The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.5           February 3, 1997 
 
 
Pathfinder Organizes To Up Commercial Sales  

BY GREG McCARTAN
Pathfinder is organizing a number of one-week sales trips around the United States this spring, with the goal of increasing the number of bookstores, libraries, and schools where books and pamphlets by the publisher are available to workers and young people.

Sara Lobman, Pathfinder's business manager, said, "Members of Pathfinder's staff are working with supporters in cities across the country to organize intensive sales trips, which will help meet the opportunities to increase the sales of Pathfinder titles today."

Visits are being organized over the next two months in Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C. A similar sales trip was organized in Chicago last December.

"Overall, Pathfinder supporters increased sales through Pathfinder Bookstores in the United States by $40,000 last year," she said, going from $76,815 in 1995 to $117,243 in 1996. "This experience of regularly selling more books to co- workers, young people involved in protest actions, and others can be a big help in organizing to get out to other commercial outlets to do sales work," she said. The increased sales through Pathfinder bookstores was accomplished through a concerted effort by supporters, among them members of the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists. Monthly charts in the Militant have kept track of the results of this ongoing campaign.

While sales to retail stores and college bookstores went up in 1996, overall sales to booksellers other than Pathfinder Bookstores decreased somewhat for the year.

Lobman pointed out how Pathfinder titles are seen by buyers at retail stores and libraries as important resource tools, containing firsthand accounts of important historical material and a point of view on central questions in world politics. "As with selling books on the job," she said, "getting books on the shelves of retail outlets has mostly to do with explaining why people are interested in what is in Pathfinder books."

Pathfinder publishing, located in New York City, has for decades published and kept in print the writings and speeches of revolutionary and working-class leaders. These include the founders of the modern communist movement Karl Marx and Frederick Engels; leaders of the Russian revolution V. I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky; the generations of those who have built a communist party in the United States as part of their involvement in the battles of the working class and the oppressed such as James P. Cannon, Farrell Dobbs, Joseph Hansen, Jack Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters, and others; the leadership of the first socialist revolution in the Americas, Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara; and working- class and revolutionary leaders such as Malcolm X, Eugene V. Debs, Nelson Mandela, Thomas Sankara, Maurice Bishop, and others.

Luis Madrid, who recently completed editing on La última lucha de Lenin (Lenin's Final Fight) that will be available in late February, organizes Pathfinder staff members in this sales effort.

In February, he will be going to Los Angeles, where several supporters have organized regular sales visits over the last year. Pathfinder supporters are setting up appointments in San Diego, reports Madrid, as well as researching which titles are used in university classrooms. "We will be having some meetings to show professors the quality and usefulness of Pathfinder's edition of The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels, and The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, by Engels, for example," he said.

"The sales trips by staff members have two basic goals," Madrid added. "One is to have a Pathfinder representative meet with as many potential book buyers at stores and libraries as possible, in order to increase our overall sales. Second is to lay the ground work for an ongoing effort by Pathfinder supporters in the area.

"Pathfinder staff members work with supporters in the city they will be going to for several weeks prior to the trip," he said. "Local supporters call up bookstores with current accounts to set up appointments, drop off catalogs to stores that do not currently carry our titles to see if the buyer would be interested in a meeting, and contact librarians at college and public libraries to set up a time for a Pathfinder representative to review the catalog."

"Our goal is that after the tour there will be more supporters who regularly oversee or service accounts with commercial customers in each city," he said.

Michael Baumann, another Pathfinder staff member, will be going to Washington, D.C., at the end of January. Supporters there are "doing great," he said. They "have lined up at least four or five visits every day. More than 20 appointments are set up right now. I'll be meeting with supporters on Sunday right before the Super Bowl, to prepare the week and do a training session. Especially important will be some discussion about the books and what is happening in politics today that make them relevant. This is always a key aspect of our sales work." Visits will include independent bookstores, libraries, and college bookstores, Baumann said.

Abby Tilsner reports from Atlanta that in response to the bombing of an abortion clinic there, activists have been getting out with Pathfinder books and pamphlets on street tables, at the Martin Luther King march, as well as selling to co-workers. Socialist workers sold one copy of Is Biology Woman's Destiny? and the pamphlet Abortion is a Woman's Right on the job at Wilen Manufacturing Co. Also, two of the Abortion is A Woman's Right pamphlets and one copy of Problems of Women's Liberation were sold at street tables.  
 
 
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