Excerpt:
As an example of how it is sometimes difficult even to locate the current
stronghold of a publisher's records (let alone to find out what they
contain) it is worth citing the case of the Deux Coqs d'Or edition of
Madeline--a book that came to my attention in the first place
entirely through serendipity. I had to engage in extensive communication
with people in Sacramento and Los Angeles, California; Paris; New York;
Montréal; Toronto; and Racine, Wisconsin merely to learn how
Éditions Cocorico of 1954 became Éditions des Deux Coqs d'Or
of 1971 and where I might currently apply to search the archive. When I
applied, of course, I learned that the archive was non-existent.
Virtually the same scenario was repeated with many other publishers on
five continents. On the other hand there are numerous publishers who
maintain to this day complete and perfectly clear files about books
published more than thirty years ago, and some who are even willing to
share the contents.Publishers are not consistently informed about their
own books. It fell to me to give a leading executive at Simon and
Schuster word that his company had published Madeline in
1939. He knew all about the book; he had probably grown up on it; but it
was news that he was helping run the company that had given it life.
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