There is constant difficulty upon this point. A large edition of a book gets left upon the publisher's hands under all sorts of circumstances, and his right to dispose of it depends upon those circumstances.

He may have originally produced too large an edition, for a publisher cannot make the public buy a book they do not want, and no one can always guess what book the public will want. He may have never made any attempt to get rid, in the usual manner, of what he has produced. For instance, on page 35, we have given an example of an agreement where it would be directly to the publisher's advantage not to get rid of more than a certain number of copies. Again, in cases where a large royalty is to be paid upon sales, only after a certain number of sales have been effected, or, under the “ guarantee system,” when a royalty is to be paid only after the guaranteed number have been sold, it is easy to understand (though the fact may be hard to believe) that occasionally it becomes to the publisher's pecuniary interest not to sell a book. Lastly, a publisher may not be able to get rid of what he has printed, irrespective of the matter of the book, because he himself is not recognised by the big booksellers as a person from whom a saleable book is ever got.