W. H. FREEMAN AND COMPANY | PUBLISHERS

5649 MARKET STREET, SAN FRANCISCO 5, CALIFORNIA + TELEPHONE: YUKON 6-5115

Mr. Walter Carter, Head February 23, 1956
Entomology Department

Pineapple Research Institute of Hawaii

Post Office Box 3166

Honolulu 2, Hawaii

Dear Mr. Carter:

Your recent letter about the Buchner Endosymbiosis
was interesting enough for us to take out our old file on
this project and refigure the possibilities of our doing it.
Even with the good and gratis offices of a translator such
as Miss Bertha Mueller, the project looks worse today than
it did in 1954, Composition costs have increased about 15%
since then. Paper has increased in price three times in the
past year! Even if I close my eyes to certain inescapable
costs here, I find that we would probably have to price the
book at about $17.50. That would further cut sales and so
largely nullify the advantages a number of us have seen in
translating the book,

I cannot for the life of me see how this book can pos-
sibly be done under current American conditions. I have racked
my brains and can suggest to you only three possibilities;

(1) Encourage Buchner to write a much shorter version of the
work--about half its present size--with the help of all you
enthusiastic supporters of his to prepare an English version.

(2) Have the book published in England--that is, get some
English publisher to undertake it--either in its present form
or in the suggested abbreviated one, in which case we would
be glad to import copies, guaranteeing the English publisher
the purchase of a minimum number depending on price (in a
sense, helping to subsidize the book).

(3) Go to an American university press, where operational
costa and taxes are not such factors as they are in a pub-
lishing house such as ours; I can recommend two of these quite
highly to you, first of all Cornell University Press, where
the Director, Mr. Victor Reynolds, would give such a proposal
SyMpathetic attention (you may use my nusme with him), and the
University of California Press, Mr. August Frugé, Director.

In short, I must say that any work in book form that
enlists such tenacious support as the Buchner must be well
worth publishing; but I for one do not see how an American
commercial publisher can handle this work.

Sincerely yours,

WHF :mc J
ec? Dr. Lederberg
Dr. Steinhaus

W. BH. Freeman