Junk Man

Eighteen months ago, smart, redheaded Publisher John Farrar (Farrar & Rinehart) published a book called Life Is My Song, the autobiography of Poet John Gould Fletcher, a year later published his Selected Poems. Last month Poet Fletcher won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and demand for his books revived. But Publishers Farrar & Rinehart had thrown away their chance to make any money on Fletcher's autobiography. The week before, they had sold their remaining stock of Life Is "remainders" My named Song to Max a Salop. dealer in book Max Salop, literary junk man, is known to few outside the book business. But in side the business, he is a familiar legend.

A short, swarthy, 47-year-old immigrant with curly black hair, smoky eyes, a terrific Bronx-Jewish accent, and a terrific publicity phobia, he is married, the father of two children, Jeanette and Mildred, lives in The Bronx. Legends about Max Salop in the book business are matched only by Sam Goldwyn legends in the movies.

Tallest tale in the Salop apocrypha is the story that he cannot read or write, has only recently learned to sign his name.

What makes Salop a legend is his genius for selling books--any book. When a publisher has done all he knows how and still has copies on hand, he sends for Max Salop to come and get the remainders. Within the next few months Max Salop has sold not only the publisher's dead stocks, but has reprinted maybe 5,000, 10.000, 20,000 copies besides.

Twenty years ago Max Salop and two brothers, Morris and Abraham, were in the retail shoe business. Then Max went into second-hand books, started the Harlem Book Co. as a retail bookstore on Manhattan's 125th Street. When Depression hit, he waved ready cash under publishers' long faces, cornered the market in publishing's distress merchandise. Today he owns several bargain bookshops, a reprint house which publishes under half-a-dozen aliases. Not even Salop himself knows how many books he sells a year.

Typical Salop issues: At $1.89, a $5 book on American birds, a $3.50 book on insects; at $1.48, a $5 volume on American glass. From Publisher Horace Liveright he once bought a book called Orpheus, a scholarly study of religion by French Archeologist Salomon Reinach. Reduced to $1.49 from its original price of $5, it sold around 35,000 copies.

But Max Salop's success does not depend merely on price-cutting. Even more spectacular is what he does to a book's appearance. A collection of Ibsen plays (his first big success) was made from Modern Library plates, but reprinted on larger, thicker paper, with the imprint: Norwegian Publications, Oslo, Norway. Another Salop success was a 1,136-page volume titled Five Sinners and a Saint priced at $1.69. Inside this new literary package readers discovered six time-worn staples--the autobiographies of Madame P'ompadour, Benvenuto Cellini, De Quincey, Rousseau, Benjamin Franklin, St. Augustine. Another time Salop bought an out-of-date civics book. When it did not sell, he dressed it up in a fancy jacket, sold out the edition.

Salop's theory of bookselling is simple: people like big books, pretty books, with red and green covers, nice pictures. When he buys books, he buys by weight, size, color. What is inside the book does not interest him. Pulling down a volume from a publisher's stockroom shelves, he turns it over in his plump hands, says: "Tick [thick], 18-c-." If it is thin, he says: "Tin, 8-c-." Some sixth sense supplies him with his shrewd literary judgments. Of one unfortunate author he is supposed to have said: "Dat guy? Dat guy? He couldn't even write a good remainder!"

With all his genius for selling literary junk, Max Salop has an almost wistful ambition to become a "legitimate" publisher. In 1933 he bought the highbrow Dial Press from Ambassador to Greece Lincoln MacVeagh and took a beating for art's sake. He lost money--probably the only time in his career. But he hung on proudly till 1938.

Well-liked by publishers, Max Salop is regarded as one of the best credit risks in the trade. To one of them he once sent a check made out for "one tusan dollars.'' The check was good. A kindly man, he refuses to install bookkeeping machines in his offices, because they take away jobs. A thrifty man, he does not hesitate to take his family on vacations to Miami, Atlantic City, Lakewood, N. J. According to another Salop legend, when his first child was born, 16 years ago, Salop put her on his payroll at $75 a week; likewise the second daughter, born four years later. (His older daughter, he once remarked, was not very smart in school. "But she knows what stocks to buy.")

To a. publisher's editor, Salop once sighed: "If I only had your education. If I'd only read all the books that you have. If I only had your ability with the pen, what I could do! But maybe," added Salop, "I'd just be a lousy editor."

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