My Years with Ludwig von Mises.pdf - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

are clumsy, inept, inefficient and negligent in the highest degree.
Against such an assumption stands the fact that the Press published
and still publishes books of normal quality. To a professor who complained
to the Press about the poor appearance of the book and told
them that their reputation will suffer, the Press answered (September
12) that its reputation does not depend on "this one instance" but
"on the accumulqtive flow of high-quality work which comes from
us steadily.:>:'
Thus the Press itself comes near to admitting that its failure to
produce the·new edition of Human Action as a book of normal American
shape was the result of a purposeful design to prejudice both the
circulation of the book and the reputation and the material interests
of the author.
The present management of the Press regrets for political reasons
the fact that their predecessors published my books. They are especially
angry about the great success of Human Action. If they had any
sense of propriety at all, they would openly tell the author that they
do not want any longer to publish his books and that he is free to look
for another publisher. Whenjn the course of seeing the book through
the various phases of publication, I noticed how the Press insidiously
delayed from month to month the publication of the new edition
of Human Action and how it muddled the printing process, I
suggested this solution to them. But the Press does not want to lose
the very lucrative rights to Human Action. While the Press, as it told
the representative of a distributor who ordered copies of the book,
loses money on about 90% of its publications, Human Action sold six
printings and brought in revenues from translation and quotation. It
was a very profitable job for the Press.
The Press wants to make money on my books and at the same time
to "punish" the author as well as the readers by giving them the most
wretched service. Without informing me, the Press chose for the
production of the new edition of Human Action a process devised by
an incompetent bungler and never tried before. The inadequacy of
this procedure delayed the production for many months and finally
gave the Press a pretext to deny me "for mechanical reasons" the
right to see the page proofs. When I protested, Mr. Chester Kerr, the
Director of the Press, replied on January 22: "We are entirely willing
to take responsibility for seeing that the new edition of Human Action
is printed without error. I am confident that you will have no
cause to regret not having seen page proofs."
It is obvious that the Press withheld from me the page proofs
because it wanted to bring out a defective book. And when the book
was finally ready and the first copies were sent out to the distributors,
the Press tried to keep the fact secret from me and did not even send
me, the author, a copy.
The Press cannot help admitting (in a letter to my attorney on
September 30) that "the general quality of the work is undeniably
below our customary standard." But it stubbornly refuses to substitute
a new normal-quality book for this scandalous botchery.
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