That there is a tremendous unsupplied book demand in this country there is no doubt:  the wider distribution and easier access given to periodicals prove this point.  Now and then there has been tried an unsupported or not well-thought-out plan for bringing books to a public not now reading them, but there seems little or no understanding of the fact that there lies an uncultivated field of tremendous promise to the publisher who will strike out on a new line and market his books, so that the public will not have to ferret out a book-store or wind through the maze of a department store.  The American reading public is not the book-reading public that it should be or could be made to be; but the habit must be made easy for it to acquire.  Books must be placed where the public can readily get at them.  It will not, of its own volition, seek them.  It did not do so with magazines; it will not do so with books.

In the meanwhile, Bok’s literary letter had prospered until it was now published in some forty-five newspapers, One of these was the Philadelphia Times.  In that paper, each week, the letter had been read by Mr. Cyrus H. K. Curtis, the owner and publisher of The Ladies’ Home Journal.  Mr. Curtis had decided that he needed an editor for his magazine, in order to relieve his wife, who was then editing it, and he fixed upon the writer of Literary Leaves as his man.  He came to New York, consulted Will Carleton, the poet, and found that while the letter was signed by William J. Bok, it was actually written by his brother who was with the Scribners.  So he sought Bok out there.

The publishing house had been advertising in the Philadelphia magazine, so that the visit of Mr. Curtis was not an occasion for surprise.  Mr. Curtis told Bok he had read his literary letter in the Philadelphia Times, and suggested that perhaps he might write a similar department for The Ladies’ Home Journal.  Bok saw no reason why he should not, and told Mr. Curtis so, and promised to send over a trial instalment.  The Philadelphia publisher then deftly went on, explained editorial conditions in his magazine, and, recognizing the ethics of the occasion by not offering Bok another position while he was already occupying one, asked him if he knew the man for the place.

“Are you talking at me or through me?” asked Bok.

“Both,” replied Mr. Curtis.

This was in April of 1889.

Bok promised Mr. Curtis he would look over the field, and meanwhile he sent over to Philadelphia the promised trial “literary gossip” instalment.  It pleased Mr. Curtis, who suggested a monthly department, to which Bok consented.  He also turned over in his mind the wisdom of interrupting his line of progress with the Scribners, and in New York, and began to contemplate the possibilities in Philadelphia and the work there.

He gathered a collection of domestic magazines then published, and looked them over to see what was already in the field.  Then he began to study himself, his capacity for the work, and the possibility of finding it congenial.  He realized that it was absolutely foreign to his Scribner work; that it meant a radical departure.  But his work with his newspaper syndicate naturally occurred to him, and he studied it with a view of its adaptation to the field of the Philadelphia magazine.