Since mid-August, socialist workers, young socialists, and others have made use of Pathfinder’s Super Saver Sale (see ad on page 7) to distribute socialist literature as part of the campaign. The sale, which features two-dozen steeply discounted titles in English, Spanish, and French, goes through November 30.

In addition to books sold in the United States, communists in Australia, Canada, Iceland, New Zealand, Sweden, and the United Kingdom sold 692 Pathfinder books and pamphlets in October. The worldwide total is 2,675. This makes October the best month for such book sales by socialist campaigners since Pathfinder’s last big sale in April when 2,500 books were sold in the United States alone at the activities building up to and during the April 25 march in Washington, D.C., to defend a woman’s right to choose.

These sales had an impact on total Pathfinder sales for October, which came to about $17,700. This was still short of the target as part of the communist movements’ goal to increase Pathfinder sales by 10 percent in the last six months of 2004 compared to the first half of the year. The reason for the shortfall is that net Pathfinder orders by bookstores, campuses, and libraries were the lowest of the year.

Sales for the first six months this year averaged $18,700 per month, for a total of $112,200. Distributors worldwide adopted a campaign to increase this to $123,400 the last six months of 2004. In the four months between July and October, $76,640 was sold. That leaves $46,760 for the last two months of the year toward the target. Sales for November and December must average $23,380 each month to meet the goal.

Supporters of the SWP in the United States and Communist Leagues in other countries are working with party leaderships in their area to maximize orders from bookstores, campuses, and libraries for November and December. At a special meeting of SWP supporters in New York November 14, Gale Shanghold who directs the effort in the area, said, “The next four weeks are crucial if we’re going to make the goal by the end of December.” At the meeting, supporters made assignments and set deadlines to follow up with customers and get book placements before the holidays.

Socialists from Chicago; Cleveland; Detroit; New York; Craig, Colorado; Price, Utah; Pittsburgh; and London sold more than double their first six months’ average sales in October. In two of the cities—Chicago and Cleveland—they nearly tripled these sales.

Carole Lesnick from Cleveland said the relatively high October sales there were “a direct result of the increased campaigning we did for the SWP candidates nationally and locally. We reached out broadly and sold subscriptions to the Militant, built Militant Labor Forums, and got a number of people to stop by the Socialist Workers campaign headquarters. One of the things we did was set up a table outside a movie theater showing the film Motorcycle Diaries about Che Guevara’s travel through Latin America as a youth. The next time we went, we got permission to set up the table inside the theater and sold $100 in books along with subscriptions to the Militant.”

In other cities—from Tampa, Florida, to Chicago—socialists have had similar successes with book sales outside movie theaters showing Motorcycle Diaries.

There are initial encouraging signs for November sales. Socialist campaigners, for example, staffed a Pathfinder booth at the Miami bookfair November 12-14. They sold 216 books for a total of $1,600. The fair, a longstanding cultural and literary event in southern Florida, featured over 300 authors at reading presentations and a street fair with over 200 booths. The three best sellers from the Pathfinder booth, reported Ruth Robbinet, were the Communist Manifesto (16), The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning (15), and Capitalism’s World Disorder (12). “We sold out of Capitalism’s World Disorder on Saturday afternoon, half way through the fair,” said Barbara Bowman, one of the volunteers staffing the booth.
 
 
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