The books were purchased by working people and youth on street corners in workers districts, on the job, in Pathfinder bookstores, at political actions, to other bookstores and libraries, and through orders for university class readings.

Substantially higher sales in December pushed this campaign to increase sales by 10 percent compared to the first half of 2003. The six-month campaign was led jointly by Socialist Workers Party branches in the United States and Communist Leagues in other countries, whose members help organize Pathfinder bookstores in their areas and distribute Pathfinder books and pamphlets in their workplaces along with supporters of the communist movement worldwide.

Barbara Bowman in Miami reported that 41 titles were sold in December at the Pathfinder bookstore there—nearly half of those at the Militant Labor Forums, which are held weekly at the bookstore. In addition to discussion on topics of interest to working people, the forum in Miami had a special display of recommended books featured each week and an announcement of the weekly progress on the sales campaign.

Two young men who regularly attend the Miami forums took a consignment of books with them on a visit to Mississippi over the holidays, Bowman reported. They sold $100 in Pathfinder titles. One of them said the trip was very effective because many people in Mississippi don’t have access to books like this. “They want to spread the word, give people they know time to save up some money, and do another trip in a month or two,” Bowman said.  
 
Houston Latino Book Fair
“Taking advantage of special openings at conferences and book fairs was key to our success in the last three months,” reported Jacquie Henderson from Houston. These sales increased the number of people who come into the local Pathfinder store looking for further titles, she noted. Pathfinder supporters in Houston surpassed their sales goal in October, November, and December.

In October, 59 books were sold at Houston’s annual Latino Book Fair. On one of his days off, one young worker helped set up a table displaying Pathfinder titles at the University of Houston. He has now been regularly attending the Friday night Militant Labor Forum in Houston and participating in classes on Pathfinder titles.

Henderson also reported that a bus driver with a route that takes him between Mexico, Houston, and the eastern United States has been stopping by the bookstore for a couple of years now to pick up titles when he is in town. In December he brought another driver with him to the store. Both walked out with several titles and said they would be back next time.

In New Zealand a special effort in December registered the highest sales of the six-month campaign in that country. In the last three months of the year, supporters of Pathfinder, led by members of the Communist League in Auckland and Christchurch, sold an average of nearly 150 percent of their goal.

The Pathfinder bookstore in Detroit held an open house over the holidays, reported Osborne Hart. It made its sales goal each of the last six months. Publicity for the event was distributed early and featured an appeal to Pathfinder Readers Club members to prepay for advance copies of new titles being released this month. These are Aldabonazo: Inside the Cuban Revolutionary Underground, 1952-58 by Armando Hart, a leader of the Cuban Revolution; Leur Trotsky et le nôtre, the French-language edition of Their Trotsky and Ours by Jack Barnes; and Rebelión Teamster, the Spanish-language edition of Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs.

The open house netted seven advance payments for Aldabonazo.

The $240,000 goal was surpassed by nearly $3,000. “There was a $7,000 leap in sales in December in comparison to the previous five months,” said Maceo Dixon from Atlanta.

“Classroom adoptions—titles that have been assigned as reading by professors teaching university courses—were a big part of the December sales,” said Dixon. These included 162 copies of Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, the writings and speeches of the German communist leader Rosa Luxemburg. They were ordered by a New Jersey bookstore located near Rutgers University campus in New Brunswick. A campus bookstore in East Lansing, Michigan, ordered 124 copies of Malcolm X: The Last Speeches.

Over the six-month campaign, orders for the Communist Manifesto, the founding programmatic document of the modern communist movement, written by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, led all titles with 727 copies sold. In December several classroom orders of the Manifesto came in, said Dixon, who volunteers to pack and ship orders from the Pathfinder distribution center in Atlanta. Volunteers also filled an order from a Boston college for 70 copies of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Frederick Engels.

“These orders are the result of cumulative work,” said Gale Shangold from New York. “They often are the result of visits and discussions with buyers, not just in the last six month but even a year or two ago,” she said. Dixon and Shangold are members of the steering committee that organizes the work of supporters of the communist movement to print and distribute titles by Pathfinder Press.

She gave an example of an independent bookstore in Harlem, New York. Over a year ago sales volunteers began to work with the buyer at this store to convince them to order on line, Shangold said. In December they sent in an order for more than $900 in Pathfinder titles.

Volunteer sales representatives in each city have paid special attention to promoting Pathfinder’s Spanish-language titles. “With the growing immigration from Latin America there is increasing interest in the titles we carry in Spanish, many of which cannot be gotten anywhere else,” Shangold said. She reported that during a visit to a new Spanish-language bookstore that is just opening in the Bronx the buyer knew about Pathfinder’s titles because a customer had asked for El desorden mundial del capitalismo, the Spanish translation of Capitalism’s World Disorder by Jack Barnes.

A national distributor of Spanish-language books with offices in New York placed orders totaling several thousand dollars over the course of the campaign, she added.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home