In 1883, aged 17, Rowlandson joined the staff of the
NSW Bookstall Company, and was employed as a tram ticket seller at the office at the corner of
King and
Elizabeth streets. He was promoted to cashier and then manager. When the proprietor Henry Lloyd died in 1897, Rowlandson bought the business from the widow and conceived the idea of selling Australian books at one shilling each, creating the
Bookstall series. In spite of his belief that there was a market for cheap Australian books, the prospects were not encouraging. Australians generally had not much faith in the value of the work of their country's novelists, and it seemed unlikely that books could be sold in large editions in a country with a population still, at the turn of the century, under four million. Rowlandson and Alma Jenkins were married in 1898 in Sydney. In late 1904 the NSW Bookstall Company published
Steele Rudd's ''Sandy's Selection'', for which Rowlandson paid £500 for the publication rights, at that time the largest sum paid in advance for an Australian book. The unprecedented fee paid to Rudd meant that about twenty thousand copies needed to be sold before a profit could be made. Rowlandson also spent comparatively large sums in readers' fees, and among the many distinguished artists employed as illustrators were
Norman Lindsay,
Lionel Lindsay,
Percy Lindsay,
Ruby Lindsay,
David Low,
Percy Spence and
Will Dyson. He published works by
Arthur Adams,
John Barry,
Louis Becke,
Randolph Bedford,
Edwin Brady,
George Cockerill,
Edward Dyson,
Beatrice Grimshaw,
Sumner Locke,
Vance Palmer,
Ambrose Pratt,
Thomas Spencer and
Alfred Stephens among others. Postcards included paintings by
Neville Cayley. Rowlandson himself may have been the author (as 'Paul Cupid') of a 1909 novel
The Rival Physicians. As a result of increased costs during
World War I the copy price of the books was increased to one shilling and threepence, but it was lowered to one shilling again as soon as possible. ==Late life and legacy==