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Bok, Edward William, 1863-1930

"A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After"


That there is a tremendous unsupplied book demand in this country there
is no doubt: the wider distribution and easier access given to
periodicals prove this point. Now and then there has been tried an
unsupported or not well-thought-out plan for bringing books to a public
not now reading them, but there seems little or no understanding of the
fact that there lies an uncultivated field of tremendous promise to the
publisher who will strike out on a new line and market his books, so
that the public will not have to ferret out a book-store or wind
through the maze of a department store. The American reading public is
not the book-reading public that it should be or could be made to be;
but the habit must be made easy for it to acquire. Books must be
placed where the public can readily get at them. It will not, of its
own volition, seek them. It did not do so with magazines; it will not
do so with books.
In the meanwhile, Bok's literary letter had prospered until it was now
published in some forty-five newspapers, One of these was the
_Philadelphia Times_.


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