31

MOUTON CUTS BACK ITS ACTIVITIES

format; there were even publications that appeared in type script. In fact, this simplification process had been introduced by De Ridder back in 1973, given the necessity to cut costs. In any case, Van Schooneveld’s series lost their uniform format, also because Mouton used more and more Rast European printers and typesetters, who used different paper and typefaces from what was used in the printshop in The Hague. Before that a lot of printing work had been outsourced to printing companies closer to home like the Zuid-Nederlandsche Drukkerij N.V. (’s-Hertogenbosch) and N.I.C.I. (Ghent, Belgium). The focus of Mouton’s activities came to be more on cancelling than on honoring contracts. RA.F. van Veen’s letter of December 24, 1974 to Van Schooneveld states in unequivocal language: Naturally authors try to find a solution for their problems by approaching other publishers, such as Brill, Nijhoff, Van Gorcum, Peter de Ridder, Elsevier and many others, here and in the U.S.A., in England and everywhere. [... ] We cut out hundreds of contracts, but we have so many books in preparation that we even have not the slightest chance to diminish production during the first few years. 64 Van der Wilks letter dated August 30,1976 65 is an indication of the ever more distant relationship between Van Schooneveld and Mouton. It is evident from the letter that Mouton no longer wished to store Van Schooneveld’s editor’s copies in its warehouse in Nuenen, but proposed to send the stock they had on hand by container to Bloomington: ‘De omvang van het transport was overigens een garage voor twee auto’s vol tot op 1V 2 meter hoogte.’ 66 [‘The vol ume of the shipment was a two-car garage full to a height of about 5 feet.’] A letter dated October 20, 1976 from Mouton director RA.F. van Veen to Van Schooneveld also explains the new series, edited by Werner Winter, Trends in linguistics, ‘in the first place a continuation of the Current Trends in Linguistics volumes.’ 67 Mouton transferred some books that were to appear in Janua linguarum to Winter’s series. There was less internal com petition between Janua linguarum and the Contributions to the sociology of language series, which began to appear in 1971 under the editorship of Joshua A. Fishman. De Ridder’s departure also had consequences for the position of Roman Jakobson, who for two decades had been Mouton’s most important author, and whose advices and scholarly diplomacy played a great role, certainly in