It is somewhat strange that so little difficulty regarding cost or selling price has yet arisen with the issue of the modern cheap editions of books. These cheap issues are published at net prices, they yield a fair profit to those through whose hands they pass, and the public are quite satisfied. Recent history of popular literature shows that success is obtained, not by high prices, but by big sales. What is wanted is the realization of what Matthew Arnold once wrote, "that he hoped for the day when food and books shall both alike be felt as needs." In connexion with the trade of publishing, the question is, how best to help the bookseller to obtain his supply of books, as the miscellaneous character of the books published, and the increasing number of publishers, and the cost of "travelling" books in the country, make it imperative that some distributing medium should be engaged in this work. In most countries such an agency exists, but methods vary in each country; it is represented here by the wholesale agent, who supplies from his own stock or collects from the publishers everything a country bookseller may have ordered. By some publishers this agency has a poor recognition, but without such distributing houses it would be quite impossible for the ordinary retail bookseller to obtain his supplies, as the public when ordering books scarcely ever give the publisher's name, and frequently give half a mutilated title, which only those in daily intercourse with all published books could recognize, so that this part of a general system of distribution should not only be fully recognized by the publisher, but in calculating discounts and expenses this distributing method should be considered. One is inclined to ask if there is anything wrong with the trade; if so, is it with the retail bookseller, for after all it is this agency which comes in direct contact with the public. Until the introduction of the net system before mentioned, there was a war of discounts existing which would have eventually meant ruin, and it is only a reasonable conclusion that what every bookseller recognizes as a good to the trade should be further extended. Is not the time ripe for more organization, without oppression, to be adopted by the trade? We have now the organizations of both the publisher and bookseller, to which all the leading members of each of these branches of the trade belong. Why cannot, as before suggested, some rules of a broad but inclusive character be laid down and agreed upon by members of both associations, so that the differences and difficulties which so frequently arise may be easily adjusted? By these means a dignity and influence as of old would be restored to the booksellers, petty grievances would be easily removed, and the question of a living discount would be more easily discussed, and the book world (which formerly had only two interests, that of author and publisher, but now