The saloon-keeper may attribute decreased business to the versatile motion picture, but to the average book dealer the industry can be most beneficial.

It is what might be called the adaptation mania from which both publishers and book dealers have profited. To prove this, you have only to take into account “Les Miserables,” which, when released at the picture theaters, created an enormous sale of cheap reprints of the popular book.

This has been followed up by many other adaptations from novels and stage plays, and in every case it has meant extra trade for the book dealer who has been keen enough to make good use of the opportunities thus presented. Many movie fans, after seeing the photoplay version of a popular book, and finding it to their liking, have a desire for reading the story. Instead of borrowing the book from the local library, they prefer to spend up to a quarter on a cheap edition—and this is precisely where the book trade comes in.

Hardly a week goes by without some popular book or play has been produced in motion-picture form.

There are apparently few book dealers who have given this new field of business activity the close attention it demands. Some have been content to wait until the demand came—a most short-sighted policy that meant customers going elsewhere—whilst others have sat down and let the exhibitor reap the harvest.

I think it worth while for every book dealer to make a friend of the local motion-picture showman. The benefit would be mutual. The exhibitor could inform the book dealer well in advance whether he had any adaptations booked, so that the book dealer could lay in a stock to meet the demand. He could also announce outside his store that the picture was being shown at the theater in question, whilst all could obtain the book of the film from him.

The exhibitor would reciprocate the publicity thus given by announcing that the book was obtainable of the book dealer, or by allowing the latter to distribute circulars to the audience.

These are but suggestions. Other possible schemes may be devised by the wide-awake book dealer. It is, however, well to know that here is a source of revenue to be tapped.