Along with the Book Club of California, I am pleased to announce the publication of A Western Publisher: Paul Elder & Company, 1898-1968. The book was released at a splendid reception at the Book Club headquarters on 11 May 2026.
For seventy years, Paul Elder’s bookstore was a familiar sight in downtown San Francisco. Most people knew him as a bookseller, but Elder preferred to call himself “A Western Publisher.” Between 1898 and 1917, Paul Elder published over four hundred books, many of which remain very collectible. The finest of these were published in the years 1901-11, when he teamed with the well-known printer John Henry Nash.
Elder’s bookstores were no less memorable. He and his early partner, Morgan Shepard, created a new kind of bookstore with a well-earned reputation for carefully crafted artistic ambience, where art objects of all kinds were displayed on equal footing with the books.
A Western Publisher is the first book written about Elder and his publishing and bookselling career. The book includes a biography of Elder and his bookstores, highlights of selected books and Impressions magazine, and a full list of Elder’s publications.
Elder was a survivor: he kept his business afloat through both the 1906 Earthquake and Fire and the Great Depression. His frequent, if hidden, financial difficulties would be familiar to anyone running an independent bookstore today. But the man himself was an enigma: gracious and charming yet unemotional, very formal and very private, a mystery even to those with whom he worked closely.
A Western Publisher: Paul Elder & Company, 1898-1968 is the 245th publication of the Book Club of California, and was produced in two editions. Book design by Carmel O’Mara-Horwitz & Allwyn O’Mara. Both editions are set in Goudy Old Style and printed on Monadnock Astrolite paper by Puritan Press in Hollis, New Hampshire under the direction of Jay Stewart & Adrian Lucia.
The standard edition, of 250 copies, is clothbound by Puritan Press in Hollis, New Hampshire, and features printed endpapers and gold foil stamping on the cover and spine. It is presented in a dust jacket.
The deluxe edition, of 25 copies, features a full cloth binding with printed endpapers and gold foil stamping on the cover and spine. It is presented in a slipcase with a selection of giclée prints. This edition was bound by The Key Printing and Binding in San Francisco, California.
The book is now available from the Book Club of California. The standard edition is $265. Deluxe edition copies are $350. Sales tax and shipping are additional.