inner forms of two gatherings imposed together and the outer forms together. In either case, each sheet would have been cut in two before binding. It should be noted that Smith, Elder acquired its own printing shop in 1857, having previously depended on other printers, notably Bradbury and Evans, for book production. Esmond was reprinted on Smith's own presses. Publication was announced on 17 October 1857 [Harden, Esmond, p. 87] though the ledger accounts are dated November and the book itself bears the date 1858.
It might be said that Smith overestimated the demand for a cheap edition of Esmond, since in June 1863 the firm's warehouse still held 3,320 copies out of a first printing of 10,000. Yet there was every reason to bet high on Thackeray in 1857. Although Bradbury and Evans lived to rue the euphoria of that year, claiming to have lost thousands on The Virginians, the amazing thing is that Smith did not lose a penny. In the first month and a half the company had sold 3,528 copies, enough to pay all its costs for the cheap edition of Esmond and divide £6.17 with Thackeray. In the next year author and publisher divided a profit of £88.9, and in the next they shared an even £100, after which they still had half the edition in hand. Far from [198/199] being a drug on the market, the remaining stock was like money in reserve, for the author was Thackeray and the publisher had a long-term commitment to the property. Thackeray's unexpected death sent sales soaring, and by January 1866 Smith was preparing a new edition for a new printing of 1,000 copies. By hindsight one could say that Smith did not bet high enough in 1857, for he failed to order stereotyped plates, which he could have used for the January 1866 edition and for a second printing of 1,000 more copies in September of the same year. By 1866 Smith had completed his acquisition of the Thackeray literary empire by purchasing copyrights from all other owners, so he did not have to share profits with anyone. In eighteen months, by June 1867, he had recovered costs on the 1866 edition of Esmond and made another £57.12, plus the publisher's 5 percent commission figured on total income.
The available records are incomplete, but one can estimate that the cheap edition of Esmond made between £800 and £1,200 of profit from 12,000 copies produced in three printings over an eight-year period on an investment of under £700, all of which was recovered within two months. By comparison, the profits for Bradbury and Evans's cheap edition of Vanity Fair over a thirteen-year period came to about £1,300 on 22,000 copies produced in eleven printings and a remainder in 1865 of 681 copies.
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Last modified: 8 April 2001