John B. (John Berry) Alden

John Berry Alden was an American publisher remembered for making books more affordable and widely available. Active in New York during the late 1800s, he was closely associated with the boom in cheap reprints and subscription-style book selling that opened literature to a broader public.

Before establishing the firm that carried his name, he founded the American Book Exchange. That venture eventually failed, but Alden remained an important figure in low-cost publishing through the 1880s and 1890s, issuing large numbers of inexpensive editions of well-known works.

He was also the husband of journalist and reformer Cynthia May Alden, whom he married in 1896. Although many details of his life are less widely documented than those of some other publishers of his era, his name remains tied to an ambitious effort to make books cheaper and easier for ordinary readers to own.