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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Publisher's Confession, by Walter Hines Page

+

+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most

+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions

+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of

+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at

+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have

+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.

+

+

+

+Title: A Publisher's Confession

+

+Author: Walter Hines Page

+

+Release Date: June 11, 2017 [EBook #54892]

+

+Language: English

+

+Character set encoding: UTF-8

+

+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION ***

+

+

+

+

+Produced by Charlie Howard and the Online Distributed

+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was

+produced from images generously made available by The

+Internet Archive)

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+A PUBLISHER’S CONFESSION

+

+

+[Illustration]

+

+

+  NEW YORK

+  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO.

+  1905

+

+

+

+

+  COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY

+  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO.

+

+

+  _Published March, 1905_

+

+

+

+

+CONTENTS

+

+

+  CHAPTER                                                     PAGE

+     I THE RUINOUS POLICY OF LARGE ROYALTIES                     3

+

+    II WHY “BAD” NOVELS SUCCEED AND “GOOD” ONES FAIL            27

+

+   III ARE AUTHORS AN IRRITABLE TRIBE?                          45

+

+    IV HAS PUBLISHING BECOME COMMERCIALIZED?                    61

+

+     V HAS THE UNKNOWN AUTHOR A CHANCE?                         79

+

+    VI THE PRINTER WHO ISSUES BOOKS AT THE AUTHOR’S EXPENSE     99

+

+   VII THE ADVERTISING OF BOOKS STILL EXPERIMENTAL             115

+

+  VIII THE STORY OF A BOOK FROM AUTHOR TO READER               131

+

+    IX THE PRESENT LIMITS OF THE BOOK MARKET                   147

+

+     X PLAIN WORDS TO AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS                   163

+

+

+

+

+PUBLISHERS’ NOTE

+

+

+There is expressed in these chapters so much that is practical and

+of interest to those engaged in the various branches of authorship,

+book-making and book-selling that the present publishers have availed

+themselves of the permission of the Boston _Transcript_, in which they

+originally appeared, to gather them together in book form.

+

+NEW YORK, _March, 1905_.

+

+

+

+

+A Publisher’s Confession

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER I

+

+THE RUINOUS POLICY OF LARGE ROYALTIES

+

+

+  _How it Operates to the Disadvantage of Both Author and Publisher--

+    The Actual Facts and Figures--Authors’ Earnings Greatly Exaggerated

+    by the Press--Books Sell Too Cheaply--What a Fair Price for All

+    Concerned Would Be._

+

+The author of a very popular book, who has written another that will

+be as popular, wishes me to publish it, so he is kind enough to say;

+and he came to see me and asked on what terms I would bring it out. In

+these strenuous times he can dictate his own terms to his publisher;

+and I happened to know that two houses had made him offers.

+

+I confess, since I am old-fashioned, that this method of an author

+shocks me. If he does not openly hawk his book and his reputation, he

+at least tempts one publisher to bid against another, and thus invites

+the publisher to regard it as a mere commodity. But I suppressed my

+dislike of the method and went straight about the business of getting

+the book, for I should like to have it.

+

+“I will give you,” I said, “twenty per cent. royalty, and I will pay

+you $5,000 on the day of publication.”

+

+The words had not fallen from my mouth before I wished to recall them,

+for the publishing of books cannot be successfully done on these terms.

+There are only two or three books a year that can pay so much.

+

+“I will consider it,” said he.

+

+Abject as I was, I recovered myself far enough to say: “No, the offer

+is made for acceptance now or never--before this conversation ends. I

+cannot keep it open.”

+

+“My dear sir,” I went on, for I was regaining something of my normal

+courage, “do you know what twenty per cent. royalty on a $1.50 book

+means? You receive thirty cents for every copy sold. My net profit

+is about four or five cents a copy, if I manufacture it well and

+advertise it generously; and I supply the money in advance. I make an

+advance to you; I pay the papermaker in advance of my collections, the

+printer--everybody; and I wait from ninety to one hundred and twenty

+days after the book is sold to get my money. My profit is so small

+that it may vanish and become a loss by any misadventure, such as too

+much advertising, the printing of too large an edition, or the loss of

+an account with a failed bookdealer. I have no margin as an insurance

+against accidents or untoward events. I am doing business with you

+on an unfairly generous basis. I am paying you all the money that

+the book can earn--perhaps more than it can earn--for the pleasure of

+having you on my list. If I make money, I must make it on books for

+which I pay a smaller royalty.”

+

+“But I can get twenty per cent. from almost any other publisher,” he

+replied, truthfully. “Why should I consider less from you?”

+

+I could not answer him except by saying:

+

+“Yes, I am not blaming you--not quite; but there is a grave fault in

+the system that has brought about this general result. You may have

+forgotten that this high royalty is a direct temptation to a publisher

+to skimp his advertising. You expect generous advertising of the book.

+Well, I can never sign an order for an advertisement of it without

+recalling the very narrow margin of profit that I have. An order for

+$500 worth of advertising will take as much net profit as I can make

+on several thousand copies.

+

+“Again, when I come to manufacture the book, I cannot help recalling

+that gilt letters on the cover will increase the cost by one cent

+or two cents a copy. You tempt me to do all my work in the cheapest

+possible way.”

+

+Well, we are good friends, this writer and I, and we signed the

+contract. He is to receive a royalty of twenty per cent., and a payment

+on his royalty account of $5,000 on the day of publication.

+

+When, therefore, I had the pleasure of receiving the friends of another

+author, who told me that he would give me the book for twenty per cent.

+royalty ($5,000 cash on publication) if I cared to read it, I replied,

+“No.”

+

+

+NO MONEY ON THAT BASIS

+

+I had recovered. I said: “I cannot make money on that basis. Neither

+can other legitimate and conscientious publishers, who build their

+business to last. I will let novels alone, if I must. I will do a small

+business--but sounder. If that is your condition, do not leave the

+book. I will pay you a sliding scale of royalties: I cannot give you

+twenty per cent.”

+

+And he went away. I had just as lief another publisher lost money on

+the book as to lose it myself. True, the public, the reading public and

+the writing public, will regard the success of the book (if it succeed)

+as evidence of a rival publisher’s ability and enterprise. He will win

+temporary reputation. He will seem to be in the “swim” of success. He

+will publish flaming advertisements, in the hope of obtaining other

+successful authors; and he will attract them, for much book advertising

+is done not with the hope of selling the book, but chiefly to impress

+writers with the publisher’s energy and generosity. But there’s no

+profit and great risk in business conducted in this way.

+

+There is positive danger, in fact. And I owe it to myself and to all

+the men and women whose books I publish to see to it first of all that

+my own business is sound, and is kept sound. In no other way can I

+discharge my obligations to them and keep my publishing house on its

+proper level instead of on the level of a mere business shop.

+

+The rise of royalties paid to popular authors is the most important

+recent fact in the publishing world. It has not been many years

+since ten per cent. was the almost universal rule; and a ten per

+cent. royalty on a book that sells only reasonably well is a fair

+bargain between publisher and author. If the publisher do his work

+well--make the book well, advertise it well, keep a well-ordered and

+well-managed and energetic house--this division of the profits is a

+fair division--except in the case of a book that has a phenomenally

+large sale. Then he can afford to pay more. Unless a book has a pretty

+good sale, it will not leave a profit after paying more than a ten per

+cent. royalty.

+

+Figure it for yourself. The retail price of a novel is $1.50. The

+retail bookseller buys it for about ninety cents. The wholesale

+bookseller buys it from the publisher for about eighty cents. This

+eighty cents must pay the cost of manufacturing the book; of selling

+it; of advertising it; must pay its share towards the cost of keeping

+the publisher’s establishment going--and this is a large and increasing

+cost; it must pay the author; and it must leave the publisher himself

+some small profit. Now, if out of this eighty cents which must be

+divided for so many purposes, the author receives a royalty of twenty

+per cent. (thirty cents a copy), there is left, of course, only fifty

+cents to pay all the other items. No other half-dollar in this world

+has to suffer such careful and continuous division! I have met a good

+many authors who have never realized that a ten per cent. royalty means

+nearly twenty per cent. on what the publisher actually sells the book

+for, and that a twenty per cent. royalty is nearly forty per cent. on

+the actual wholesale price.

+

+There are several things of greater importance in the long run to an

+author than a large royalty. One of them is the unstinted loyalty of

+his publisher. His publisher must have a chance to be generous to his

+book. He ought not to feel that he must seek a cheap printer, that he

+must buy cheap paper, that he must make a cheap cover, that he must too

+closely watch his advertising account. A publisher has no chance to be

+generous to a book when he can make a profit on it only at the expense

+of its proper manufacture. The grasping author is, therefore, doing

+damage to his own book by leaving the publisher no margin of profit.

+

+

+THE STABILITY OF THE PUBLISHER

+

+There is still another thing that an author should set above his

+immediate income from any particular book; and that is the stability

+of his publisher. The publisher is a business man (he has need to be

+a business man of the highest type), but he is also the guardian of

+the author’s property. If his institution be not sound and be not kept

+sound, the loss to the author in money and in standing may be very

+great. The embarrassment or failure of a publishing firm now and then

+causes much gossip; for a publishing house is a center of publicity.

+But nobody outside the profession knows what practical trouble and

+confusion and loss every failure or financial embarrassment costs the

+writing world. The normal sale of many books is stopped. The authors

+lose in the end, and they lose heavily.

+

+Every publisher who appreciates his profession tries to make his house

+permanent, with an eye not only to his own profit, but also to the

+service that he may do to the writers on his list. If it is of the

+very essence of banking that a bank shall be in sound condition and

+shall have the confidence of the community, it is even more true that

+a publishing house should be sound to the core and should deserve

+financial confidence. The publisher must do his business with reference

+to a permanent success. But if he must do business on the basis of a

+twenty per cent. royalty, he takes risks that he has no right to take.

+It deserves to be called “wildcat” publishing.

+

+I am, therefore, not making a plea, by this confession, for a larger

+profit to the publisher in any narrow or personal sense. Every

+successful publisher--really successful, mind you--could make more

+money by going into some other business. I think that there is not a

+man of them who could not greatly increase his income by giving the

+same energy and ability to the management of a bank, or of some sort

+of industrial enterprise. Such men as Mr. Charles Scribner, Mr. George

+Brett, Mr. George H. Mifflin, could earn very much larger returns by

+their ability in banks, railroads or manufacturing, than any one of

+them earns as a publisher; for they are men of conspicuous ability.

+

+It is, therefore, not as a matter of mere gain to the publisher that

+it is important to have the business on a sound and fair basis; but it

+is for the sake of the business itself and for the sake of the writers

+themselves.

+

+

+AN AUTHOR’S BLUNDER

+

+Here is a true tale of a writer of good fiction: He made a most

+promising start. His first book, in fact, caused him to be sought by

+several publishers, who do not hesitate to solicit clients--a practice

+that other dignified professions discourage. The publisher of his first

+book gave him a ten per cent. royalty. For his second book he demanded

+more. A rival publisher offered him twenty per cent. The second book

+also succeeded. But the author in the meantime had heard the noise of

+other publishing houses. He had made the acquaintance of another writer

+whose books (which were better than his) had sold in much greater

+quantities. Of course, the difference in sales could not be accounted

+for by the literary qualities of the books--his friend had a better

+publisher than he--so he concluded. His third book, therefore, was

+placed with a third publisher, because he would advertise more loudly.

+Well, that publisher failed. His failure, by the way, the report of

+the receivers showed, was caused by spending too much in unproductive

+advertising.

+

+Here our author stood, then, with three books, each issued by a

+different publishing house. What should he do with his fourth book? He

+came back to his second publisher, who had, naturally, lost some of his

+enthusiasm for such an author. To cut the story short, that man now

+has books on five publishers’ lists. Not one of the publishers counts

+him as his particular client. In a sense his books are all neglected.

+One has never helped another. He has got no cumulative result of his

+work. He has become a sort of stray dog in the publishing world. He

+has cordial relations with no publisher; and his literary product has

+really declined. He scattered his influence, and he is paying the

+natural penalty.

+

+The moral of this true story (and I could tell half a dozen more like

+it) is that a publisher is a business man, but not a mere business

+man. He must be something more. He is a professional man also. He can

+do his best service only for those authors who inspire his loyalty, who

+enable him to make his publishing house permanent, and who leave him

+enough margin of profit to permit him to make books of which he can be

+proud.

+

+The present fashion of a part of the writing world--to squeeze the last

+cent out of a book and to treat the publisher as a mere manufacturer

+and “boomer”--cannot last. It has already passed its high period and is

+on the decline. A self-respecting worm would have turned long ago. Even

+the publisher is now beginning to turn.

+

+Better still, the authors whose books will be remembered longest

+have not caught the fashion of demanding everything. It was that

+passing school of “booms” and bellowing that did it all--the writers

+of romances for kitchen maids and shop girls, whose measure of book

+values was by dollars only. Such fashions always pass. For, if novel

+writing be so profitable an industry, a large number of persons

+naturally take it up; and they ruin the market by overstocking it.

+

+

+THE “BOOMED” BOOK PASSING

+

+Fast passing, then--praise God--is the “boomed” book, which, having no

+merit, could once be sold by sheer advertising, in several editions of

+100,000 each. I have made a list of the writers of books that during

+the last five or six years have sold in enormous editions; and every

+one of these writers, but two, has lived to see his (or her) latest

+book sell far below its predecessors. One man, for instance, wrote a

+first book which sold more than 200,000 copies. His publishers announce

+only the sixtieth thousand of his latest novel, though it has now

+nearly run its course.

+

+These are not pleasant facts. I wish that every novelist might have an

+increasing sale for every book he writes. They all earn more than they

+receive--even the bad ones whose books prosper; but the system that

+they brought with them deserves to die--must die, if publishing is to

+remain an honorable profession. They brought with them the 20 per cent.

+royalty, and the demand for an advertising outlay that was based on

+the sale of 100,000 or 200,000 copies. Only the keeper of dark secrets

+knows how many publishers have lost, or how large their losses have

+been, on “boomed” books. But any intelligent business man may take the

+50 cents that the publisher receives for his $1.50 novel after paying

+the author’s 20 per cent. royalty, and divide it thus:

+

+  Cost of manufacture,

+  Cost of selling,

+  Office expense,

+  Extravagant advertising,

+  Profit.

+

+If he can find anything left for profit, then he can get rich at any

+business. There have been novels so extravagantly advertised that the

+advertising cost alone amounted to 22 cents for every copy sold. The

+writer drove the publisher to loss; the publisher (foolishly) consented

+in the hope of attracting other authors to his house. If “other

+authors” knew that the very cost of the bait that attracted them makes

+the publishing house unsound, they would not long be fooled.

+

+Thus it comes about, in this strange and fascinating world of writing

+and making and selling books, that one period of “whooping up” novels

+is ending. Half the novels advertised during the past few years in

+big medicine style did not pay the publishers; and any conservative

+publisher can tell you which half they are.

+

+The manufacturing novelist has always been with us. But he used to be

+an humble practitioner of the craft whose “output” was sold for ten

+cents a volume. He always will be with us, and his product will sell,

+some at ten cents a volume, some at $1.50. But the time seems about to

+pass when he can disturb the publishing situation. For the publisher

+has to accept his methods when he accepts his work; and his methods

+do not pay either in dignity, permanency, or cash. If any of these be

+lacking--and in proportion as they are lacking--the results will fall

+short of the ideal. The results to be hoped for are money, but not

+money only, but also a watchful care by the publisher over his author’s

+reputation and growth, and a cumulative influence for his books.

+

+

+THE INCOME OF AUTHORS

+

+There are, perhaps, a dozen American novelists who have large incomes

+from their work; there are many more who have comfortable incomes; but

+there is none whose income is as large as the writers of gossip for the

+literary journals would have us believe. It has been said that Harper’s

+Magazine pays Mrs. Humphry Ward $15,000 for the serial right of each of

+her stories and twenty per cent. royalty. Miss Johnston must have made

+from $60,000 to $70,000 from royalties on “To Have and to Hold,” for

+any publisher can calculate it.

+

+But along with these great facts let us humbly remember that Mr.

+Carnegie received $300,000,000 for all his steel mills, good will,

+etc.; for the authors that I have named are the “millionaires” of

+the craft. I wish there were more. But the diligent writers of most

+good fiction, hard as they have ground the publishers in the rise of

+royalties, are yet nearer to Grub street than they are to Skibo Castle.

+

+The truth is--but it would be a difficult task to reduce such a truth

+to practice--that the public gets its good new novels too cheap. There

+is not a large enough margin of profit for author, publisher and

+bookseller in a new book that is meant to be sold for $1.50 and that

+is often sold for $1.08. The business of bookmaking and bookselling is

+underpaid. There is not a publisher in the United States who is today

+making any large sum of money on his “general trade.” Money is made on

+educational books, on subscription books, on magazines. But publishing,

+as publishing, is the least profitable of all the professions, except

+preaching and teaching, to each of which it is a sort of cousin.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER II

+

+WHY “BAD” NOVELS SUCCEED AND “GOOD” ONES FAIL

+

+

+  _The First May Have No Literary Quality, but They Have a Genuine

+    Quality--Power of Construction the Main Thing in Story-Writing--

+    Literary Reviews of Novels are Regarded as of Little Value by

+    Publishers--Odd Incidents and Facts in the Business._

+

+A report on the manuscript of a novel made by a “literary” reader

+not long ago ended with this sentence: “This novel is bad enough to

+succeed.” He expressed the feeling of a great many literary persons

+that fiction often succeeds in the market in proportion to its

+“badness.” And surely there are many instances to support such a

+contention from the “Lamplighter” to “When Knighthood Was in Flower.”

+But the “literary” view of fiction is no more trustworthy than the

+“literary” view of politics or of commerce; for it concerns itself more

+with technique than with substance.

+

+It is a hard world in which “Knighthood,” “Quincy Adams Sawyer”

+and “Graustark,” to say nothing of “The One Woman,” “Alice of Old

+Vincennes” and a hundred more “poor” books make fortunes, while Mr.

+Howells and Mr. James write to unresponsive markets and even Mr.

+Kipling cannot find so many readers for a new novel as Mr. Bacheller of

+“Eben Holden.” It seems a hard world to the professional literary folk;

+but the professional literary folk would find it a hard world anyhow;

+for it has a way of preferring substance to color. And novels, after

+all, have less to do with literature than they have to do with popular

+amusement.

+

+Heaven forbid that I should make defence of bad writing, or of

+sensational literature, or of bad taste, or of any other thing that is

+below grade; but, as between the professional literary class, and the

+great mass of men who buy “Eben Holdens” and “David Harums” the mass of

+men have the better case.

+

+Why does a man read a novel? Let us come down to common-sense. He seeks

+one of two things--either a real insight into human nature (he got that

+in “David Harum”) or he seeks diversion, entertainment. A writer’s

+style is only a part of the machinery of presentation. The main thing

+is that he has something to present. Even though I am a publisher I

+think that I know something about literary quality and literary values,

+and it must be owned at once that hardly one in a dozen of the very

+popular recent novels has any literary quality. But every one of them,

+nevertheless, has some very genuine and positive quality. They were

+not written by any trick, and their popularity does not make the road

+to success any easier to find. They have qualities that are rarer than

+the merely literary quality. Mr. Henry James’s novels have what is

+usually called the literary quality. Yet half the publishing houses in

+the United States have lost money on them, while the publisher and the

+author of “Richard Carvel” and “The Crisis” and “The Crossing” made a

+handsome sum of money from these books, which have no literary style.

+

+This does not mean a whining confession that “literature” does not pay.

+For my part I cannot weep because Mr. James and Mr. Howells do not

+find many readers for their latest books. They find all they deserve.

+Mere words were never worth much money or worth much else. But, while

+Mr. Churchill is not a great writer (since he has no style), and while

+few persons of the next generation of readers (whereby I mean those of

+year after next) are going to take the trouble to read his books, yet,

+for all that, they have a quality that is very rare in this world, a

+quality that their imitators never seem to see. They have construction.

+They have action. They have substance. A series of events come to pass

+in a certain order, by a well-laid plan. Each book makes its appeal as

+a thing built, finished, shapen, if not well-proportioned, substantial.

+It is a real structure--not a mere pile of bricks and lumber. The

+bricks and lumber that went into them are not as fine nor as good as

+somebody else may have in his brickyard and his lumber pile. But they

+are put together. A well shapen house of bad bricks is a more pleasing

+thing than any mere brick-pile whatever.

+

+I recall this interesting experience of a man whose novels are now

+fast winning great popular favor. He sat down and wrote a story and

+sent it to a publisher. It was declined. He sent it to another.

+Again it was declined. Then he brought it to me. (He told me of the

+preceding declinations a year later). I told him frankly that it lacked

+construction. I supposed that that was the last that I should see of

+him. But about a year later he came again with another manuscript and

+with this interesting story.

+

+“Like a fool,” said he, “I simply blazed away and wrote what I supposed

+was a novel. Nobody would publish it. When you said that it lacked

+construction, I went to work to study the construction of a novel. I

+analyzed twenty. I found a dozen books on the subject which gave me

+some help. But there are few books that do help. I constructed a sort

+of method of my own.”

+

+That man yet has no sense of literary values, as they are usually

+considered. The only good quality of his style is its perfect

+directness and clearness. He writes blunt, plain sentences. But every

+one of them tells something. He does not bother himself about style,

+nor about literary quality. He fixes his mind on the story itself, to

+see that it has substance, form, action, proportion. And he worked out

+this new novel with these qualities in it.

+

+It was a dime novel in praise of one of the cardinal Christian

+virtues--very earnest, very direct. But the persons in it were real.

+They not only said things, they did things; and many of the things

+they did were interesting. One of our salesmen was asked to read the

+manuscript. “It’ll sell,” said he. Our literary adviser said that it

+was a bald moral Sunday school play. “You could put it on the stage

+by cutting it here and there,” he declared. “But it has no literary

+quality.” Both were right. The book has sold well. It has amused and

+interested its tens of thousands.

+

+The author’s next book after that was very much better. Having learned

+something of the art of construction he began to think of such a

+detail as style. He re-wrote the book to make it “smooth.” But the

+point is, he first paid attention to his construction and made sure

+that he had a story to tell.

+

+The enormous amount of waste work done by unsuccessful novel writers

+is done without taking the trouble first to make sure that they have a

+story to tell.

+

+Few persons have any constructive faculty. This is the sad fact that

+comes home at last to a man who has read novels in manuscript for many

+years. A publisher comes to look for construction in a novel before he

+looks for style or literary quality.

+

+This confession is enough to provoke the literary journals to condemn

+the publishers as mere mercenary dealers in sensational books. Yet,

+while a book that is well constructed may not be “literature,” very few

+books have a serious chance to become literature unless they have good

+construction.

+

+I, for one, and I know no publisher who holds a different opinion, care

+nothing for the judgment of the professional literary class. Their

+judgment of a novel, for instance, is of little value or instruction.

+It may be right--often it is. It may be wrong. But whether right or

+wrong (and there is no way that I know to determine finally whether any

+judgment be right or wrong) it is of no practical value. A literary

+judgment of a new novel cannot affect the judgment that men will form

+of it ten years hence. Therefore it is of no permanent value. Neither

+can it affect the sales of a new novel. It is therefore of no practical

+importance for the moment. I look upon reviews of novels as so much

+publicity--they have value, as they tell the public that the book is

+published and can be bought, and as they tell something about it which

+may prod the reader’s curiosity. Further than this they are of no

+account. Not one of the three publishers whose personal habits I know

+as a rule takes the trouble to read the reviews of novels of his own

+publishing.

+

+Novel making, then, is an industry, and the people who make them best

+concern themselves very little about what is usually meant by “literary

+values,” and very little about their popularity. The writers who

+deliberately set out to write novels of great popularity have almost

+always missed it. The industry is an art, also, but it is not an art

+of mere fine writing. It is chiefly an art of construction--an art of

+putting things in due proportion. This assumes, of course, that the

+novelist has things to put.

+

+The truth is, the delicate and difficult art of finding out just what

+the public cares for--the public of this year or the public of ten

+years hence--has not been mastered by many men, whether writers or

+publishers. If you find out what the great public of today wants,

+you are a sensationalist. If you find out what the great public of

+ten or twenty years hence will want, you are a maker or a publisher

+of literature. And the public of the future is pretty sure to want

+something different from the public of today.

+

+Within six months after the publication of a popular novel the

+publisher of it (other publishers, too) will receive a dozen or a

+hundred stories that have been suggested by it. Many an author of

+such a manuscript will write that he has discovered the secret of

+the popular book’s success and that he has turned it to profit in

+his own effort. Such letters are singularly alike. The writers of

+them regard success as something won by a trick, as a game of cards

+might be won. These remind one, too, of the advertisements of patent

+medicines--except that the writers of them are sincere. They believe

+heartily in their discovery. Thus every very popular novel gives a

+great stimulus to the production of novels. “To Have and To Hold”

+brought cargoes of young women for colonists’ wives to hundreds of

+amateur story writers.

+

+But stranger than the popularity of very popular novels, or than the

+utter failure of merely “literary” novels, is the moderate success of a

+certain kind of commonplace stories. I know a woman of domestic tastes

+who every two years turns off a quiet story. She has now written a

+dozen or more. They are never advertised. But they are well printed and

+put forth by one of our best publishers. The “literary” world pays no

+heed to her. Her books are not even reviewed in the best journals. They

+lack distinction. But every one is sure to sell from ten to fifteen

+thousand copies. No amount of advertising, no amount of noise could

+increase the number of readers to twenty-five thousand; and there is no

+way to prevent a sale of from ten to fifteen thousand copies. Why this

+is so is one of the most baffling problems of psychology. But it is the

+rule. Authors of novels are known and rated among publishers as ten

+thousand, or twenty-five thousand, or fifty thousand, or one hundred

+thousand writers. Book after book reaches a certain level of popularity

+and--stops. Mr. Marion Crawford, Mr. Hopkinson Smith, Miss Wilkins--all

+these have their more or less constant levels.

+

+The lay world has no idea of the number of novels that fail. There are

+one-book authors all over the country. The publishers’ hope always is

+that a new writer who makes a pretty good novel will do better next

+time. Thus the first book is accepted for the sake of the next one. The

+first fails, and the second is not wanted. There are dozens and dozens

+of such cases every year. The public doesn’t know it, for the very

+abyss of oblivion is the place where a dead novel falls. Nobody knows

+it--that is the tragedy--but the publishers and the author.

+

+A case came to light a little while ago of a man who had years ago

+written novels that failed. He had been forgotten. But he took a new

+start. Yet he feared that his first failures would damn him with the

+publishers. He took another name, therefore. Not even his publishers

+knew who he really was. He succeeded and he concealed his identity

+until he died.

+

+The publisher’s loss on an unsuccessful novel may be little or big.

+All publishers lose much on unsuccessful ventures in fiction, chiefly

+on young authors who are supposed to have a future, or on old authors

+who have a “literary” reputation and have reached that ghostly period

+of real decline when they walk in dreams from one publishing house to

+another.

+

+But there is generally a reason for success or for failure. The

+trouble is that the reason often does not appear soon enough. The

+chief reason for the success of a novel is the commonplace one that it

+contains a story. It may be told ill or it may be told well, but there

+is a story. And the chief reason for failure is the lack of a story.

+A novel may be ever so well written,--if it have no story, the public

+will not care for it.

+

+I wonder if there be any light in this very obvious discovery. Simple

+as it seems, it costs every publishing house a pretty penny every

+year to find it out; and as soon as we find it out about one writer

+we forget it about another! It is a great truth that does not remain

+discovered.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER III

+

+ARE AUTHORS AN IRRITABLE TRIBE?

+

+

+  _An Emphatic Answer in the Negative--They Are Gentlemen and Ladies

+    and Treat Their Publisher with Courtesy--Bonds of Friendship Thus

+    Formed That Endure--Some Amusing and Nettling Exceptions--Cranks

+    Among the Scholars--The Inconstant Author Who Is Always Changing

+    Publishers--Why a Publishing Trust Is Impossible._

+

+The old and persistent notion that the writers of books are an

+irritable tribe, hard to deal with, and manageable only by flattery--if

+it was ever true, is not true now. During an experience of a good

+many years I have suffered a discourtesy from only two. Both these

+were “philosophers”--not even poets, nor novelists. They wrote books

+that the years have proved are dull; and, when it became my duty to

+disappoint them, although I hope I did it courteously, they wrote

+ill-tempered letters. The hundreds of other writers of all sorts that

+I have had the pleasure to deal with have conducted themselves as men

+and women of common sense, and most of them are men and women of very

+unusual attractiveness. I doubt whether a man of any other calling has

+the privilege of dealing with persons of such graciousness and of such

+consideration.

+

+But the women who write require more attention than the men. Their

+imaginations are more easily excited by the hope of success, and few of

+them have had business experience. They want to be fair and appreciate

+frank dealing. Yet they like to have everything explained in great

+detail.

+

+One woman, now one of our most successful novelists--successful both

+as a writer of excellent books and as an earner of a good income--was

+kind enough to seek my advice about one of her early novels. It was a

+book that she ought not to have written; the subject was badly chosen.

+I frankly told her so. The whole reading world has told her so since.

+But naturally she did not agree with me. She took the book to another

+publisher. Two years passed. She had a second novel ready. This was one

+of the best American stories of a decade. To my great gratification I

+received a letter from her one day asking if I cared to read it. Of

+course I said yes.

+

+Then came another telling how she had never changed her opinion of her

+former book--not a jot--I must understand that thoroughly. If that were

+clearly understood she went on to say she would like to have me publish

+the new book on two conditions: (1) That I should myself read it

+immediately and say frankly what I thought of it, and (2) that I should

+pay her a royalty large enough to repair her wounded feelings about

+the former book. Subsequently she added another condition--

+

+“You may publish it,” she said, “if you heartily believe in the book.”

+

+Very shrewdly said--that “heartily believe in the book.” For the secret

+of good publishing lies there. There are some books that a publisher

+may succeed with without believing in them--a dictionary or a slapdash

+novel, for examples. But a book that has any sterling quality--a real

+book--ought never to have the imprint of a publisher who is not really

+a sharer of its fortunes, a true partner with the author. For only with

+such a book can he do his best.

+

+I did believe in this book. As soon as it was in type I required every

+man in my office who had to do with it to read it--the writer of

+“literary notes,” the salesman and even the shipping clerk. When the

+author next called I introduced to her all these. They showed their

+enthusiasm. She was convinced. The book succeeded in the market almost

+beyond her expectations. It is a good book. Everyone of us believes in

+it and believes in her.

+

+She is not a crank, “but only a woman.” We have our reward in her

+friendship and she is generous enough to think that we have done her

+some service. We esteem it a high privilege to be her publishers.

+

+But God save me from another woman who has won a conspicuous success in

+the market. The first question she ever asked me was:

+

+“Are you a Christian?”

+

+“Do I look like a Jew or a Mohammedan?” I asked.

+

+She never forgave me. Her novel had a great religious motive. It sold

+by the tens of thousands and most maudlin emotionalists in the land

+have read it. But I do not publish it. To do so, I should have had to

+pay the price of being “converted.” Now this lady is a crank. But it

+is not fair to call her books literature.

+

+The veriest crank of all is our great scholar. It is an honor to

+publish the results of his scholarship (few parsnips as it butters),

+for the man’s work is as attractive as he is odd. He thinks himself

+the very soul of fairness. Yet he comes at frequent intervals wishing

+so to change his contract as to make publishing his books an even more

+expensive luxury than it was before. A contract is to him a thing to

+make endless experiments with. When we were once driven to desperation,

+one of my associates suggested that we propose half a dozen unimportant

+changes in it, on the theory that change--any change--was all he

+wanted. It was an inspired suggestion. A great scholar, a restless

+child. But some day (we feel) he will break over all traces, and we are

+all afraid of him.

+

+But very sane and sensible men and women are most of those who succeed

+in winning the public favor. Some are grasping, as other men are. One,

+for instance, whose book had earned $7,000 in two years, demanded

+a prepayment of $8,000 for the next book. A compromise was made on

+$2,000! That was the measure of my folly, for the book is waning in its

+popularity and has hardly earned this prepaid royalty.

+

+An author came to my office one day indignant because his novel was not

+more extensively advertised. There was the usual explanation--it would

+not pay. He had money to spare and he proposed to advertise it himself.

+He wrote the advertisements, he selected the journals in which the

+advertisements should appear, and he inserted them--$1,000 worth.

+

+By some strange fate the sales of the book began just then greatly

+to decline. They have kept declining since, and why nobody can tell.

+When the public has bought a certain number of copies of a novel--of

+one novel it may be 1,000 copies, of another 100,000 copies--there is

+nothing that can be done to make it buy another 1,000 or 100,000. It

+seems to know when it has enough. Take more it will not. The worst

+“crank” that any publisher ever encountered is not an author; it is the

+public, unreasoning, illogical, unconvincible, stolid!

+

+Odd persons are found in every craft. But I think that there are fewer

+odd ones among successful writers than among successful lawyers, for

+instance. And this is what one would naturally expect, but for the

+traditional notion that writers are unbalanced. Who else is so well

+balanced as the writer of good books? He must have sanity and calmness

+and judgment, a sense of good proportion, an appreciation of right

+conduct and of all human relations, else he could not make books of

+good balance and proportion.

+

+Most writers have few financial dealings, and they often innocently

+propose impracticable things. But this is not a peculiar trait of

+writers. Most preachers and many women show it. I have known a

+successful college president, for instance, to cut a paragraph out of a

+proof sheet with a pair of scissors, imagining that this would cause it

+to be taken out by the printers.

+

+They are appreciative, too; and they make the most interesting friends

+in the world. Almost all writers of books work alone. Lawyers work with

+clients and with associated and opposing lawyers. Even teachers have

+the companionship of their pupils in the work. Men of most crafts work

+with their fellows, and they forget how much encouragement they owe to

+this fellowship. A dreary task is made light by it and monotonous labor

+is robbed of its weariness. But the writer works alone.

+

+Almost the first man to be taken into his confidence about his work

+is his publisher. If the publisher be appreciative and sympathetic

+and render a real service, how easily and firmly the writer is won.

+A peculiarly close friendship follows in many cases--in most cases,

+perhaps, certainly in most cases when the author’s books are successful.

+

+And this is why a great publishing trust, or “merger” is impossible.

+The successful publisher sustains a relation to the successful author

+that is not easily transferable. It is a personal relation. A great

+corporation cannot take a real publisher’s place in his attitude to the

+authors he serves.

+

+This is the reason, too, why the “authors’ agents” seldom succeed

+in raising the hopes of unsuccessful writers. As soon as a writer

+and a publisher have come into a personal relation that is naturally

+profitable and pleasant, a “go-between” has no place. There is no

+legitimate function for him.

+

+Writers are as constant in their relations as other men and women.

+As they acquire experience, they become more constant. Every one for

+himself works his way to this conclusion--once having an appreciative

+and successful publisher, it is better to hold to him. And the strong

+friendships that grow out of this relation are among the most precious

+gains to each.

+

+One publisher said to another the other day: “I see by your

+announcements that one of my authors has gone to you--you are welcome.”

+

+“Yes,” was the reply, “I have in almost every instance made a mistake

+when I have taken in a dissatisfied writer--one cannot make lasting

+friends with them.”

+

+Every great publishing house has been built on the strong friendships

+between writers and publishers. There is, in fact, no other sound

+basis to build on; for the publisher cannot do his highest duty to

+any author whose work he does not appreciate, and with whom he is not

+in sympathy. Now, when a man has an appreciation of your work and

+sympathy for it, he wins you. This is the simplest of all psychological

+laws--the simplest of all laws of friendship and one of the soundest.

+

+Those who know the personal history of the publishing houses that in

+recent years have failed or met embarrassments know that, in most

+cases, one cause of decline was the drawing apart of publishers and

+authors. When authors begin to regard their publishers as mere business

+agents, and publishers to regard authors as mere “literary men” with

+whom they have only business relations, the beginning of a decline has

+come.

+

+I recall as one of the pleasantest days of my life the day on which

+I accepted a book by an author I had never before seen. So pleasant

+was our correspondence that I took the first occasion I could to go

+nearly a thousand miles to see him. In his own house we talked about

+his literary plans, and I spent a day always to be remembered. Our

+friendship began then. Of course I was interested in his work--you

+cannot long feign an interest that you do not feel. This friendship has

+lasted now long enough to make it very much more secure a bond than any

+merely commercial service could have become.

+

+Every publisher’s experience is the same--if he be a real publisher

+and will long remain a real publisher. Else he would be only a printer

+and a salesman, and mere printers and salesmen have not often built

+publishing houses. For publishing houses have this distinction over

+most other commercial institutions--they rest on the friendship of the

+most interesting persons in the world, the writers of good books.

+

+The more formal cultivation of friendly relations such as the famous

+dinners that some publishers used regularly to give to writers has

+gone out of fashion. There are yet a few set dinners in the routine

+of several American publishing houses. But every true publisher knows

+the authors of his books--knows them as his friends; and the tradition

+of irritability is false. It is usually the unsuccessful who are

+irritable, whether they be authors or not.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER IV

+

+HAS PUBLISHING BECOME COMMERCIALIZED?

+

+

+  _A Charge Fairly Met and Its Truths Admitted--Many Features of the

+    Business in Which a Low Tone Prevails--The Literary Solicitor an

+    Abhorrent Creature--On the Whole, However, Commercial Degradation

+    Prevails Less with Publishers Than in Many Other Callings--The

+    Confidence Authors Have in Them Is Their Best Asset._

+

+Authorship and publishing--the whole business of producing

+contemporaneous literature--has for the moment a decided commercial

+squint. It would be wrong to say, as one sometimes hears it said, that

+it has been degraded; for it has probably not suffered as nearly a

+complete commercialization as the law has suffered, for instance. But

+that fine indifference to commercial results which was once supposed

+to be characteristic of the great publishers does not exist today.

+Perhaps it never existed except in memoirs and literary journals! But

+there was a less obvious effort to make money in the days of the first

+successful American publishing houses than there is now.

+

+The old publishing houses put forth schoolbooks; and many a dignified

+literary venture was “financed” by money made from the sale of

+textbooks and subscription books. But now the greater part of the

+money made from these two special departments is made by houses that

+publish nothing else. The making of schoolbooks and the making of

+subscription books have been specialized, and almost separated from

+general publishing. Two great textbook houses have made large incomes;

+and they publish nothing but schoolbooks. These profits, which were

+once at the service of literature, are now withdrawn from it. The

+“general” publisher has to make all his profits on his “general” books.

+The necessity is the heavier on him, therefore, to make every book pay.

+This is one reason why the general publisher has to watch his ledger

+closely.

+

+Another reason for greater emphasis on the financial side of literary

+production is the enormously increased expense of conducting a general

+publishing house. The mere manufacture of books is perhaps a trifle

+cheaper than it used to be, but every other item of expense has been

+increased enormously within a generation. It costs more to sell

+books than it ever cost before. Advertising rates have been doubled

+or trebled, and more advertising must be done. Even a small general

+publishing house must spend as much as $30,000 or $50,000 a year in

+general advertising. There are many houses that each spend a great deal

+more than this every year.

+

+The author, too, it must be remembered, has become commercial. He

+demands and he receives a larger share of the gross receipts from his

+book than authors ever dreamed of receiving in the days of the old-time

+publisher. All the other expenses of selling books have increased.

+There was a time when publishing houses needed no travelling salesmen.

+Now every house of any importance has at least two. They go everywhere,

+with “dummies” and prospectuses of books long before they are ready for

+the market. Other items of “general expense” besides advertising and

+salesmen and ever-increasing rent, are the ever-growing demands of the

+trade for posters and circulars; correspondence grows more and more;

+more and more are special “window displays” required, for which the

+publisher pays. All the while, too, books are sold on long time. As a

+rule they are not paid for by many dealers till six months after they

+are manufactured.

+

+All these modern commercial methods have added to the publisher’s

+expense or risk; and for these reasons his business has become

+more like any other manufacturing business than it once seemed

+to be--perhaps more than it once was. Of course there are

+publishers--there always were such--who look only to their ledgers as

+a measure of their success. These are they who have really demoralized

+the profession, and the whole publishing craft has suffered by their

+methods.

+

+It was once a matter of honor that one publisher should respect the

+relation established between another publisher and a writer, as a

+physician respects the relation established between another physician

+and a patient. Three or four of the best publishing houses still live

+and work by this code. And they have the respect of all the book world.

+Authors and readers, who do not know definitely why they hold them in

+esteem, discern a high sense of honor and conduct in them. Character

+makes its way from any man who has it down a long line--everybody who

+touches a sterling character comes at last to feel it both in conduct

+and in product. The very best traditions of publishing are yet a part

+of the practice of the best American publishing houses, which are

+conducted by men of real character.

+

+But there are others--others who keep “literary drummers,” men who go

+to see popular writers and solicit books. The authors of very popular

+books themselves also--some of them at least--put themselves up at

+auction, going from publisher to publisher or threatening to go. This

+is demoralization and commercialization with a vengeance. But it is the

+sin of the authors.

+

+As a rule, this method has not succeeded; or it has not succeeded

+long. There are two men in the United States who have gone about

+making commercial calls on practically every man and woman who has

+ever written a successful book; and they are not well thought of by

+most of the writers whom they see. Every other publisher hears of

+their journeyings and of their “drumming.” Sometimes they have secured

+immediate commercial results, but as a rule they have lost more than

+they have gained. The permanent success of every publishing house is

+built on the confidence and the esteem of those who write books. When a

+house forfeits that, it begins to lose. Its very foundations begin to

+become insecure.

+

+Commercial as this generation of writers may be, almost every writer of

+books has an ambition to win literary esteem. They want dignity. They

+seek reputation on as high a level as possible. “The trouble with the

+whole business” (I quote from a letter from a successful novelist) “is

+that novel-writing has become so very common. ‘Common’ is the word. It

+is no longer distinguished. What I want is distinction. Money I must

+have--some money at least; but I want also to be distinguished.” That

+is a frank confession that almost every writer makes sooner or later.

+

+Now, when a publishing house forfeits distinction it, too, becomes

+common, and loses its chance to confer a certain degree of distinction.

+And literary “drummers” have this effect--authors who can confer

+distinction shun their houses. The literary solicitor, therefore, can

+work only on a low level; and the houses that use him are in danger of

+sinking to a low level.

+

+The truth is, it is a personal service that the publisher does for the

+author, almost as personal a service as the physician does for his

+patient or the lawyer for his client. It is not merely a commercial

+service. Every great publisher knows this and almost all successful

+authors find it out, if they do not know it at first.

+

+The ideal relation between publisher and author requires this personal

+service. It even requires enthusiastic service. “Do you thoroughly

+believe in this book? and do you believe in me?” these are the very

+proper questions that every earnest writer consciously or unconsciously

+puts to his publisher. Even the man who writes the advertisements of

+books must believe in them. Else his advertisements will not ring true.

+The salesmen must believe what they say. The booksellers and the public

+will soon discover whether they believe it. They catch the note of

+sincerity--the public is won; the author succeeds. Or they catch the

+note of insincerity and the book lags.

+

+This is the whole story of good publishing. Good books to begin with,

+then a personal sincerity on the part of the publisher. And there is no

+lasting substitute for these things.

+

+The essential weakness in most of even the best publishing houses

+of our day is the lack of personal literary help to authors by the

+owners of the publishing houses themselves. Almost every writer

+wishes to consult somebody. If they do not wish advice, they at least

+wish sympathy. Every book is talked over with somebody. Now, when a

+publishing house has a head--an owner--who will read every important

+manuscript, and freely and frankly talk or write about it, and can give

+sympathetic suggestions, that is the sort of publishing house that will

+win and hold the confidence of the best writers. From one point of view

+the publisher is a manufacturer and salesman. From another point of

+view he is the personal friend and sympathetic adviser of authors--a

+man who has a knowledge of literature and whose judgment is worth

+having. A publisher who lacks the ability to do this high and intimate

+service may indeed succeed for a time as a mere manufacturer and

+seller of books; but he can add little to the best literary impulses

+or tendencies of his time; nor is he likely to attract the best writers.

+

+And--in all the noisy rattle of commercialism--the writers of our own

+generation who are worth most on a publisher’s list respond to the true

+publishing personality as readily as writers did before the day of

+commercial methods. All the changes that have come in the profession,

+therefore, have not after all changed its real character as it is

+practised on its higher levels. And this rule will hold true--that no

+publishing house can win and keep a place on the highest level that

+does not have at least one man who possesses this true publishing

+personality.

+

+There is much less reason to fear the commercial degradation of many

+other callings than the publishers’.

+

+A louder complaint of commercialism has been provoked by the unseemly

+advertising of novels than by any other modern method of publishers.

+Now this is a curious and interesting thing. A man or woman writes a

+story (let us call it a story, though it be a mild mush of mustard,

+warranted to redden the faded cheeks of sickly sentimentality) which,

+for some reason that nobody can explain, has the same possibilities of

+popularity as Salvation Soap. A saponaceous publisher puts it out; he

+advertises it in his soapy way; people buy it--sometimes two hundred or

+three hundred thousand of them.

+

+Behold! a new way has been found to write books that sell, and a new

+way to sell them. Hundreds of writers try the easy trick. Dozens of

+minor publishers see their way to fortune. But the trick cannot be

+imitated, and the way to fortune remains closed. It is only now and

+then that a novel has a big “run” by this method. The public does not

+see the hundreds of failures. It sees only the occasional accidental

+success.

+

+There is no science, no art, no literature in the business. It is like

+writing popular songs: One “rag-time” tune will make its way in a

+month from one end of the country to the other. A hundred tune-makers

+try their hands at the trick--not one of their tunes goes. The same

+tune-maker who “scored a success” often fails the next time. There is,

+I think, not a single soap-novelist who has put forth a subsequent

+novel of as great popularity as his “record-breaker,” and several

+publishing houses have failed through unsuccessful efforts at the

+brass-band method.

+

+This is not publishing. It is not even commercialism. It is a form of

+gambling. A successful advertising “dodge” makes a biscuit popular,

+or a whiskey, or a shoe, or a cigarette, or anything. Why not a

+book, then? This would be all that need be said about it but for the

+“literary” journals. They forthwith fall to gossiping, and keep up a

+chatter about “great sellers,” and bewail commercialism in literature,

+until we all begin to believe that the whole business of book-writing

+and book-publishing has been degraded. Did it ever occur to you that in

+the “good old days” of publishing there were no magazines that retailed

+the commercial and personal gossip of the craft?

+

+As nearly as I can make out the publishing houses in the United States

+that are conducted as dignified institutions are conducted with as

+little degrading commercialism as the old houses whose history has

+become a part of English literature, and I believe that they are

+conducted with more ability. Certainly not one of them has made a

+colossal fortune. Certainly not one of them ever failed to recognize

+or to encourage a high literary purpose if it were sanely directed.

+Every one of them every year invests in books and authors that they

+know cannot yield a direct or immediate profit, and they make these

+investments because they feel ennobled by trying to do a service to

+literature.

+

+The great difficulty is to recognize literature when it first comes

+in at the door, for one quality of literature is that it is not

+likely even to know itself. The one thing that is certain is that the

+critical crew and the academic faculty are sure not to recognize it

+at first sight. To know its royal qualities at once under strange and

+new garments--that is to be a great publisher, and the glory of that

+achievement is as great as it ever was.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER V

+

+HAS THE UNKNOWN AUTHOR A CHANCE?

+

+

+  _A Popular Illusion Based on “Graustark” and “David Harum” Dispelled--

+    Publishers Blunder More Often in Welcoming Than in Rejecting

+    Manuscripts of the “New Man”--Guess Work Enters Largely Into the

+    Fate of a Novel--How Publishers Judge Manuscripts and How “Reading”

+    Is Done._

+

+It will probably always be believed by many persons that publishing

+houses do not give careful attention to book manuscripts that come

+from strangers. The case of “David Harum” did much to fix this notion

+in the public mind. The manuscript was declined by three or four

+publishers before it was accepted by the Appletons. Its declination was

+an evidence of bad financial book-judgment, but it is not proof that

+it was carelessly considered. Most publishers’ readers are literary

+folk, pure and simple. Not one in a hundred has a good financial

+judgment of a manuscript. As a literary product, judged by academic

+standards, there was not much in “David Harum” to commend it. The

+publishers who rejected it acted on the readers’ reports. When it went

+to the Appletons, somebody was shrewd enough to see that if it were

+shortened and put in somewhat better form, it would have a commercial

+value. A publishing judgment was passed on it there and not merely a

+conventional literary judgment.

+

+Or, take the case of “Graustark.” It was declined at least by one

+publisher. There is, perhaps, not a “literary” reader in the world

+who would have commended it in manuscript, or (for that matter) who

+will commend it now. It does violence to every literary canon. But a

+Chicago publisher, by some divine or subterranean suggestion, saw a

+chance for it. Its roughest edges were hewn off with an axe, and it

+was put forth. There have now appeared four “Graustark” books, three

+of which have each sold perhaps a hundred times as many copies as Mr.

+Howell’s latest novel will sell.

+

+The difference between a mere literary judgment and a publishing

+judgment indicates the greatest weakness in the organizations of most

+publishing houses. The publisher himself is usually a business man. He

+has to concern himself with the financial work of his house--with the

+manufacture and the sale of books. In a great measure he relies, for

+his judgment of literary values, on his advisers and readers. As a rule

+these advisers and readers are employed men or women. They know nothing

+about what may be called the commercial value of books. Many of them

+know nothing about the losses or the profits on the books that they

+have commended. They have had no experience in selling books. These

+facts indicate the wrong organization of most publishing houses. Yet

+the faithfulness that they show to aspiring authors is amazing; they

+plough conscientiously through thousands of manuscripts looking for the

+light of some possible genius, and they commend dozens of books where

+their employers accept a single volume.

+

+But the publisher does acquire a sort of sixth sense about a book. He

+may or he may not know literary values, but he comes to have a peculiar

+sort of knowledge of the commercial possibilities of books. If he takes

+“literary readers’” judgments and does not read manuscripts himself,

+he will now and then let a “David Harum” pass through his hands. To

+avoid such mistakes every publishing house has at least two readers,

+and these read manuscripts independently of one another. The publisher

+then makes his judgment from them both, or perhaps from a third reading

+by a specialist, if the manuscript seem good enough to warrant a third

+reading.

+

+The mistake of permitting a profitable manuscript to be rejected does

+not come, therefore, from inattention to the work of strangers, but

+from sheer fallibility of judgment. And the work of strangers is very

+carefully considered in every publishing house that I know anything

+about. Every publisher in these days is just as eager to get a new good

+writer on his list as any unknown writer is eager to get a publisher;

+and no manuscript above the grade of illiteracy is neglected.

+

+A “first reader”--a man of all around general knowledge of books, and

+he ought to be a man full of hard common-sense, common-sense being

+worth more than technical literary knowledge--the “first reader”

+examines the manuscript. If it be a shopworn piece of commonplace

+work, obviously hopeless, he may not read it from preface to end, but

+he must say in his written report whether he has read it all. Whether

+he condemn it or approve it, it is examined or read by another reader.

+If both these condemn it as hopeless, the publisher declines it without

+more ado.

+

+The greater number of manuscripts that come to publishing houses are

+hopeless. Three-fourths of them, or more, are novels that have been

+written by lonely women or by men who have no successful occupation;

+and most of these are conscious or unconscious imitations of recent

+popular novels. It does not require very shrewd judgment to see that

+they are hopeless. But it does require time. If they are above the

+grade of illiteracy somebody must read a hundred pages or more to

+make sure that the dulness of the early chapters may not be merely a

+beginner’s way of finding his gait. And many of these manuscripts go

+from publishing house to publishing house. There are, I should say, a

+thousand hopeless novels in manuscript at all times making this weary

+journey.

+

+Sometimes one comes back to the same publisher a second time, the

+author having perhaps not kept an accurate record of its itinerary.

+Sometimes it comes back a year later, somewhat changed. There is one

+novel-manuscript that has come to me four times within two years,

+every time in a somewhat different form, and twice with different

+titles--obviously to fool the “careless” publisher.

+

+While very few mistakes are made or are likely to be made with these

+manuscripts that two readers independently declare hopeless, the

+class next to these require a great deal of work and care. This class

+includes those books by unknown writers that are not bad. One reader

+will say that they are worth considering. The next reader will say

+that they have some sort of merit. Then the publisher must go slowly.

+A third person must read them. If the publisher be an ideal publisher,

+he will read them himself. (The weakness of most American publishing

+houses of this generation comes just here--the publisher himself does

+not read many manuscripts.)

+

+In the best publishing houses (this, I know, is the habit of three) the

+reports on books of this class are all read at a meeting of the firm,

+or (better) at a meeting of the firm and of the heads of departments.

+At such a meeting the judgment of a sensible man who is at the head of

+the sales department of a publishing house is very useful. He knows

+by his everyday work what sort of books the public is buying. Some of

+them are books that the “literary” world knows nothing about or has

+forgotten.

+

+And three or four or five men, by a little discussion, can reach a

+clearer and saner judgment about a book from the reports of three or

+four readers than the readers themselves can reach or than any one

+man or any two men who consider the reports could reach. There is no

+subject in the world about which a conference is likely to be more

+helpful. One man’s judgment about the publishing quality of a book may

+easily be wrong. The judgment of two men may be wrong if they look at

+it from the same angle or with the same temperament. But the judgment

+of three, or four, or five men, if they have the facts before them and

+if they indulge in frank discussion, is very seldom wrong. No book

+on which serious work has been done ought to be rejected or accepted

+without the benefit of the independent reports of two or three sensible

+persons who have carefully read it, and without the discussions

+of these reports by three or four other persons of experience

+and judgment. And in at least three American publishing houses

+every manuscript of any value or promise runs a course of hopeful

+consideration such as this; for the publisher wants good new books, he

+wants good new writers; and he wants them badly. Half a dozen popular

+writers will build a publishing house. It is, therefore, doubtful

+whether any other business is so carefully conducted with reference to

+its sources of supply.

+

+In fact, all publishers make many more mistakes in accepting books

+than in declining them. They accept many books from new writers that

+they hope may possibly succeed, but in which they have not very strong

+faith. It is the book manuscripts of this class that cause the most

+work and the greatest trouble--the class that may possibly succeed. A

+book of this class by a new writer who shows cleverness or some other

+good quality is often accepted in the hope that the author may do

+better with the next book. It is accepted as an encouragement and as

+a hope; it chiefly is for this reason that so many books are published

+that are barely good enough to warrant publication. The publisher is

+trying to “develop” an author.

+

+Sometimes this method succeeds; for it sometimes happens that a

+good writer writes a first book that is merely a promise of later

+achievement. But this does not often happen. In most cases the second

+book is no better than the first--or is worse. Then the publisher

+loses and the writer is seldom heard of again. The number of one-novel

+writers scattered over the land would surprise the world if it were

+known. There is no rule about literary production to which there

+are not an embarrassing number of exceptions. But in most cases a

+successful writer starts with a successful book. The hope that the

+second book will be better is one of the rocks on which many publishing

+ventures wreck.

+

+But if the publishers put forth a number of commonplace books (chiefly

+novels) from a false hope that they may thus develop good writers, they

+also do a service of the opposite kind. They save the long-suffering

+public from many worthless books. For if the public had thrust upon it

+all or half or a tenth of the books that are written, what a dull world

+we should have!

+

+When a book-manuscript has been rejected, the delicate task comes

+next of informing the author. This task is seldom done as well as it

+ought to be. It is almost impossible for a publisher--who receives and

+rejects manuscripts as a matter of business--to put himself in the

+place of a writer who has spent lonely weeks in her work. To send a

+mere business note is almost an insult. Yet what more can the publisher

+write? He does not dare write hopefully. If he does he will give a

+degree of encouragement that is dishonest. Yet the author expects a

+long and explicit letter telling why the manuscript is unavailable.

+If she does not receive such a letter she jumps to the conclusion that

+her manuscript has not had fair consideration. Publishers’ letters of

+rejection are the chief cause, I suspect, of the persistent notion that

+they are careless in the examination of manuscripts.

+

+Every letter of declination ought to be written by a skilful man--a

+diplomatist who can write an unpleasant truth without offence. Every

+such letter ought to be written with a pen. No general form ought to

+be used. Yet in only one of the publishing houses whose habits I know

+is this degree of care taken. The consideration of manuscript from

+strangers is careful and conscientious, but letters of rejection are

+often perfunctory.

+

+To sell a novel that has the mysterious quality of popularity in it is

+not difficult. Properly launched, it sells itself. To sell a novel that

+lacks the inherent quality of popularity--that is almost impossible.

+Apparently it has sometimes been done, but nobody can be sure whether

+the result after all was due to the book or to the salesman. Every

+publisher has proved, over and over again, to his disgust, that he

+cannot make the people buy a novel that they do not want; and when a

+novel appears (no better novel) that they do want, the novel-readers

+find it out by some free-masonry and would buy it if the publishers

+tried to prevent them.

+

+Nobody has discovered a rule--to say nothing of a principle--whereby

+the popularity of a novel by a new writer may be determined. If it be

+a really great, strong book, of course it is easy to understand that

+it will sell; but whether it will sell 10,000 copies or 100,000 nobody

+knows. If it be a slapdash dime-novel, full of action, it is easy to

+guess that it will sell; but whether 5,000 or 500,000 nobody knows.

+Sometimes a book of the sheerest commonplace happens to hit the public

+mood at the happy angle and sells beyond all expectation. The truth is,

+every new novel by an unknown writer presents a problem peculiar to

+itself; and in advertising it and offering it for sale, every book’s

+peculiar problem must be studied by itself.

+

+The whole question is a subtle social one. Who could have foretold

+popularity for “pigs in clover,” rather than for some other silly

+puzzle; or for ping-pong; or for women’s hats of a certain grotesque

+construction? The popular whim about novels is like the whims for these

+things. And a popular novel passes as quickly as any other fashion.

+The story has been many times told of the sudden falling off of the

+demand for “Trilby”--so sudden that the publishers had a large number

+of copies left on hand which could not be sold at all except as waste

+paper. Every publisher is afraid to publish very large editions of any

+very popular novel; for they have all had an experience parallel to

+this experience with “Trilby.”

+

+But other kinds of books are less capricious than novels; and the

+business of the publisher has been reduced more nearly to a science in

+dealing with books of information. Several publishers, for example,

+have series of little books made of selections from English and

+American classics. Many of them have sold well; but some of them have

+sold by the million and others just as good and just as attractive have

+stopped at the ten-thousand limit or at a lower limit. The difference

+is with the skill with which they were put on the market. Sometimes an

+ingenious “scheme” will sell information books in great numbers; and it

+often happens that the worst of three or four books on the same subject

+and published for the same price, becomes far better known than the

+other better books.

+

+As a theoretical proposition it seems plain that the publisher who

+will spend the most money in newspaper advertising will sell the most

+books. Authors not infrequently take up this notion. Sometimes it is

+true; for sometimes newspaper advertising will cause a great demand

+for a book. But this is not true with every book. And most recent

+publishing failures have been due--in a great measure, at least--to

+prodigal advertising--or, perhaps, to misdirected advertising.

+

+Every book is a problem unto itself. The wise publisher so regards

+it from the beginning; and he makes his plans for every book to suit

+its peculiar case and not another. All the long road from author to

+reader, the book--any book--presents a series of interesting, original

+problems. Many of them are very fascinating problems. They call for

+imagination, fertility, ingenuity. The reason why few authors or

+authors’ societies or other persons who have not been definitely

+trained to publishing fail, is that they are too likely to regard

+publishing as a mere routine business--a business of manufacturing a

+certain product and then of offering it for sale. They forget that

+every book--and even every edition of every book--presents a problem

+that was never presented before since the world was made. And when its

+sympathetic ingenuity and inventiveness fail, a publishing house begins

+to become a mere business and the drying-up period is not far off.

+

+But no publishing house fails because it does not examine manuscripts

+carefully. There is no other business that I know of that is done more

+seriously; and the mistakes made are fewer than the public thinks. They

+are mistakes of judgment and not of carelessness.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VI

+

+THE PRINTER WHO ISSUES BOOKS AT THE AUTHOR’S EXPENSE

+

+

+  _A Heartless Pirate Who Preys Upon the Unsophisticated and Ambitious

+    Writer--The Contract in Which This Sort of “Publisher” Cannot

+    Lose--The Inevitable Disappointment--How the Publication by Even a

+    Responsible House of a Book That Sells Poorly Injures the House._

+

+An innocent and ambitious good woman sent to me last year a form of

+contract that a printer who pretended to be a publisher had sent her to

+sign for the publication of a novel. In its unessential clauses it was

+like the usual publisher’s contract; but it required the author to pay

+in advance a fixed sum for the plates and for the manufacture of one

+thousand copies; and this sum was just about twice what they should

+cost him. Then he was to pay her not the usual ten or even fifteen

+per cent. royalty, but fifty per cent. on all copies sold--as well

+he might; and, if at the end of a year the book had ceased to sell,

+she was bound to buy the plates from him at half cost. The meaning of

+all this translated into figures, is this: The plates would cost him

+$250, for he does cheap work; a thousand copies of the book would cost

+him $200, for he makes cheap books; total, $450. She would pay him in

+advance $900. He has a profit so far of $450. He does not expect to

+sell any of the books. Her friends would buy perhaps as many as two

+hundred copies. They would not be on sale at the bookstores--except in

+her own town. At the end of the year she would pay him again for the

+plates half what he charged her at first--which is just what they cost

+him. By this time she would have paid just three times their cost to

+him. His outlay in the whole transaction would be:

+

+  For plates                              $250

+  For 1000 copies                          200

+                                          ----$450

+  His income would be: Her prepayment      900

+  Her purchase of the plates a year later  250

+                                          ----1150

+                                              ----

+  His profit                                  $700

+

+He would not have even to make any outlay of capital. She supplies the

+capital and he makes his $700 profit by writing her a few letters.

+If any of the books were sold he would receive also half what they

+brought. She would have spent $1150, less what she received for the few

+copies that were sold. Her book would not have been published--only

+printed at an excessive cost.

+

+There are several “publishers” who seem to do a prosperous brief

+business of this kind by preying upon inexperienced and disappointed

+authors. It is only by accident they ever get a book that sells; and

+they hardly pretend to put books on the market, for of course the

+booksellers will not buy them. A really good book would, therefore, in

+their hands be buried. The public would never find it out. They print a

+large number of the novels that the real publishers decline.

+

+The long list of books--chiefly novels--that these pseudo-publishers

+put out tells a sad tale of misdirected energy and of disappointed

+hopes. A man--oftener it is a woman--conceives the notion of writing a

+novel. She works alone. She shuts herself off from life about her. Any

+human being who spends months at a self-imposed secret task becomes

+profoundly, even abnormally interested in it. The story grows--or

+flows; for the author becomes more fluent as she goes on. She is likely

+to accept all the stories of extraordinary successes that she reads

+in the literary journals as if they were common successes. She goes on

+working by herself with no corrective companionship. At last she sends

+it to a real publisher and gets a disappointing decision. She imagines

+a thousand reasons why she is not appreciated. She sends it to another,

+and so on. The story of the wanderings of “David Harum” in manuscript

+has given courage to thousands of worthless novels--a courage to travel

+to the last ditch, and the last ditch is the pseudo-publisher. “Yes,”

+he writes, “it is an unusual story;” and he will be greatly honored to

+publish it, and sends one of his remarkable contracts.

+

+To get the book published by anybody will bring her recognition, she

+thinks. The public will be kinder than the publishers. She takes the

+risk--sometimes goes into debt to do so. That is the end of the book,

+and in most cases the end of the author’s career. The work begun in

+loneliness has ended in oblivion--wasted days, wasted dollars, wasted

+hopes.

+

+Yet what is an author to do who believes in his own work when it is

+refused by the regular publisher? Publish it himself or let it remain

+in manuscript. Never permit it to be brought out by a publisher to whom

+any suspicion attaches.

+

+There is not much danger (I do not believe there is any danger) that

+a manuscript of any value whatever will under present conditions fail

+to find a legitimate purchaser. But one way out of the difficulty

+that authors often seek is to propose to a legitimate publisher to

+publish his book at the writer’s expense; and it is not apparent to the

+layman why the publisher cannot afford to make such arrangements. “If

+the author pays the bill,” he says, “the publisher will surely lose

+nothing.” But the publisher does lose, and loses heavily, every time

+he publishes a book that is not successful in the market. A publisher

+cannot afford to accept a book that will not itself earn a profit. If

+the author pay all the cost and a good profit besides, even this does

+not change the case; for unsalable books clog the market and stop the

+wheels of the publisher’s whole trade. He soon begins to lose influence

+and standing in the book trade. The jobbers buy new books from him in

+smaller quantities. The booksellers become suspicious of his judgment.

+

+Last year, to give a true instance, a publisher put out four new novels

+by four new writers. His salesmen and his advertising man announced

+them as good books. They made enthusiastic estimates of them. The

+book dealers ordered liberally. Three out of the four failed to make

+any appreciable success. The dealers had many copies of them left on

+hand. This year, when the same publisher brought out two more new

+novels by two more new writers, his salesmen met with incredulity and

+indifference. The booksellers said to them with a sad smile, “We’ll

+swap copies of your last year’s novels for these.”

+

+Now it so happens that both of these new books of this year are good

+and popular. A demand for them was made as soon as the reviews appeared

+and people began to read them. But the booksellers were ill supplied.

+They would order only a few copies at a time--or none. Thus the good

+books of this year suffered because the publisher’s dull books of last

+year failed to bring profit or satisfaction to anybody. They stood in

+the way of this year’s better books.

+

+While, therefore, no legitimate publisher wishes to reduce his

+business to a mere commercial basis, and while he is eager to maintain

+the dignity of his profession--must maintain it in fact--and do as

+high service as possible to the literary production of his time; yet

+he cannot load down his list with many books that have not a good

+commercial reason for existence.

+

+The plausible proposition which is so often made in these days of

+universal authorship--to publish books at the author’s expense--is for

+these reasons not a sound proposition. If the book succeeds there is

+no reason why the author should make the investment. If it fail, the

+publisher loses, even though the author settle the bill; and he loses

+heavily.

+

+A writer who asks a publisher to bring out a book that has no

+commercial reason for existence is asking him to imitate the “fake”

+publisher. The “fake” publisher could not make a living (since he has

+no character and cannot sell books) except by cash payments from his

+authors. As soon as the publisher begins to receive cash payments from

+his authors (be the basis ever so legitimate) he begins to clog up the

+outlets for his product. He has taken the first step towards “fake”

+publishing.

+

+In a word, commercially unprofitable books may be printed, but they

+cannot be published without ruining the machinery that they are run

+through. He is the best publisher who has the largest proportion of

+good books on his list (whether his list be long or short) that are at

+the same time alive in the market.

+

+There are--let it be said as an exception--a few classes of books that

+every publisher wishes to have on his list in spite of the fact that

+they cannot be made profitable, such as works of great scholarship or

+monumental works that have a lasting value. It is legitimate that the

+writers or the societies or organizations under whose directions such

+books were written should pay or share the cost of their manufacture.

+But few such works yield a profit at last to either publisher or

+author. And they are not made to clog the book market. They are sold

+only to special classes of readers.

+

+A book is a commodity. Yet the moment it is treated as a mere commodity

+it takes severe revenge on its author and on its publisher.

+

+These pseudo-publishers sometimes solicit manuscripts from ignorant

+writers. They have veiled advertisements in the literary journals.

+Ignorance and ambition is a susceptible combination. Several years ago

+one of these plausible swindlers bribed a reader in one of the larger

+publishing houses to report to him the names of all the writers whose

+novels were declined there. The fakir then plied them with circulars

+and letters.

+

+While I have been writing about publishing swindles I have been

+reminded of the accusation brought several years ago against

+publishers--especially English publishers--that the temptation to

+fraud was too strong to be resisted by any but the most upright and

+successful men. An author gives his book to his publisher. Twice a year

+the publisher makes a report--pays royalties on the number of books

+that he has reported as sold. There is no way whereby the author can

+verify the publisher’s reports. He has to take his word for it. Even

+if the author or someone who acted for him were to see the publisher’s

+books, he could learn nothing, for the publisher’s bookkeeping is a

+very complicated thing; and reports of book sales could easily be

+“doctored.”

+

+The chance for fraud does exist. But the first wish of every normal

+man in the business, even if he lacks vigorous honesty, is to make his

+reports of sales to his author as large as possible. This wish is too

+strong to be overcome by anything less than the most hopeless moral

+depravity. A publisher who should commit the crime of making false

+reports to his authors would be a monstrosity. Yet the contention

+that Sir Walter Besant made in England for so many years, that the

+publishing business was conducted without such checks and verifications

+as are applied to other business transactions was true; and I, for one,

+see no practical remedy for it.

+

+Moral: Select your publisher with care; make sure that he is honest

+(by far most of us are); then trust him. But steer clear of all “fake”

+publishers and “agents.”

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VII

+

+THE ADVERTISING OF BOOKS STILL EXPERIMENTAL

+

+

+  _Publishers Are Uncertain as to the Amount of Sales Made in That

+    Way--How the Book Business Differs from the Shoe Trade, for

+    Example--The Problem of How to Get the Books Before the People

+    Is at the Root of All Other Book Trade Questions--Why the Book

+    Canvasser Is Still Necessary--A Vast Field Waiting for Development._

+

+About the advertising of books, nobody knows anything. The most that

+can be said is that some publishers are making very interesting

+experiments. But nobody has yet worked out a single general principle

+that is of great value. The publishers themselves frankly confess that

+they do not know how to advertise books--except a few publishers who

+have had little experience.

+

+The fundamental difficulty of course is that hardly any two books

+present the same problem. Find a successful advertising plan for

+one book--it will not be a good plan for another. This fundamental

+difficulty marks the difference, for instance, between books and shoes.

+When a shoe merchant finds out by experiment how to describe his

+shoes and in what periodicals to print his description, his problem

+is solved. Recently several publishers discovered a successful way to

+advertise a novel. They tried the same plan with another novel and

+another. But it’s hit or miss. I, for one, would give much to know how

+often it has been “miss.”

+

+The old-fashioned way was to insert a brief, simple, dignified

+announcement of every book, as is still done in The Spectator, of

+London, for example. Good; but such an announcement doesn’t go far.

+A very few thousand persons see it. They wait until the books are

+reviewed or till some friend or authority speaks about them. For this

+perfectly good reason some publishers do not insert many advertisements

+in those publications that go only to the literary class--they are to

+a degree superfluous. Those that are inserted are inserted to give the

+publishers and the books a certain “standing,” and to keep pleasant the

+relations between the publishers and these journals.

+

+Then come, of course, the monthly popular magazines. They reach a

+very much wider class of readers, and to advertise books in them is a

+logical procedure. But their advertising rates are almost prohibitory.

+The margin of profit on books is very small. There is not money

+enough in the business to warrant extensive and expensive magazine

+advertising. The result is the publishers put their announcements

+of perhaps a dozen new books on a single advertising page of the

+magazines, and they cannot, in this restricted space, say enough about

+any particular book to make the advertisement effective.

+

+Then there are the daily papers. One or two of the best dailies in

+every large city are used by the publishers for announcements of new

+books. They cannot afford more--except in the case of those novels

+which may reach enormous editions. Given a novel that will sell 100,000

+copies or more, and you have enough possible profit to warrant a good

+deal of advertising. But during this calendar year only two novels

+(perhaps three) have new editions of more than 100,000 copies. What is

+a publisher to do, then, who has a novel that will sell 10,000 copies,

+or 20,000 copies and no more? Can he make it sell 50,000 or 100,000 by

+spending a large sum in advertising it? Perhaps, once in ten times, or

+once in twenty times; but not oftener.

+

+Five or six publishing houses spend more than $50,000 a year, each,

+in advertising. Two spend a good deal more than this sum; and one is

+reported as saying that he spends $250,000. These are not large sums

+when compared with the sums spent for advertising other wares. But

+an advertisement of a shoe published to-day will help to sell that

+shoe next year. The shoemaker gets a cumulative effect. But your

+novel advertised to-day will be dead next year. You get no cumulative

+effect. When I say, therefore, that no publisher has mastered the art

+of advertising books, I tell the literal truth. They all run against a

+dead wall; and they will all tell you so in frank moments.

+

+The study of the problem of advertising books takes one far afield.

+What quality in a book makes it popular anyhow? Even if you are wise

+enough to know that (and you are very wise if you do know that) the

+question arises whether advertising is necessary. There have been

+as many popular books sold in large editions without advertising as

+with it. If your book is really popular it may sell anyhow. I could

+make a long list of such books, and a still longer list of books

+that extensive advertising did not sell--books which seemed to their

+publishers to have the quality of great popularity.

+

+The question carries us further back still. Let us take the analogy

+of the shoemaker again. He has shoe stores within reach of the whole

+population. There is not a village in the land where there is not a

+store in which shoes are sold. The manufacturers’ salesmen find this

+distributing machinery ready to their hands. If a man in Arkansas or

+in Montana or in Florida wants a pair of shoes, he is within reach

+of a place where he may buy them. Not so with books. There are few

+bookstores. Two or three per cent. of the population (perhaps less)

+live within convenient reach of bookshops. True, a book may be ordered

+by mail. But so may a pair of shoes. But this is not a good substitute

+for a store, where a man may see the book. The mail-order business will

+always be secondary to direct sales. But, since bookstores are so few,

+the book-distributing machinery is wholly inadequate. The publisher has

+no effective way yet to reach his normal public with his wares.

+

+There is nobody to blame, perhaps. Surely, it would not be a profitable

+undertaking for any man or woman to buy a stock of books and to open a

+store in a small town. What is the remedy, then?

+

+The simple truth is, here is one of the problems of distribution that

+have not yet been solved. There are throughout the land another one

+hundred thousand persons who would buy any novel of which one hundred

+thousand have been sold, if they could see the book and hear about

+it--if it were intelligently kept for sale where they would see it.

+This is a self-evident proposition. But nobody has yet found a way thus

+to distribute a book. And (this is the point) until better distributing

+machinery is organized, it will not pay publishers to advertise with as

+prodigal a hand as shoemakers and soapmakers use in making their wares

+known.

+

+It is this lack of proper distributing machinery that has made

+possible the career of the book-agent. There are no shoe peddlers.

+Almost all the publishing houses--all the important houses--employ

+book peddlers. The business is generally regarded as a--nuisance, to

+say the most for it. But, from the publisher’s point of view, it is a

+necessity. And this is the crude way whereby it is sought to remedy the

+radical deficiency of proper distributing machinery. Of course, the

+book-agent method has its obvious disadvantages. It is not a dignified

+occupation, as most agents practise it. The most dignified members of

+the community, therefore, do not take it up. In every case it is not

+even the trustworthy members of the community that take it up. Again,

+the agent must be paid; and this is a very costly method (to the

+purchaser) of buying books. The purchaser pays half his money for the

+books; the other half for being persuaded to buy them.

+

+And (to take a broad, economic view of the subject) the book peddler

+surely cannot be considered the final solution of the problem of a

+proper distribution of books. At some time in the future, when the

+country is three or four times as densely settled as it now is, there

+will be book stores in all towns. There may still be need for the

+persuasiveness of the agent, for some of the most successful of them

+now do their best work in cities within sight of good book shops. But

+the point is, few book-agents sell new books, and few of them sell

+single books: they usually sell books in sets. The problem, therefore,

+of the proper distribution of the four or five really good books that

+my publishing house has put out this fall still remains unsolved and,

+though I advertised them in all magazines and newspapers, I should

+not effectively reach the attention of one-fifth or one-tenth of the

+possible buyers of them. I should simply spend in advertising the

+profit that I may make on the copies that I sell with a reasonable

+publicity through the regular channels. I do insert advertisements of

+them for three or four reasons--with the hope of helping their sales;

+to keep the public informed of the activity of our publishing house;

+to please the press; and--to please the authors of the books. But I

+know very well that I am working (as every publisher is working) in a

+business that has not yet been developed, that is behind the economic

+organization of other kinds of manufacturing and selling, that awaits

+proper organization.

+

+Figure it out yourself. Here is a book of which eighty thousand copies

+have been sold through “the trade;” that is, through the book stores.

+Our salesmen have visited every important bookseller from Portland,

+Me., to Portland, Ore., and from Duluth to New Orleans. We have spent

+quite a handsome sum in advertising it. Four-fifths of these eighty

+thousand copies were sold in a few months after its publication. The

+booksellers said that they could sell many more if we would advertise

+it more. We did so. By this time our salesmen were making another trip.

+No, they would not buy more, thank you; it is a little slow now. The

+second effort at advertising did not cause it to “move” in the market.

+The demand is slow yet. In other words, the demand for it that could

+be supplied by the existing book stores was practically exhausted.

+Our second advertising effort was a waste of money. We have frankly to

+confess that we do not know how to sell more copies of this book until

+the time comes when it may be put into a “set” and sold by book agents.

+This is the same as to say that, the few existing book stores utilized,

+there is no organized machinery for finding more buyers except the book

+agent.

+

+Yet it is obvious that a wholesome book (as this is) which eighty

+thousand persons have bought would please eighty thousand other persons

+of like minds and taste if we had any way to find these second eighty

+thousand persons. They exist, of course. But they live out of easy

+reach of the book stores. The book agents will find them several years

+hence.

+

+I have (I think) shown why there can never be a publishers’ trust,

+or “combine,” because the relation of the publisher and the author

+is a personal relation as intimate and personal as the relation of

+a physician to his patient or of a lawyer and his client. But, after

+a book has been sold and has become a commodity, the problem is a

+different one. The booksellers have perceived this; and they have made

+ineffective efforts to “combine.” They have failed because they have

+not made plans to widen the existing market. An organization of those

+that exist is not enough. The real problem is to extend their area, to

+find book-buyers whom they do not now reach.

+

+Perhaps all this is very dull--this trade talk. But a publisher who is

+worthy of his calling regards himself as an educator of the public;

+and he has trade reasons and higher reasons as well for wishing to

+reach as many buyers of his good books as he possibly can. He knows

+(and you know, if you know the American people) that the masses even of

+intelligent folk have yet hardly fairly begun to buy books. Go where

+you will among the people and you will find few books--pitifully few.

+We are just coming into a period when book-buying is even beginning to

+become general. The publishers of a generation hence will sell perhaps

+ten times as many good books as are sold now--surely, if they find in

+their day distributing machinery even half adequate.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VIII

+

+THE STORY OF A BOOK FROM AUTHOR TO READER

+

+

+  _The Divers Problems Which Constantly Arise--Every Step of the Way

+    Beset with Expense, So That the Publisher Is Amazed When He Finds a

+    Surplus--Why Books of Large Sale Are Hard to Get--The Publisher as

+    Anxious as the Public to Print Better Books._

+

+The wonder is (and in my mind it grows every year) how the publishers

+of books make enough money to keep their shops going. When I look at my

+own ledgers (ledger, by the way, is become a mere literary word, for we

+now all keep accounts on cards and not in books)--whenever I look at my

+own cards and see a profit, I am astonished as much as I am gratified.

+Every other publisher in America, if he have a normal and simple mind

+such as fits the calling, has the same emotion. Let me say, lest I

+appear “simple” in another sense, that our cards have, miraculously

+enough, generally shown very satisfactory profits, but the astonishment

+never becomes less.

+

+See what a long series of processes, or adventures, if you will, a book

+must go through between the writer and the reader; every step costs

+money; and the utmost possible profit is small. Suppose it be a novel.

+“Book” means “novel” these days in “literary” circles and journals.

+Heaven bless our shallow gabble called “reviews.” A novel comes to

+the publisher in fairly good English. The English doubtless is the

+author’s, but the punctuation and capitals are the “typewriter-lady’s”

+own. It must be read by one person; and, if that person’s report have

+a ray of hope, it must be read by another; perhaps by a third. These

+“readers” cost money--alas! too little money. They are generally

+literary persons who have failed, and there is something pathetic about

+their occupation. Then, after two or three readers have reported on

+it, I have to read it--in our particular shop, in any shop, somebody

+“higher up” must read it--especially if it come from a new writer.

+

+Then we have to correspond with the author or have interviews with

+h--er. All this takes time, and the cost of this service rolls up.

+Somebody must next go over the manuscript to prepare it for the

+printer--to make sure that the heroine’s name is spelt the same way all

+through and so forth and so forth. With the processes of manufacture I

+need not weary you. Only I must say that a bad manuscript can be put

+into legible type, and that type cast into solid metal blocks ready for

+the press with a rapidity and cheapness that rank among the mechanical

+wonders of the world.

+

+By this time the artist has appeared, if the novel is to be

+illustrated. Book salesmen will tell you that pictures help to sell

+novels, and they ought to know. But I venture to say that you haven’t

+seen three new novels in ten years whose illustrations conveyed

+anything but confusion to your mind. The conventional illustration of

+the conventional novel marks the lowest degradation of the present-day

+publisher. We confess by these things that we are without character

+or conviction. But the artist has the benefit of the commercial doubt

+on his side. He has also the vanity of the author. And he gets his

+fee--200, 300 or 500 good dollars or more--and the publisher pays the

+bill. Another artist makes a design for the cover.

+

+Paper, printing, binding--all these are commonplaces, worthy of mention

+here only because they roll up the cost. But there are other steps in

+the book’s journey that the public knows less about. For instance,

+as soon as the first chapter has been put into type and a cover made,

+“dummies” of the book are got ready. A “dummy” of a book is a sort of

+model, or sample, of it. The cover is the cover that will appear on the

+finished novel; the titlepage is the novel’s titlepage; and the first

+chapter is as it will be when the book is published. But the rest is

+blank paper. This “dummy” shows the physical size and appearance of the

+book.

+

+The travelling salesmen take these dummies and begin their work. They

+go to all the jobbers and book dealers, explaining to them the charming

+qualities of this newly discovered novelist, and taking orders for the

+books. By the time they come home and their advance orders are added

+up, the book is ready to go to press; and the publisher knows what his

+“first sale” will be. Meantime (not to lose the thread of my story)

+all this travelling and soliciting of orders have cost a good deal of

+money. The public has not yet seen a copy of the book nor even so much

+as heard of it nor of the “talented young author.”

+

+But now the machinery for publicity is put in action. Sly little

+literary notes about the book and the author begin to appear in the

+newspapers. These, too, have come from the publisher. From whom

+else, pray, could they come? But they mean that the publisher has to

+maintain a literary bureau. The man who writes these news notes and the

+advertisements of the book and other things about it is a man of skill,

+if he do his work well; and he, too, costs the publisher a good salary.

+When he begins to put forth advertising--how much shall he spend on

+this new novel by an unknown writer? How much shall you risk at Monte

+Carlo? Your upright man will risk nothing at Monte Carlo. I have

+sometimes thought that your upright publisher, if there be one, would

+risk nothing in advertising a new book by an unknown writer, until the

+book began itself to show some vitality in the market.

+

+But--to go back--as soon as the book is ready, review copies, of

+course, are sent to the newspapers and the literary journals (to appear

+a little later in the second-hand book-shops for sale at reduced

+prices.) All this activity requires clerks, typewriters, bookkeepers,

+postage-money--a large office, in fact. There are many posters,

+circulars--there is as much machinery required to sell a book as to

+sell a piano or an automobile.

+

+From the starting-point, where the book was an ill-written manuscript,

+to the delivery of it to the bookseller, the publisher has less than 50

+cents a copy to pay for this whole journey and to save something for

+profit if he can. Therefore I say that publishers who do succeed are

+among the most astute managers of industry.

+

+Lest I seem to “boast rather than to confess,” I come back to the

+starting-point, which was this--that the publishers’ calling is not a

+very profitable one; not a profitable one at all except in fair weather

+and with a good skipper.

+

+The truth is, publishing is too important a profession and our

+publishing houses are too important as institutions to be at the mercy

+of present conditions. The making of schoolbooks and the vending of

+standard old books in sets, which are useful vocations, but are not

+publishing proper, are now done best by firms and companies that

+do nothing else. Hence publishing proper--the bringing out of new

+books--must find a safer basis than the present conventional profit. It

+will find this safer basis in two ways.

+

+The first and obvious way is to secure books that have an enormous

+popularity. This is the effort of nearly all the publishing houses

+to-day. If a novel reach an edition of 100,000 copies, there is a good

+profit in it as matters now stand. And a novel, or other book, that

+will be bought by 100,000 persons ought not to be sold for more than

+such books now fetch. But there are not enough such books to go around;

+and the least worthy publishing house is as likely to secure them as

+the most worthy. A permanent institution, therefore, cannot be built on

+these or on the hope of them. They are the accidents of the calling.

+

+The other way to maintain a worthy publishing institution is to publish

+worthy books, to manufacture them well, to do every piece of work that

+is done on them or that is done for them in the most conscientious

+way--to keep bookmaking as a fine art, to keep bookselling a dignified

+profession, to keep the selection of books to publish on the high

+level of scholarly judgment. This done, a publisher may set his prices

+higher--must set his prices higher, for he does a higher and more

+costly service to society. Excellent and worthy of all praise as is

+some of the publishing work of this sort that is now done, a beginning

+has hardly yet been made. There is a demand, or a dormant demand can

+be awakened, for books that have merit (I mean new books as well as

+old) of better manufacture than we now often see. They must be sold for

+higher prices, of course.

+

+This is the same as to say that just as a three-dollar shoe is made

+for most feet that tread this weary continent, but a five-dollar shoe

+is made for an increasing number of feet that prefer ease to economy,

+so we are becoming rich enough and wise enough to pay two dollars, or

+three dollars, or five dollars for a good new book that shall have

+large and beautiful type, good paper, good margins, good binding--shall

+be a work of art in its manufacture as well as in the quality of its

+contents. The public gets its good books too cheap; and the reason is

+plain.

+

+It was only the other day that the publishers discovered the

+possibility of securing book after book that would run into large

+editions. A novel-reading democracy--a public-school democracy--is a

+new thing. It is an impressive thing. It made new and big markets, and

+we all rushed after it. Cheapness and great editions became the rage.

+Writers wrote for the million; publishers published for the million.

+Cheap books became the fashion. All very well--this widespread effort,

+this universal reading. But it has not radically changed human nature

+nor even the permanent foundations of the profession of publishing. We

+shall come back to higher and better work--some of us will, at least.

+

+Bring the subject home to yourself. What do you want for your book

+money? Not the latest “big seller.” You may buy that to entertain you

+on a railway journey. But if you bring it home at all, you send it

+away at Christmas to some country library. What you want in your own

+library for your book-money are good books, made at least as well as

+the furniture in the room; and you want the new books of permanent

+value. You are sometimes disgusted when you look over the publishers’

+catalogues to find so few books of this kind.

+

+Your publishers, too, are becoming weary of having such catalogues;

+and as soon as we rediscover the old truth that there is a permanent

+demand for just the kind of books that you want, we shall turn to a

+more generous encouragement of them. Men who might do better work will

+then cease trying to write “best sellers.” But you must pay the price.

+Since you have become accustomed to buy new books at $1.50 a volume,

+you are somewhat reluctant to pay $2 or $4 for a new book. You must

+break yourself of that habit. In a word, you must become at least as

+generous to your publisher as you are to your shoemaker; and then the

+change will take place.

+

+By a similar course of reasoning (and it is sound) you may discover

+that you are yourself to blame for what our writers write and our

+publishers publish--in a measure at least; and, whenever you want

+better books, better books will be ready for you. For the publisher

+and even the author are but human after all; and in the mood that has

+possessed us all for a decade or two--since presses and paper became

+so cheap--we have perhaps worshipped mere numbers. I have published

+some books only because thousands and thousands of persons would read

+them. You have read them simply because thousands of other people were

+reading them and for no better reason. Perhaps our sins have not been

+heinous. But, if you are so stubbornly virtuous as to cry shame at me,

+I promise you this: I will reform on the day that you yourself reform;

+but you must first signify repentance. For you--the public--are after

+all our masters.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER IX

+

+THE PRESENT LIMITS OF THE BOOK MARKET

+

+

+  _In Spite of the Many Books Issued and the Many “Large Sellers,”

+    the People Are Very Poorly Equipped with Good Books--Circulating

+    Libraries and the Sale of Books--Many Neglected Subjects on Which

+    Successful Books Could be Written--The Lack of Good Writers the

+    Main Source of Poor Sale of Books._

+

+How large the book market is, nobody knows. Still less does anybody

+know how large it may become, say, in another decade of our present

+prosperity and spread of intelligence. Beyond any doubt more books are

+bought in the United States than in any other country. Yet it is a

+constant surprise to discover how ill supplied the mass of the people

+are with good books. But the enormous increase of the market in recent

+years gives hope of a still greater increase to come. The number of

+books published every year in the United States and in the United

+Kingdom is about the same, but more American than English books run to

+large editions.

+

+Leaving out fiction, which is the spectacular and sensational part of

+publishing, books of reference, of standard literature, of history, of

+applied science and even of poetry are sold in constantly increasing

+quantities. The public hears little of these because the literary

+journals pay little attention to them. There is, for instance, one

+publisher of subscription books who now adds few books to his list of

+which he does not expect to sell 100,000 copies. He has agents in every

+part of the United States, and they probably sell more books in a year

+than all the publishing houses in the United States put together sold

+thirty years ago--excluding textbooks, of course. Last year a literary

+man went to a remote railway station, 1,000 miles from Boston or New

+York, to shoot quail. One day he saw men unloading boxes of books from

+a freight car on the side track. The wonder was that there should be

+even a freight car in that corner of the woods; and that the freight

+car should be filled with books was simply incredible. But there were

+wagon loads of Thackerays, of Dickenses, of Eliots, and even of sets

+of the poets, fairly well-printed, fairly well-bound volumes which had

+been sold to the country folk for miles around. Perhaps there has been

+more money spent for encyclopædias and dictionaries than Noah Webster

+could compute, these last ten years. The book market, therefore, is

+very much bigger than persons who live outside the book selling world

+are likely to think.

+

+Still, relatively it is small. The largest retail book store in the

+country is a department store in New York or Philadelphia; but the

+book department is not considered one of the important parts of the

+store. The much-abused department store, by the way, has done much

+to bring a new class of persons to acquire the book-buying habit.

+It has made books common merchandise for the first time. Since the

+“Century Dictionary,” to take a definite example, was thus made common

+merchandise, the sets of it that have been sold are incomparably more

+than were ever sold in any other way. Yet how small the book market yet

+is, is shown by this fact--that a novel of which one hundred thousand

+copies are sold reaches only one person in every eight thousand of the

+population.

+

+Do circulating libraries lessen book sales? Yes, I dare say they do.

+But you will find that the publishers do not complain of them. They

+are disposed to accept the comforting doctrine that everything which

+encourages the reading of books in the end helps the sale of them. In

+the end--yes. But for the moment probably no.

+

+One man will tell you that he used regularly to buy a novel a

+week--sometimes two novels. He was a pretty good customer of the

+publishers; for fifty-two novels a year is about as many as the most

+avaricious publisher could reasonably expect one man to buy. But now

+he says he does not buy three a year. A circulating library will for

+$5 bring him all he wants. The publishers have, therefore, lost him as

+a good customer. On the other hand it is a working theory that every

+subscriber to a circulating library who reads a novel and talks about

+it at the woman’s club may induce somebody to buy a copy who otherwise

+would never have heard of it. At any rate, the total number of novels,

+or of books of other sorts, now sold is not less than the number that

+was sold before the libraries found subscribers. The discussion is,

+after all, a vain one. The publisher and the author must do the best

+they can by the help of the libraries or in spite of them.

+

+Yet I am sure that the great widening of the market for which we

+are all looking will be found, when it is found, not by any special

+machinery or mechanical device; but the person who will really find

+it--or make it--will be a great writer. Whenever books are written that

+are interesting enough to compel the attention of the whole people, the

+poorest publishing house can sell them. The secret of success, after

+all, is the secret of writing books that touch masses of men deeply

+and directly. We have much to learn from the careers of such books as

+“Progress and Poverty” and “Looking Backward.” They reached their great

+sale not by the ingenuity of their publishers, nor by their literary

+merit, but only because they carried messages to many minds. However

+delusive these messages may be, they were sincere. The truth is that

+the publisher (exalt him as I am trying my best to do) is, after all,

+only a piece of machinery. The real force that makes itself felt in the

+world that has to do with books is the initial force of the men and

+women who write. Whenever a great mind, or a great sympathy, be found

+which puts forth an appeal or a hope in the form of a book that has

+the power to touch those emotions or aspirations that all men have in

+common--then the trick’s done. The mechanical plans that we make have

+power to carry only as far as the book has strength to go. If I had

+five great living writers on my list, my publishing task would be easy.

+

+For the broadening of the book market, then, what we need is

+writers--writers of the proper quality. Of novels, we have enough and

+to spare, such as they are. But not of good books of other sorts.

+Let us take a hint from the novel writers. Twenty years ago or less

+the American public was amusing itself with novels written by English

+writers. But about that time came those story tellers, a whole army

+of them, who began to write about life in different parts of our own

+country. Of New England, Miss Jewett and Miss Wilkins and Mrs. Austin

+and many more; in the Middle West, Mr. Garland, Mr. Churchill, Mr.

+Tarkington and half a hundred more; in New York, the author of “David

+Harum,” Mr. Frederick, Mr. Bacheller and others; of the South, Mr.

+Page, Miss Johnston, Miss Glasgow and more; and there are California

+stories in profusion. In other words, an army of men and women began

+about the same time to write stories of local history and manners.

+

+Now there are other subjects that need to be written of just as much.

+One such subject is science. The world is flooded with popular books

+about science, but nearly all of them fail either in being accurate or

+in being popular. There is a better opportunity now than there ever

+was before for a man who really knows the most recent and scientific

+achievements, and who can write in the language of the people. To many

+people, “authoritative books” are dry books, but this is not what I

+mean. Such books as I have in mind can be written only by men of the

+best scientific equipment, but they can be written only by men who have

+also a great deal of literary skill.

+

+Another great subject about which good books are needed is--you may not

+believe this--American history. Our political history has got itself

+pretty voluminously written, and there is no lack of slapdash books in

+distant imitation of Green’s “Short History of the English People.”

+But most of these have been prepared out of newspaper files by men

+who would not take their task seriously or who were not well prepared

+either in matured knowledge or in literary skill to produce them. Then,

+too, geographically considered, the history of less than one-fourth of

+our territory has not yet been written. Southern history, for example,

+is utterly unknown.

+

+It would be easy to name a half-dozen other great subjects which

+writers who now bring their manuscripts to the publishing houses are

+neglecting. If, therefore, men and women who have the literary gift,

+even to a reasonable degree, and who have literary ambition, would

+frankly seek those two or three publishers who are real publishers and

+would prove their ability to do serious work of this sort they would

+be almost sure to find satisfactory careers before them. Of course,

+one disadvantage of such work is that during its early stages no very

+large financial returns can be expected. But if the work were done

+well enough it would pay in the end--pay more money by far than a

+professorship in science or in history or in literature pays.

+

+All this leads me to this general remark--that the writing public does

+not take the trouble to find out who the real publishers are. There is

+a lack of coöperation between publishers and writers in what may be

+called the formative period of the writer’s lives. A man who writes

+a book sends it to some publishing house that is chosen by accident

+or by personal acquaintance or by whim. The public seems to think

+that one publishing house is as good as another. If a writer’s first

+volume in this way falls into the hands of a publisher who does not

+make the acquaintance of the writer, or who cannot make an appraisal

+of his ability and promise, and who does not understand him, then the

+writer, after an initial failure, of course, becomes discouraged. On

+the other hand, all the publishers are so eager to get books that they

+accept work which is not properly done, and on their part fail to put

+themselves into such a relation to young authors as would help them to

+their normal development.

+

+If a man or woman, therefore, proposes to enter upon a literary career

+his first duty is to make the acquaintance of a real publisher, to be

+as frank with him as one must be with one’s physician or one’s lawyer.

+If two such men work together seriously and without too great haste the

+best results will be achieved for both, and the best results are not

+likely to come in any other way.

+

+If you start, then, to gossip intelligently about the book market or

+about anything else with which a publisher has to do, and if you gossip

+long enough, you will come back to the starting point of the whole

+matter. What do we do or can we do to encourage the writing of good

+books? And now we’ve run on a subject as deep as a well and as wide as

+a door. In the multitude of counsellors about it there is confusion. In

+the only other “confession” that is to follow this I shall try to show

+how ignorant and mistaken all those are who differ with me about this

+fundamental subject.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER X

+

+PLAIN WORDS TO AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS

+

+

+  _It Pays the Author to Be Honest and Frank with His Publisher,

+    Who Is, After All, His Best Friend--Some Recent Instances of a

+    Discouraging Sort--The Need of Greater Dignity and Statesmanship

+    Among Publishers--The Obligation of Ministering to the Higher

+    Impulses of the People._

+

+I am flattered by hearing that a prominent publishing house wishes to

+print these rambling “confessions” in a pamphlet, to send to persons

+who write books; “for,” says this house, “they tell some plain facts

+that authors ought to know.” I hope so; and, for my part, I am not

+averse to publishers knowing them either. For instance, the wretched

+smallness of one sinner among the publishers came to light to-day.

+Here is the unpleasant story:

+

+A year and a half ago I published the first novel by a young author.

+He is a promising writer and his story was a good one. We sold it in

+fairly satisfactory numbers. We advertised it, “exploited” it--did the

+best we could. We invited the author to come and see us. We took him

+into our confidence. We have regarded him as our partner, so far as his

+book is concerned. We have had a continuous correspondence. We have

+exchanged visits a time or two. He paid me the compliment to ask my

+advice about his next story. We have become good friends, you see; and

+we are as helpful to each other as we know how to be. Now his second

+novel is finished. In a letter that came from him to-day he informed me

+that another publishing house (I have a great mind to write the name

+of it here) has made him a very handsome offer of serial publication,

+provided, of course, that they may also publish the book!

+

+Now, if the young author wishes to go browsing in these new pastures,

+I have no power or wish to prevent him. I cannot serve him--or do

+not care to serve him--if he is unwilling that I should. But I was

+nevertheless very grateful when he wrote, “Of course, I prefer you. I

+hope you have never thought me unloyal.”

+

+If publishing his first book had been a mere job done under contract,

+a commercial job and nothing more--that would have been one thing. But

+that’s not publishing. What I did was to give the man the unstinted

+service of our house, as publishers, as advisers, as friends. We

+print and advertise and sell his books--yes, to the very best of our

+ability. But we do more. We try to make friends for his book and for

+him throughout the reading world. We all take a personal interest in

+him and in his future. We invest our money, our good will, our work,

+our experience, our advice, our enthusiasm in him and in his future.

+This service (except the investment of money) is not a matter of

+contract. It is a personal, friendly service. If the service had not

+been successful, he would have had a perfect right to come and say

+that he feared that we did not serve him well and to go away from us.

+That would have been frank and honorable. Even, since we did succeed

+and have become friends, he could still go to another publisher. Yet,

+I maintain, if he had, he would have shown himself a man of blunt

+appreciation and dull honor. And the publisher who tried to win him

+away did a trick unworthy of the profession.

+

+This is my last story about a publisher; and the moral is plain, alike

+to publisher and to author.

+

+And now I will tell my last story about an author, the moral of which

+also is plain:

+

+There is an author for whom we have published two books, and they have

+been uncommonly successful. A little while ago he finished his third

+book. He wrote that many publishers had solicited it, that he had had

+several handsome offers, that he needed a large sum of money. Would we

+make a big advance payment? He disliked to mention the subject, but

+business was business after all. Now I had been at that man’s service

+for several years. Day and night, he had sought my advice.

+

+Well, we were cajoled into making a big advance payment--about half

+as big as he first asked for; and the contract was signed. Two days

+later, I met another publisher under conditions which invited free and

+friendly talk; and I told him this story. The publisher smiled and

+declared that that author had approached him and asked how much he

+would give for this very book!

+

+Men and brethren, we live in a commercial age. I suspect that, if

+we knew history well enough, we should discover that all ages have

+been commercial, and that all our predecessors had experiences like

+these. For ungrateful men have written books for many a century, I

+have no doubt; and we know that Barabbas was a publisher. But let us

+lift an honorable calling to an honorable level. Hence these frank

+“confessions.” And, if any publisher wishes to reprint them to send

+to authors, or any author to send to publishers, they both have my

+permission. For dignity and honor thrive best in an atmosphere of

+perfect frankness.

+

+Thinking over the behavior of authors and publishers to one another, I

+am obliged to confess that, while the peanut methods that I have just

+described are not common enough to cause us to despair, the truth is

+that the whole business is yet somewhat unworthily conducted. I mean

+that it is conducted on too low a plane. For what is it that we are

+engaged in?

+

+The writers of good books are among the greatest benefactors of

+society; and the publishers of good books, if publishing be worthily

+regarded and properly done, is a necessary and complimentary service.

+The publisher is the partner, the helper of the author and his high

+servant or minister to the people. It is work worthy of large men and

+of high-minded men. Honest men we are--those of us who conduct the

+publishing houses that are in good repute. But I sometimes think that

+we miss being large men; for we do not do our business in (shall I

+say?) a statesmanlike way. We imitate the manners of tradesmen. We

+speak in the vocabulary of tradesmen. We are too likely to look at

+small projects as important--to pay our heed to the mere tricks of our

+trade--and to treat large enterprises, if we have them, as if they were

+but a part of the routine. A good book is a Big Thing, a thing to be

+thankful to heaven for. It is a great day for any of us when we can put

+our imprint on it. Here is a chance for reverence, for something like

+consecration. And the man or the woman who can write a good book is a

+form of capital infinitely more attractive than a large bank account

+or a great publishing “plant.” Yet, if we regard an author simply as

+“capital,” we are not worthy to serve him. The relation leads naturally

+to a friendly and helpful attitude. We know something about books,

+about the book-market, about the public, that no author is likely to

+know. With this knowledge we can serve those that write. And with our

+knowledge of the author and of his work, we can serve the public. It is

+our habit to keep our accounts with authors accurately, to pay them

+promptly, to receive them courteously when they call, to answer their

+letters politely and sometimes to bore them with formal dinners at our

+clubs, before they sail for Europe. But how many of us really know

+the intellectual life of any author whose books we print and supply a

+stimulus to his best plans?

+

+And the authors? How little they know about us or about publishing!

+They seem to select publishers by whims and not often by knowledge. I

+know a writer of good books who is at this moment seeking his third

+publisher. One of the others failed. The other displeased him. And now

+he is thinking of giving his next book to a third publisher who also

+will fail within five years, or I am no prophet. Yet I am hindered by

+courtesy from telling him so. Why the man has not by this time found

+a personality among the publishers who has a soundly constructed

+business and at the same time a helpful intellectual appreciation of

+his work, I cannot understand. He, too, is looking at a great matter in

+a small way.

+

+Therefore I am led to write down these rules for an author to follow

+when he looks for a publisher:

+

+Find out whether the publishing house that you have in mind be

+financially sound. The commercial agencies will tell you, or will tell

+any commercial friend who may make inquiry for you. And find out who

+the real owners of the house are.

+

+Then find out who conducts it. If it is conducted by a lot of hired

+“literary” men, avoid it. They are, most of them, men who have failed

+at authorship; they “read” and “advise” for salaries; and most of them

+know nothing about the houses that they serve. They are not principals,

+but (as Henry George once called them) “literary operatives.” I mean to

+say nothing harsh about a well-meaning, hard-working class of men. But

+if you have a good book, you wish to find not a “literary operative,”

+but a real publisher.

+

+Having found a real publisher, you will expect him to read your book

+himself. I am assuming that you have an important book. When he has

+read it, he will talk to you about it frankly. When I say frankly, I

+mean frankly. If he is himself a real man and knows men and books, he

+will not retail hack literary phrases to you. He will talk good English

+and good sense straight out of his intelligence to your intelligence,

+with no nonsense such as reviewers write in the “literary” magazines.

+He will become your intellectual friend.

+

+Having found such a man, give him your book and leave him to work out

+the details of publishing. He will be proud to serve you. You will

+discover as your acquaintance ripens, that he has your whole career as

+a writer in his mind and plans. He will shape his whole publishing

+activities to your development and to the development of other writers

+like you.

+

+Then--if you are capable of writing great books--you will discover

+that you have set only natural forces at work for your growth and for

+your publisher’s growth; and the little artificial tricks of the trade

+whereby a flashy story has a “run”--into swift oblivion--will pass from

+your mind and from his. You will both be doing your best work.

+

+After all, the authors of any generation generally have the publishers

+that they deserve to have; and this axiom is reversible. For my part,

+while I am as glad as Podunk, Exploitem & Company to have novels

+that will sell 100,000 copies, provided they give clean and decent

+amusement, I take no permanent interest in anything that comes this

+month and goes the next; nor does any serious man. My wish and aim

+is to become a helpful partner of some of the men and women of my

+generation who can, by their writings, lay the great democracy that we

+all serve under obligations to them for a new impulse. By serving them,

+I, too, serve my country and my time. And, when I say that this is my

+aim and wish, I could say with equal truth that it is the aim and wish

+of every other real publisher. But, as every good physician constantly

+wonders at the ignorance and credulity of otherwise sensible men who

+seek quacks, so I wonder at the simplicity of many respectable writers

+of books in seeking publishers. Of downright quacks in the publishing

+world, there are not many. But there are incompetents a-plenty and a

+fair share of adventurers.

+

+We shall both--authors and publishers--get the proper cue if we regard

+the swarming, eager democracy all about us as a mass of constantly

+rising men and women, ambitious to grow, with the same higher impulses

+that we feel in our best moods; and if we interpret our duty as the

+high privilege of ministering to these higher impulses and not to their

+lower senses, without commercialism on one side and without academicism

+on the other, men among men, worthy among the worthy, we may make our

+calling under such a conception a calling that leads.

+

+

+

+

+Transcriber’s Notes

+

+

+Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a

+predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not

+changed.

+

+Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced

+quotation marks retained.

+

+Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

+

+Redundant chapter titles were removed by Transcriber.

+

+

+

+

+

+End of Project Gutenberg's A Publisher's Confession, by Walter Hines Page

+

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+<pre>

+

+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Publisher's Confession, by Walter Hines Page

+

+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most

+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions

+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of

+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at

+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have

+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.

+

+

+

+Title: A Publisher's Confession

+

+Author: Walter Hines Page

+

+Release Date: June 11, 2017 [EBook #54892]

+

+Language: English

+

+Character set encoding: UTF-8

+

+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION ***

+

+

+

+

+Produced by Charlie Howard and the Online Distributed

+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was

+produced from images generously made available by The

+Internet Archive)

+

+

+

+

+

+

+</pre>

+

+

+<h1>A<br />

+PUBLISHER’S<br />

+CONFESSION</h1>

+

+<div class="p2 figcenter" style="max-width: 6.5em;">

+<img src="images/i001.jpg" width="103" height="110" alt="Publisher's logo" />

+</div>

+

+<p class="p2 center vspace">

+NEW YORK<br />

+<span class="larger">DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; CO.</span><br />

+<span class="smaller">1905</span>

+</p>

+

+<hr />

+

+<p class="newpage p4 center vspace smaller">

+<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1905, by</span><br />

+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; CO.<br />

+<br />

+<br />

+<i>Published March, 1905</i><br />

+</p>

+

+<hr />

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2><a id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>

+</div>

+

+<table summary="Contents">

+  <tr class="small">

+    <td class="tdl nopad" colspan="2">CHAPTER</td>

+    <td class="tdr nopad">PAGE</td></tr>

+  <tr>

+    <td class="tdr top">I</td>

+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Ruinous Policy of Large Royalties</span></td>

+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">3</a></td></tr>

+  <tr>

+    <td class="tdr top">II</td>

+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Why “Bad” Novels Succeed and “Good” Ones Fail</span></td>

+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">27</a></td></tr>

+  <tr>

+    <td class="tdr top">III</td>

+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Are Authors an Irritable Tribe?</span></td>

+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">45</a></td></tr>

+  <tr>

+    <td class="tdr top">IV</td>

+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Has Publishing Become Commercialized?</span></td>

+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">61</a></td></tr>

+  <tr>

+    <td class="tdr top">V</td>

+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Has the Unknown Author a Chance?</span></td>

+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">79</a></td></tr>

+  <tr>

+    <td class="tdr top">VI</td>

+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Printer Who Issues Books at the Author’s Expense</span></td>

+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">99</a></td></tr>

+  <tr>

+    <td class="tdr top">VII</td>

+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Advertising of Books Still Experimental</span></td>

+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">115</a></td></tr>

+  <tr>

+    <td class="tdr top">VIII</td>

+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Story of a Book from Author to Reader</span></td>

+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">131</a></td></tr>

+  <tr>

+    <td class="tdr top">IX</td>

+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Present Limits of the Book Market</span></td>

+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">147</a></td></tr>

+  <tr>

+    <td class="tdr top">X</td>

+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Plain Words to Authors and Publishers</span></td>

+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">163</a></td></tr>

+</table>

+

+<hr />

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2>PUBLISHERS’ NOTE</h2>

+</div>

+

+<p>There is expressed in these chapters

+so much that is practical and of interest

+to those engaged in the various branches

+of authorship, book-making and book-selling

+that the present publishers have

+availed themselves of the permission of

+the Boston <cite>Transcript</cite>, in which they

+originally appeared, to gather them together

+in book form.</p>

+

+<p class="in0 sigleft"><span class="smcap">New York</span>, <i>March, 1905</i>.</p>

+

+<hr />

+

+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3">3</a></span></p>

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2><span class="larger wspace">A Publisher’s Confession</span></h2>

+</div>

+

+<h2 class="nobreak p2"><a id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I<br />

+

+<span class="subhead">THE RUINOUS POLICY OF LARGE

+ROYALTIES</span></h2>

+

+<blockquote>

+

+<p class="hang"><i>How it Operates to the Disadvantage of Both Author

+and Publisher—The Actual Facts and Figures—Authors’

+Earnings Greatly Exaggerated

+by the Press—Books Sell Too Cheaply—What

+a Fair Price for All Concerned Would Be.</i></p></blockquote>

+

+<p>The author of a very popular book,

+who has written another that will be as

+popular, wishes me to publish it, so he

+is kind enough to say; and he came to

+see me and asked on what terms I

+would bring it out. In these strenuous

+times he can dictate his own terms to

+his publisher; and I happened to know

+that two houses had made him offers.</p>

+

+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4">4</a></span>

+I confess, since I am old-fashioned,

+that this method of an author shocks

+me. If he does not openly hawk his

+book and his reputation, he at least

+tempts one publisher to bid against

+another, and thus invites the publisher

+to regard it as a mere commodity. But

+I suppressed my dislike of the method

+and went straight about the business of

+getting the book, for I should like to

+have it.</p>

+

+<p>“I will give you,” I said, “twenty per

+cent. royalty, and I will pay you $5,000

+on the day of publication.”</p>

+

+<p>The words had not fallen from my

+mouth before I wished to recall them,

+for the publishing of books cannot be

+successfully done on these terms. There

+are only two or three books a year that

+can pay so much.</p>

+

+<p>“I will consider it,” said he.</p>

+

+<p>Abject as I was, I recovered myself

+far enough to say: “No, the offer is

+made for acceptance now or never—<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5">5</a></span>before

+this conversation ends. I cannot

+keep it open.”</p>

+

+<p>“My dear sir,” I went on, for I was

+regaining something of my normal courage,

+“do you know what twenty per

+cent. royalty on a $1.50 book means?

+You receive thirty cents for every copy

+sold. My net profit is about four or five

+cents a copy, if I manufacture it well

+and advertise it generously; and I supply

+the money in advance. I make an

+advance to you; I pay the papermaker

+in advance of my collections, the printer—everybody;

+and I wait from ninety to

+one hundred and twenty days after the

+book is sold to get my money. My

+profit is so small that it may vanish and

+become a loss by any misadventure,

+such as too much advertising, the printing

+of too large an edition, or the loss of

+an account with a failed bookdealer. I

+have no margin as an insurance against

+accidents or untoward events. I am

+doing business with you on an unfairly<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6">6</a></span>

+generous basis. I am paying you all the

+money that the book can earn—perhaps

+more than it can earn—for the pleasure

+of having you on my list. If I make

+money, I must make it on books for

+which I pay a smaller royalty.”</p>

+

+<p>“But I can get twenty per cent. from

+almost any other publisher,” he replied,

+truthfully. “Why should I consider

+less from you?”</p>

+

+<p>I could not answer him except by

+saying:</p>

+

+<p>“Yes, I am not blaming you—not

+quite; but there is a grave fault in the

+system that has brought about this general

+result. You may have forgotten

+that this high royalty is a direct temptation

+to a publisher to skimp his advertising.

+You expect generous advertising

+of the book. Well, I can never sign

+an order for an advertisement of it without

+recalling the very narrow margin of

+profit that I have. An order for $500

+worth of advertising will take as much<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7">7</a></span>

+net profit as I can make on several thousand

+copies.</p>

+

+<p>“Again, when I come to manufacture

+the book, I cannot help recalling that

+gilt letters on the cover will increase the

+cost by one cent or two cents a copy.

+You tempt me to do all my work in the

+cheapest possible way.”</p>

+

+<p>Well, we are good friends, this writer

+and I, and we signed the contract. He

+is to receive a royalty of twenty per

+cent., and a payment on his royalty

+account of $5,000 on the day of publication.</p>

+

+<p>When, therefore, I had the pleasure of

+receiving the friends of another author,

+who told me that he would give me the

+book for twenty per cent. royalty

+($5,000 cash on publication) if I cared to

+read it, I replied, “No.”</p>

+

+<h3>NO MONEY ON THAT BASIS</h3>

+

+<p>I had recovered. I said: “I cannot

+make money on that basis. Neither<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8">8</a></span>

+can other legitimate and conscientious

+publishers, who build their business to

+last. I will let novels alone, if I must.

+I will do a small business—but sounder.

+If that is your condition, do not leave

+the book. I will pay you a sliding scale

+of royalties: I cannot give you twenty

+per cent.”</p>

+

+<p>And he went away. I had just as lief

+another publisher lost money on the

+book as to lose it myself. True, the

+public, the reading public and the writing

+public, will regard the success of the

+book (if it succeed) as evidence of a rival

+publisher’s ability and enterprise. He

+will win temporary reputation. He will

+seem to be in the “swim” of success. He

+will publish flaming advertisements, in

+the hope of obtaining other successful

+authors; and he will attract them, for

+much book advertising is done not with

+the hope of selling the book, but chiefly

+to impress writers with the publisher’s

+energy and generosity. But there’s no<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9">9</a></span>

+profit and great risk in business conducted

+in this way.</p>

+

+<p>There is positive danger, in fact.

+And I owe it to myself and to all the

+men and women whose books I publish

+to see to it first of all that my own business

+is sound, and is kept sound. In no

+other way can I discharge my obligations

+to them and keep my publishing

+house on its proper level instead of on

+the level of a mere business shop.</p>

+

+<p>The rise of royalties paid to popular

+authors is the most important recent

+fact in the publishing world. It has

+not been many years since ten per cent.

+was the almost universal rule; and a ten

+per cent. royalty on a book that sells

+only reasonably well is a fair bargain

+between publisher and author. If the

+publisher do his work well—make the

+book well, advertise it well, keep a well-ordered

+and well-managed and energetic

+house—this division of the profits is a

+fair division—except in the case of a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10">10</a></span>

+book that has a phenomenally large

+sale. Then he can afford to pay more.

+Unless a book has a pretty good sale, it

+will not leave a profit after paying more

+than a ten per cent. royalty.</p>

+

+<p>Figure it for yourself. The retail

+price of a novel is $1.50. The retail

+bookseller buys it for about ninety

+cents. The wholesale bookseller buys it

+from the publisher for about eighty

+cents. This eighty cents must pay the

+cost of manufacturing the book; of selling

+it; of advertising it; must pay its

+share towards the cost of keeping the

+publisher’s establishment going—and

+this is a large and increasing cost; it

+must pay the author; and it must leave

+the publisher himself some small profit.

+Now, if out of this eighty cents which

+must be divided for so many purposes,

+the author receives a royalty of twenty

+per cent. (thirty cents a copy), there is

+left, of course, only fifty cents to pay all

+the other items. No other half-dollar<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11">11</a></span>

+in this world has to suffer such careful

+and continuous division! I have met

+a good many authors who have never

+realized that a ten per cent. royalty

+means nearly twenty per cent. on what

+the publisher actually sells the book for,

+and that a twenty per cent. royalty is

+nearly forty per cent. on the actual

+wholesale price.</p>

+

+<p>There are several things of greater

+importance in the long run to an author

+than a large royalty. One of them is the

+unstinted loyalty of his publisher. His

+publisher must have a chance to be generous

+to his book. He ought not to feel

+that he must seek a cheap printer, that

+he must buy cheap paper, that he must

+make a cheap cover, that he must too

+closely watch his advertising account.

+A publisher has no chance to be generous

+to a book when he can make a profit

+on it only at the expense of its proper

+manufacture. The grasping author is,

+therefore, doing damage to his own book<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12">12</a></span>

+by leaving the publisher no margin of

+profit.</p>

+

+<h3>THE STABILITY OF THE PUBLISHER</h3>

+

+<p>There is still another thing that an

+author should set above his immediate

+income from any particular book; and

+that is the stability of his publisher.

+The publisher is a business man (he has

+need to be a business man of the highest

+type), but he is also the guardian of the

+author’s property. If his institution be

+not sound and be not kept sound, the loss

+to the author in money and in standing

+may be very great. The embarrassment

+or failure of a publishing firm now and

+then causes much gossip; for a publishing

+house is a center of publicity. But nobody

+outside the profession knows what

+practical trouble and confusion and loss

+every failure or financial embarrassment

+costs the writing world. The normal

+sale of many books is stopped. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13">13</a></span>

+authors lose in the end, and they lose

+heavily.</p>

+

+<p>Every publisher who appreciates his

+profession tries to make his house permanent,

+with an eye not only to his own

+profit, but also to the service that he

+may do to the writers on his list. If it is

+of the very essence of banking that a

+bank shall be in sound condition and

+shall have the confidence of the community,

+it is even more true that a publishing

+house should be sound to the

+core and should deserve financial confidence.

+The publisher must do his

+business with reference to a permanent

+success. But if he must do business on

+the basis of a twenty per cent. royalty,

+he takes risks that he has no right to

+take. It deserves to be called “wildcat”

+publishing.</p>

+

+<p>I am, therefore, not making a plea, by

+this confession, for a larger profit to the

+publisher in any narrow or personal

+sense. Every successful publisher—<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14">14</a></span>really

+successful, mind you—could make

+more money by going into some other

+business. I think that there is not a

+man of them who could not greatly increase

+his income by giving the same

+energy and ability to the management

+of a bank, or of some sort of industrial

+enterprise. Such men as Mr. Charles

+Scribner, Mr. George Brett, Mr. George

+H. Mifflin, could earn very much larger

+returns by their ability in banks, railroads

+or manufacturing, than any one

+of them earns as a publisher; for they

+are men of conspicuous ability.</p>

+

+<p>It is, therefore, not as a matter of

+mere gain to the publisher that it is important

+to have the business on a sound

+and fair basis; but it is for the sake of

+the business itself and for the sake of the

+writers themselves.</p>

+

+<h3>AN AUTHOR’S BLUNDER</h3>

+

+<p>Here is a true tale of a writer of good

+fiction: He made a most promising<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15">15</a></span>

+start. His first book, in fact, caused him

+to be sought by several publishers, who

+do not hesitate to solicit clients—a

+practice that other dignified professions

+discourage. The publisher of his first

+book gave him a ten per cent. royalty.

+For his second book he demanded more.

+A rival publisher offered him twenty

+per cent. The second book also succeeded.

+But the author in the meantime

+had heard the noise of other

+publishing houses. He had made the

+acquaintance of another writer whose

+books (which were better than his) had

+sold in much greater quantities. Of

+course, the difference in sales could not

+be accounted for by the literary qualities

+of the books—his friend had a better

+publisher than he—so he concluded.

+His third book, therefore, was placed

+with a third publisher, because he

+would advertise more loudly. Well,

+that publisher failed. His failure, by

+the way, the report of the receivers<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16">16</a></span>

+showed, was caused by spending too

+much in unproductive advertising.</p>

+

+<p>Here our author stood, then, with

+three books, each issued by a different

+publishing house. What should he do

+with his fourth book? He came back to

+his second publisher, who had, naturally,

+lost some of his enthusiasm for such

+an author. To cut the story short, that

+man now has books on five publishers’

+lists. Not one of the publishers counts

+him as his particular client. In a sense

+his books are all neglected. One has

+never helped another. He has got no

+cumulative result of his work. He has

+become a sort of stray dog in the publishing

+world. He has cordial relations

+with no publisher; and his literary product

+has really declined. He scattered

+his influence, and he is paying the

+natural penalty.</p>

+

+<p>The moral of this true story (and I

+could tell half a dozen more like it) is

+that a publisher is a business man, but<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17">17</a></span>

+not a mere business man. He must be

+something more. He is a professional

+man also. He can do his best service

+only for those authors who inspire his

+loyalty, who enable him to make his

+publishing house permanent, and who

+leave him enough margin of profit to

+permit him to make books of which he

+can be proud.</p>

+

+<p>The present fashion of a part of the

+writing world—to squeeze the last cent

+out of a book and to treat the publisher

+as a mere manufacturer and “boomer”—cannot

+last. It has already passed

+its high period and is on the decline. A

+self-respecting worm would have turned

+long ago. Even the publisher is now

+beginning to turn.</p>

+

+<p>Better still, the authors whose books

+will be remembered longest have not

+caught the fashion of demanding everything.

+It was that passing school of

+“booms” and bellowing that did it all—the

+writers of romances for kitchen<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18">18</a></span>

+maids and shop girls, whose measure of

+book values was by dollars only. Such

+fashions always pass. For, if novel writing

+be so profitable an industry, a large

+number of persons naturally take it up;

+and they ruin the market by overstocking

+it.</p>

+

+<h3>THE “BOOMED” BOOK PASSING</h3>

+

+<p>Fast passing, then—praise God—is

+the “boomed” book, which, having no

+merit, could once be sold by sheer advertising,

+in several editions of 100,000 each.

+I have made a list of the writers of books

+that during the last five or six years

+have sold in enormous editions; and

+every one of these writers, but two, has

+lived to see his (or her) latest book sell

+far below its predecessors. One man,

+for instance, wrote a first book which

+sold more than 200,000 copies. His

+publishers announce only the sixtieth

+thousand of his latest novel, though it

+has now nearly run its course.</p>

+

+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19">19</a></span>

+These are not pleasant facts. I wish

+that every novelist might have an increasing

+sale for every book he writes.

+They all earn more than they receive—even

+the bad ones whose books prosper;

+but the system that they brought with

+them deserves to die—must die, if publishing

+is to remain an honorable profession.

+They brought with them the

+20 per cent. royalty, and the demand for

+an advertising outlay that was based on

+the sale of 100,000 or 200,000 copies.

+Only the keeper of dark secrets knows

+how many publishers have lost, or how

+large their losses have been, on

+“boomed” books. But any intelligent

+business man may take the 50 cents

+that the publisher receives for his $1.50

+novel after paying the author’s 20 per

+cent. royalty, and divide it thus:</p>

+

+<p class="in0 in4">

+Cost of manufacture,<br />

+Cost of selling,<br />

+Office expense,<br />

+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20">20</a></span>Extravagant advertising,<br />

+Profit.

+</p>

+

+<p>If he can find anything left for profit,

+then he can get rich at any business.

+There have been novels so extravagantly

+advertised that the advertising cost

+alone amounted to 22 cents for every

+copy sold. The writer drove the publisher

+to loss; the publisher (foolishly)

+consented in the hope of attracting

+other authors to his house. If “other

+authors” knew that the very cost of the

+bait that attracted them makes the

+publishing house unsound, they would

+not long be fooled.</p>

+

+<p>Thus it comes about, in this strange

+and fascinating world of writing and

+making and selling books, that one

+period of “whooping up” novels is ending.

+Half the novels advertised during

+the past few years in big medicine style

+did not pay the publishers; and any

+conservative publisher can tell you

+which half they are.</p>

+

+<p>The manufacturing novelist has always<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21">21</a></span>

+been with us. But he used to be

+an humble practitioner of the craft

+whose “output” was sold for ten cents a

+volume. He always will be with us, and

+his product will sell, some at ten cents a

+volume, some at $1.50. But the time

+seems about to pass when he can disturb

+the publishing situation. For the publisher

+has to accept his methods when he

+accepts his work; and his methods do

+not pay either in dignity, permanency,

+or cash. If any of these be lacking—and

+in proportion as they are lacking—the

+results will fall short of the ideal.

+The results to be hoped for are money,

+but not money only, but also a watchful

+care by the publisher over his author’s

+reputation and growth, and a cumulative

+influence for his books.</p>

+

+<h3>THE INCOME OF AUTHORS</h3>

+

+<p>There are, perhaps, a dozen American

+novelists who have large incomes from

+their work; there are many more who<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22">22</a></span>

+have comfortable incomes; but there is

+none whose income is as large as the

+writers of gossip for the literary journals

+would have us believe. It has been

+said that Harper’s Magazine pays Mrs.

+Humphry Ward $15,000 for the serial

+right of each of her stories and twenty

+per cent. royalty. Miss Johnston must

+have made from $60,000 to $70,000

+from royalties on “To Have and to

+Hold,” for any publisher can calculate

+it.</p>

+

+<p>But along with these great facts let us

+humbly remember that Mr. Carnegie

+received $300,000,000 for all his steel

+mills, good will, etc.; for the authors

+that I have named are the “millionaires”

+of the craft. I wish there were

+more. But the diligent writers of most

+good fiction, hard as they have ground

+the publishers in the rise of royalties,

+are yet nearer to Grub street than they

+are to Skibo Castle.</p>

+

+<p>The truth is—but it would be a difficult<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23">23</a></span>

+task to reduce such a truth to practice—that

+the public gets its good new

+novels too cheap. There is not a large

+enough margin of profit for author, publisher

+and bookseller in a new book that

+is meant to be sold for $1.50 and that is

+often sold for $1.08. The business of

+bookmaking and bookselling is underpaid.

+There is not a publisher in the

+United States who is today making any

+large sum of money on his “general

+trade.” Money is made on educational

+books, on subscription books, on magazines.

+But publishing, as publishing, is

+the least profitable of all the professions,

+except preaching and teaching, to each

+of which it is a sort of cousin.</p>

+

+<hr />

+

+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27">27</a></span></p>

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II<br />

+

+<span class="subhead">WHY “BAD” NOVELS SUCCEED AND

+“GOOD” ONES FAIL</span></h2>

+</div>

+

+<blockquote>

+

+<p class="hang"><i>The First May Have No Literary Quality, but

+They Have a Genuine Quality—Power of Construction

+the Main Thing in Story-Writing—Literary

+Reviews of Novels are Regarded as of

+Little Value by Publishers—Odd Incidents and

+Facts in the Business.</i></p></blockquote>

+

+<p>A report on the manuscript of a novel

+made by a “literary” reader not long

+ago ended with this sentence: “This

+novel is bad enough to succeed.” He

+expressed the feeling of a great many

+literary persons that fiction often succeeds

+in the market in proportion to its

+“badness.” And surely there are many

+instances to support such a contention

+from the “Lamplighter” to “When

+Knighthood Was in Flower.” But the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28">28</a></span>

+“literary” view of fiction is no more

+trustworthy than the “literary” view

+of politics or of commerce; for it concerns

+itself more with technique than

+with substance.</p>

+

+<p>It is a hard world in which “Knighthood,”

+“Quincy Adams Sawyer” and

+“Graustark,” to say nothing of “The

+One Woman,” “Alice of Old Vincennes”

+and a hundred more “poor” books

+make fortunes, while Mr. Howells and

+Mr. James write to unresponsive markets

+and even Mr. Kipling cannot find

+so many readers for a new novel as Mr.

+Bacheller of “Eben Holden.” It seems

+a hard world to the professional literary

+folk; but the professional literary folk

+would find it a hard world anyhow; for

+it has a way of preferring substance to

+color. And novels, after all, have less

+to do with literature than they have to

+do with popular amusement.</p>

+

+<p>Heaven forbid that I should make defence

+of bad writing, or of sensational<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29">29</a></span>

+literature, or of bad taste, or of any

+other thing that is below grade; but, as

+between the professional literary class,

+and the great mass of men who buy

+“Eben Holdens” and “David Harums”

+the mass of men have the better case.</p>

+

+<p>Why does a man read a novel? Let

+us come down to common-sense. He

+seeks one of two things—either a real

+insight into human nature (he got that

+in “David Harum”) or he seeks diversion,

+entertainment. A writer’s style

+is only a part of the machinery of presentation.

+The main thing is that he has

+something to present. Even though I

+am a publisher I think that I know

+something about literary quality and

+literary values, and it must be owned at

+once that hardly one in a dozen of the

+very popular recent novels has any

+literary quality. But every one of

+them, nevertheless, has some very genuine

+and positive quality. They were

+not written by any trick, and their popularity<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30">30</a></span>

+does not make the road to success

+any easier to find. They have

+qualities that are rarer than the merely

+literary quality. Mr. Henry James’s

+novels have what is usually called the

+literary quality. Yet half the publishing

+houses in the United States have lost

+money on them, while the publisher and

+the author of “Richard Carvel” and

+“The Crisis” and “The Crossing” made

+a handsome sum of money from these

+books, which have no literary style.</p>

+

+<p>This does not mean a whining confession

+that “literature” does not pay.

+For my part I cannot weep because Mr.

+James and Mr. Howells do not find many

+readers for their latest books. They

+find all they deserve. Mere words were

+never worth much money or worth

+much else. But, while Mr. Churchill is

+not a great writer (since he has no style),

+and while few persons of the next generation

+of readers (whereby I mean

+those of year after next) are going to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31">31</a></span>

+take the trouble to read his books, yet,

+for all that, they have a quality that is

+very rare in this world, a quality that

+their imitators never seem to see. They

+have construction. They have action.

+They have substance. A series of

+events come to pass in a certain order,

+by a well-laid plan. Each book makes

+its appeal as a thing built, finished,

+shapen, if not well-proportioned, substantial.

+It is a real structure—not a

+mere pile of bricks and lumber. The

+bricks and lumber that went into them

+are not as fine nor as good as somebody

+else may have in his brickyard and his

+lumber pile. But they are put together.

+A well shapen house of bad bricks is a

+more pleasing thing than any mere

+brick-pile whatever.</p>

+

+<p>I recall this interesting experience of a

+man whose novels are now fast winning

+great popular favor. He sat down and

+wrote a story and sent it to a publisher.

+It was declined. He sent it to another.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32">32</a></span>

+Again it was declined. Then he brought

+it to me. (He told me of the preceding

+declinations a year later). I told him

+frankly that it lacked construction. I

+supposed that that was the last that I

+should see of him. But about a year

+later he came again with another manuscript

+and with this interesting story.</p>

+

+<p>“Like a fool,” said he, “I simply

+blazed away and wrote what I supposed

+was a novel. Nobody would publish it.

+When you said that it lacked construction,

+I went to work to study the construction

+of a novel. I analyzed twenty.

+I found a dozen books on the subject

+which gave me some help. But there

+are few books that do help. I constructed

+a sort of method of my own.”</p>

+

+<p>That man yet has no sense of literary

+values, as they are usually considered.

+The only good quality of his style is its

+perfect directness and clearness. He

+writes blunt, plain sentences. But every

+one of them tells something. He does<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33">33</a></span>

+not bother himself about style, nor

+about literary quality. He fixes his

+mind on the story itself, to see that it

+has substance, form, action, proportion.

+And he worked out this new novel with

+these qualities in it.</p>

+

+<p>It was a dime novel in praise of one of

+the cardinal Christian virtues—very

+earnest, very direct. But the persons in

+it were real. They not only said things,

+they did things; and many of the things

+they did were interesting. One of our

+salesmen was asked to read the manuscript.

+“It’ll sell,” said he. Our literary

+adviser said that it was a bald moral

+Sunday school play. “You could put it

+on the stage by cutting it here and

+there,” he declared. “But it has no

+literary quality.” Both were right.

+The book has sold well. It has amused

+and interested its tens of thousands.</p>

+

+<p>The author’s next book after that was

+very much better. Having learned

+something of the art of construction he<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34">34</a></span>

+began to think of such a detail as style.

+He re-wrote the book to make it

+“smooth.” But the point is, he first

+paid attention to his construction and

+made sure that he had a story to tell.</p>

+

+<p>The enormous amount of waste work

+done by unsuccessful novel writers is

+done without taking the trouble first to

+make sure that they have a story to tell.</p>

+

+<p>Few persons have any constructive

+faculty. This is the sad fact that comes

+home at last to a man who has read

+novels in manuscript for many years.

+A publisher comes to look for construction

+in a novel before he looks for style

+or literary quality.</p>

+

+<p>This confession is enough to provoke

+the literary journals to condemn the

+publishers as mere mercenary dealers in

+sensational books. Yet, while a book

+that is well constructed may not be

+“literature,” very few books have a

+serious chance to become literature unless

+they have good construction.</p>

+

+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35">35</a></span>

+I, for one, and I know no publisher

+who holds a different opinion, care nothing

+for the judgment of the professional

+literary class. Their judgment of a

+novel, for instance, is of little value or

+instruction. It may be right—often it

+is. It may be wrong. But whether

+right or wrong (and there is no way that

+I know to determine finally whether any

+judgment be right or wrong) it is of no

+practical value. A literary judgment

+of a new novel cannot affect the judgment

+that men will form of it ten years

+hence. Therefore it is of no permanent

+value. Neither can it affect the sales of

+a new novel. It is therefore of no practical

+importance for the moment. I look

+upon reviews of novels as so much publicity—they

+have value, as they tell the

+public that the book is published and

+can be bought, and as they tell something

+about it which may prod the reader’s

+curiosity. Further than this they

+are of no account. Not one of the three<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36">36</a></span>

+publishers whose personal habits I know

+as a rule takes the trouble to read the

+reviews of novels of his own publishing.</p>

+

+<p>Novel making, then, is an industry,

+and the people who make them best concern

+themselves very little about what

+is usually meant by “literary values,”

+and very little about their popularity.

+The writers who deliberately set out to

+write novels of great popularity have

+almost always missed it. The industry

+is an art, also, but it is not an art of

+mere fine writing. It is chiefly an art of

+construction—an art of putting things

+in due proportion. This assumes, of

+course, that the novelist has things to

+put.</p>

+

+<p>The truth is, the delicate and difficult

+art of finding out just what the public

+cares for—the public of this year or the

+public of ten years hence—has not been

+mastered by many men, whether writers

+or publishers. If you find out what

+the great public of today wants, you are<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37">37</a></span>

+a sensationalist. If you find out what

+the great public of ten or twenty years

+hence will want, you are a maker or a

+publisher of literature. And the public

+of the future is pretty sure to want

+something different from the public of

+today.</p>

+

+<p>Within six months after the publication

+of a popular novel the publisher of

+it (other publishers, too) will receive a

+dozen or a hundred stories that have

+been suggested by it. Many an author

+of such a manuscript will write that he

+has discovered the secret of the popular

+book’s success and that he has turned it

+to profit in his own effort. Such letters

+are singularly alike. The writers of

+them regard success as something won

+by a trick, as a game of cards might be

+won. These remind one, too, of the advertisements

+of patent medicines—except

+that the writers of them are sincere.

+They believe heartily in their discovery.

+Thus every very popular novel gives a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38">38</a></span>

+great stimulus to the production of

+novels. “To Have and To Hold”

+brought cargoes of young women for

+colonists’ wives to hundreds of amateur

+story writers.</p>

+

+<p>But stranger than the popularity of

+very popular novels, or than the utter

+failure of merely “literary” novels, is

+the moderate success of a certain kind of

+commonplace stories. I know a woman

+of domestic tastes who every two years

+turns off a quiet story. She has now

+written a dozen or more. They are never

+advertised. But they are well printed

+and put forth by one of our best publishers.

+The “literary” world pays no

+heed to her. Her books are not even

+reviewed in the best journals. They lack

+distinction. But every one is sure to

+sell from ten to fifteen thousand copies.

+No amount of advertising, no amount of

+noise could increase the number of readers

+to twenty-five thousand; and there

+is no way to prevent a sale of from ten<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39">39</a></span>

+to fifteen thousand copies. Why this is

+so is one of the most baffling problems of

+psychology. But it is the rule. Authors

+of novels are known and rated among

+publishers as ten thousand, or twenty-five

+thousand, or fifty thousand, or one

+hundred thousand writers. Book after

+book reaches a certain level of popularity

+and—stops. Mr. Marion Crawford,

+Mr. Hopkinson Smith, Miss Wilkins—all

+these have their more or less constant

+levels.</p>

+

+<p>The lay world has no idea of the number

+of novels that fail. There are one-book

+authors all over the country. The

+publishers’ hope always is that a new

+writer who makes a pretty good novel

+will do better next time. Thus the first

+book is accepted for the sake of the next

+one. The first fails, and the second is

+not wanted. There are dozens and

+dozens of such cases every year. The

+public doesn’t know it, for the very

+abyss of oblivion is the place where a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40">40</a></span>

+dead novel falls. Nobody knows it—that

+is the tragedy—but the publishers

+and the author.</p>

+

+<p>A case came to light a little while ago

+of a man who had years ago written

+novels that failed. He had been forgotten.

+But he took a new start. Yet he

+feared that his first failures would damn

+him with the publishers. He took

+another name, therefore. Not even his

+publishers knew who he really was. He

+succeeded and he concealed his identity

+until he died.</p>

+

+<p>The publisher’s loss on an unsuccessful

+novel may be little or big. All publishers

+lose much on unsuccessful ventures

+in fiction, chiefly on young authors

+who are supposed to have a future, or on

+old authors who have a “literary” reputation

+and have reached that ghostly

+period of real decline when they walk in

+dreams from one publishing house to

+another.</p>

+

+<p>But there is generally a reason for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41">41</a></span>

+success or for failure. The trouble is

+that the reason often does not appear

+soon enough. The chief reason for the

+success of a novel is the commonplace

+one that it contains a story. It may

+be told ill or it may be told well, but

+there is a story. And the chief reason

+for failure is the lack of a story. A novel

+may be ever so well written,—if it have

+no story, the public will not care for it.</p>

+

+<p>I wonder if there be any light in this

+very obvious discovery. Simple as it

+seems, it costs every publishing house

+a pretty penny every year to find it out;

+and as soon as we find it out about one

+writer we forget it about another! It is

+a great truth that does not remain discovered.</p>

+

+<hr />

+

+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45">45</a></span></p>

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III<br />

+

+<span class="subhead">ARE AUTHORS AN IRRITABLE TRIBE?</span></h2>

+</div>

+

+<blockquote>

+

+<p class="hang"><i>An Emphatic Answer in the Negative—They Are

+Gentlemen and Ladies and Treat Their Publisher

+with Courtesy—Bonds of Friendship

+Thus Formed That Endure—Some Amusing

+and Nettling Exceptions—Cranks Among the

+Scholars—The Inconstant Author Who Is Always

+Changing Publishers—Why a Publishing

+Trust Is Impossible.</i></p></blockquote>

+

+<p>The old and persistent notion that the

+writers of books are an irritable tribe,

+hard to deal with, and manageable only

+by flattery—if it was ever true, is not

+true now. During an experience of a

+good many years I have suffered a discourtesy

+from only two. Both these

+were “philosophers”—not even poets,

+nor novelists. They wrote books that

+the years have proved are dull; and,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46">46</a></span>

+when it became my duty to disappoint

+them, although I hope I did it courteously,

+they wrote ill-tempered letters.

+The hundreds of other writers of all sorts

+that I have had the pleasure to deal with

+have conducted themselves as men and

+women of common sense, and most of

+them are men and women of very unusual

+attractiveness. I doubt whether a

+man of any other calling has the privilege

+of dealing with persons of such

+graciousness and of such consideration.</p>

+

+<p>But the women who write require

+more attention than the men. Their

+imaginations are more easily excited by

+the hope of success, and few of them

+have had business experience. They

+want to be fair and appreciate frank

+dealing. Yet they like to have everything

+explained in great detail.</p>

+

+<p>One woman, now one of our most

+successful novelists—successful both as

+a writer of excellent books and as an

+earner of a good income—was kind<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47">47</a></span>

+enough to seek my advice about one of

+her early novels. It was a book that she

+ought not to have written; the subject

+was badly chosen. I frankly told her so.

+The whole reading world has told her so

+since. But naturally she did not agree

+with me. She took the book to another

+publisher. Two years passed. She had

+a second novel ready. This was one of

+the best American stories of a decade.

+To my great gratification I received a

+letter from her one day asking if I cared

+to read it. Of course I said yes.</p>

+

+<p>Then came another telling how she

+had never changed her opinion of her

+former book—not a jot—I must understand

+that thoroughly. If that were

+clearly understood she went on to say

+she would like to have me publish the

+new book on two conditions: (1) That

+I should myself read it immediately and

+say frankly what I thought of it, and (2)

+that I should pay her a royalty large

+enough to repair her wounded feelings<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48">48</a></span>

+about the former book. Subsequently

+she added another <span class="locked">condition—</span></p>

+

+<p>“You may publish it,” she said, “if

+you heartily believe in the book.”</p>

+

+<p>Very shrewdly said—that “heartily

+believe in the book.” For the secret of

+good publishing lies there. There are

+some books that a publisher may succeed

+with without believing in them—a

+dictionary or a slapdash novel, for examples.

+But a book that has any sterling

+quality—a real book—ought never

+to have the imprint of a publisher who is

+not really a sharer of its fortunes, a true

+partner with the author. For only with

+such a book can he do his best.</p>

+

+<p>I did believe in this book. As soon as

+it was in type I required every man in

+my office who had to do with it to read

+it—the writer of “literary notes,” the

+salesman and even the shipping clerk.

+When the author next called I introduced

+to her all these. They showed their

+enthusiasm. She was convinced. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49">49</a></span>

+book succeeded in the market almost

+beyond her expectations. It is a good

+book. Everyone of us believes in it and

+believes in her.</p>

+

+<p>She is not a crank, “but only a woman.”

+We have our reward in her

+friendship and she is generous enough to

+think that we have done her some service.

+We esteem it a high privilege to be

+her publishers.</p>

+

+<p>But God save me from another woman

+who has won a conspicuous success

+in the market. The first question she

+ever asked me was:</p>

+

+<p>“Are you a Christian?”</p>

+

+<p>“Do I look like a Jew or a Mohammedan?”

+I asked.</p>

+

+<p>She never forgave me. Her novel had

+a great religious motive. It sold by the

+tens of thousands and most maudlin

+emotionalists in the land have read it.

+But I do not publish it. To do so, I

+should have had to pay the price of

+being “converted.” Now this lady is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50">50</a></span>

+a crank. But it is not fair to call her

+books literature.</p>

+

+<p>The veriest crank of all is our great

+scholar. It is an honor to publish the results

+of his scholarship (few parsnips as

+it butters), for the man’s work is as attractive

+as he is odd. He thinks himself

+the very soul of fairness. Yet he comes

+at frequent intervals wishing so to

+change his contract as to make publishing

+his books an even more expensive

+luxury than it was before. A contract

+is to him a thing to make endless experiments

+with. When we were once

+driven to desperation, one of my associates

+suggested that we propose half a

+dozen unimportant changes in it, on the

+theory that change—any change—was

+all he wanted. It was an inspired suggestion.

+A great scholar, a restless

+child. But some day (we feel) he will

+break over all traces, and we are all afraid

+of him.</p>

+

+<p>But very sane and sensible men and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51">51</a></span>

+women are most of those who succeed

+in winning the public favor. Some are

+grasping, as other men are. One, for instance,

+whose book had earned $7,000 in

+two years, demanded a prepayment of

+$8,000 for the next book. A compromise

+was made on $2,000! That was the

+measure of my folly, for the book is

+waning in its popularity and has hardly

+earned this prepaid royalty.</p>

+

+<p>An author came to my office one day

+indignant because his novel was not

+more extensively advertised. There was

+the usual explanation—it would not

+pay. He had money to spare and he

+proposed to advertise it himself. He

+wrote the advertisements, he selected

+the journals in which the advertisements

+should appear, and he inserted

+them—$1,000 worth.</p>

+

+<p>By some strange fate the sales of the

+book began just then greatly to decline.

+They have kept declining since, and why

+nobody can tell. When the public has<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52">52</a></span>

+bought a certain number of copies of a

+novel—of one novel it may be 1,000

+copies, of another 100,000 copies—there

+is nothing that can be done to make

+it buy another 1,000 or 100,000. It

+seems to know when it has enough.

+Take more it will not. The worst

+“crank” that any publisher ever encountered

+is not an author; it is the

+public, unreasoning, illogical, unconvincible,

+stolid!</p>

+

+<p>Odd persons are found in every craft.

+But I think that there are fewer odd ones

+among successful writers than among

+successful lawyers, for instance. And

+this is what one would naturally expect,

+but for the traditional notion that writers

+are unbalanced. Who else is so well

+balanced as the writer of good books?

+He must have sanity and calmness and

+judgment, a sense of good proportion, an

+appreciation of right conduct and of all

+human relations, else he could not make

+books of good balance and proportion.</p>

+

+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53">53</a></span>

+Most writers have few financial dealings,

+and they often innocently propose

+impracticable things. But this is

+not a peculiar trait of writers. Most

+preachers and many women show it. I

+have known a successful college president,

+for instance, to cut a paragraph

+out of a proof sheet with a pair of scissors,

+imagining that this would cause it

+to be taken out by the printers.</p>

+

+<p>They are appreciative, too; and they

+make the most interesting friends in the

+world. Almost all writers of books work

+alone. Lawyers work with clients and

+with associated and opposing lawyers.

+Even teachers have the companionship

+of their pupils in the work. Men of most

+crafts work with their fellows, and they

+forget how much encouragement they

+owe to this fellowship. A dreary task is

+made light by it and monotonous labor

+is robbed of its weariness. But the

+writer works alone.</p>

+

+<p>Almost the first man to be taken into<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54">54</a></span>

+his confidence about his work is his publisher.

+If the publisher be appreciative

+and sympathetic and render a real service,

+how easily and firmly the writer is

+won. A peculiarly close friendship follows

+in many cases—in most cases, perhaps,

+certainly in most cases when the

+author’s books are successful.</p>

+

+<p>And this is why a great publishing

+trust, or “merger” is impossible. The

+successful publisher sustains a relation

+to the successful author that is not easily

+transferable. It is a personal relation.

+A great corporation cannot take a real

+publisher’s place in his attitude to the

+authors he serves.</p>

+

+<p>This is the reason, too, why the

+“authors’ agents” seldom succeed in

+raising the hopes of unsuccessful writers.

+As soon as a writer and a publisher

+have come into a personal relation that

+is naturally profitable and pleasant, a

+“go-between” has no place. There is

+no legitimate function for him.</p>

+

+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55">55</a></span>

+Writers are as constant in their relations

+as other men and women. As they

+acquire experience, they become more

+constant. Every one for himself works

+his way to this conclusion—once having

+an appreciative and successful publisher,

+it is better to hold to him. And the

+strong friendships that grow out of this

+relation are among the most precious

+gains to each.</p>

+

+<p>One publisher said to another the

+other day: “I see by your announcements

+that one of my authors has gone

+to you—you are welcome.”</p>

+

+<p>“Yes,” was the reply, “I have in almost

+every instance made a mistake

+when I have taken in a dissatisfied

+writer—one cannot make lasting friends

+with them.”</p>

+

+<p>Every great publishing house has been

+built on the strong friendships between

+writers and publishers. There is, in fact,

+no other sound basis to build on; for the

+publisher cannot do his highest duty to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56">56</a></span>

+any author whose work he does not appreciate,

+and with whom he is not in

+sympathy. Now, when a man has an

+appreciation of your work and sympathy

+for it, he wins you. This is the

+simplest of all psychological laws—the

+simplest of all laws of friendship and one

+of the soundest.</p>

+

+<p>Those who know the personal history

+of the publishing houses that in recent

+years have failed or met embarrassments

+know that, in most cases, one

+cause of decline was the drawing apart

+of publishers and authors. When authors

+begin to regard their publishers as

+mere business agents, and publishers to

+regard authors as mere “literary men”

+with whom they have only business

+relations, the beginning of a decline has

+come.</p>

+

+<p>I recall as one of the pleasantest days

+of my life the day on which I accepted a

+book by an author I had never before

+seen. So pleasant was our correspondence<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57">57</a></span>

+that I took the first occasion I

+could to go nearly a thousand miles to

+see him. In his own house we talked

+about his literary plans, and I spent a

+day always to be remembered. Our

+friendship began then. Of course I was

+interested in his work—you cannot long

+feign an interest that you do not feel.

+This friendship has lasted now long

+enough to make it very much more secure

+a bond than any merely commercial

+service could have become.</p>

+

+<p>Every publisher’s experience is the

+same—if he be a real publisher and will

+long remain a real publisher. Else he

+would be only a printer and a salesman,

+and mere printers and salesmen have

+not often built publishing houses. For

+publishing houses have this distinction

+over most other commercial institutions—they

+rest on the friendship of the most

+interesting persons in the world, the

+writers of good books.</p>

+

+<p>The more formal cultivation of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58">58</a></span>

+friendly relations such as the famous

+dinners that some publishers used regularly

+to give to writers has gone out of

+fashion. There are yet a few set dinners

+in the routine of several American publishing

+houses. But every true publisher

+knows the authors of his books—knows

+them as his friends; and the tradition of

+irritability is false. It is usually the unsuccessful

+who are irritable, whether

+they be authors or not.</p>

+

+<hr />

+

+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61">61</a></span></p>

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV<br />

+

+<span class="subhead">HAS PUBLISHING BECOME COMMERCIALIZED?</span></h2>

+</div>

+

+<blockquote>

+

+<p class="hang"><i>A Charge Fairly Met and Its Truths Admitted—Many

+Features of the Business in Which a Low

+Tone Prevails—The Literary Solicitor an Abhorrent

+Creature—On the Whole, However,

+Commercial Degradation Prevails Less with

+Publishers Than in Many Other Callings—The

+Confidence Authors Have in Them Is Their

+Best Asset.</i></p></blockquote>

+

+<p>Authorship and publishing—the

+whole business of producing contemporaneous

+literature—has for the moment

+a decided commercial squint. It

+would be wrong to say, as one sometimes

+hears it said, that it has been degraded;

+for it has probably not suffered

+as nearly a complete commercialization

+as the law has suffered, for instance.

+But that fine indifference to commercial<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62">62</a></span>

+results which was once supposed to be

+characteristic of the great publishers

+does not exist today. Perhaps it never

+existed except in memoirs and literary

+journals! But there was a less obvious

+effort to make money in the days of the

+first successful American publishing

+houses than there is now.</p>

+

+<p>The old publishing houses put forth

+schoolbooks; and many a dignified

+literary venture was “financed” by

+money made from the sale of textbooks

+and subscription books. But now the

+greater part of the money made from

+these two special departments is made

+by houses that publish nothing else.

+The making of schoolbooks and the

+making of subscription books have been

+specialized, and almost separated from

+general publishing. Two great textbook

+houses have made large incomes; and

+they publish nothing but schoolbooks.

+These profits, which were once at the

+service of literature, are now withdrawn<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63">63</a></span>

+from it. The “general” publisher has to

+make all his profits on his “general”

+books. The necessity is the heavier on

+him, therefore, to make every book pay.

+This is one reason why the general publisher

+has to watch his ledger closely.</p>

+

+<p>Another reason for greater emphasis

+on the financial side of literary production

+is the enormously increased expense

+of conducting a general publishing

+house. The mere manufacture of books

+is perhaps a trifle cheaper than it used to

+be, but every other item of expense has

+been increased enormously within a

+generation. It costs more to sell books

+than it ever cost before. Advertising

+rates have been doubled or trebled, and

+more advertising must be done. Even

+a small general publishing house must

+spend as much as $30,000 or $50,000 a

+year in general advertising. There are

+many houses that each spend a great

+deal more than this every year.</p>

+

+<p>The author, too, it must be remembered,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64">64</a></span>

+has become commercial. He demands

+and he receives a larger share of

+the gross receipts from his book than

+authors ever dreamed of receiving in the

+days of the old-time publisher. All the

+other expenses of selling books have increased.

+There was a time when publishing

+houses needed no travelling

+salesmen. Now every house of any importance

+has at least two. They go

+everywhere, with “dummies” and prospectuses

+of books long before they are

+ready for the market. Other items of

+“general expense” besides advertising

+and salesmen and ever-increasing rent,

+are the ever-growing demands of the

+trade for posters and circulars; correspondence

+grows more and more; more

+and more are special “window displays”

+required, for which the publisher

+pays. All the while, too, books are sold

+on long time. As a rule they are not paid

+for by many dealers till six months after

+they are manufactured.</p>

+

+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65">65</a></span>

+All these modern commercial methods

+have added to the publisher’s expense or

+risk; and for these reasons his business

+has become more like any other manufacturing

+business than it once seemed

+to be—perhaps more than it once was.

+Of course there are publishers—there

+always were such—who look only to

+their ledgers as a measure of their success.

+These are they who have really

+demoralized the profession, and the

+whole publishing craft has suffered by

+their methods.</p>

+

+<p>It was once a matter of honor that one

+publisher should respect the relation

+established between another publisher

+and a writer, as a physician respects the

+relation established between another

+physician and a patient. Three or four

+of the best publishing houses still live

+and work by this code. And they have

+the respect of all the book world.

+Authors and readers, who do not know

+definitely why they hold them in esteem,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66">66</a></span>

+discern a high sense of honor and conduct

+in them. Character makes its way

+from any man who has it down a long

+line—everybody who touches a sterling

+character comes at last to feel it both in

+conduct and in product. The very best

+traditions of publishing are yet a part of

+the practice of the best American publishing

+houses, which are conducted by

+men of real character.</p>

+

+<p>But there are others—others who keep

+“literary drummers,” men who go to see

+popular writers and solicit books. The

+authors of very popular books themselves

+also—some of them at least—put

+themselves up at auction, going from

+publisher to publisher or threatening to

+go. This is demoralization and commercialization

+with a vengeance. But

+it is the sin of the authors.</p>

+

+<p>As a rule, this method has not succeeded;

+or it has not succeeded long.

+There are two men in the United States

+who have gone about making commercial<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67">67</a></span>

+calls on practically every man and

+woman who has ever written a successful

+book; and they are not well thought

+of by most of the writers whom they see.

+Every other publisher hears of their

+journeyings and of their “drumming.”

+Sometimes they have secured immediate

+commercial results, but as a rule they

+have lost more than they have gained.

+The permanent success of every publishing

+house is built on the confidence and

+the esteem of those who write books.

+When a house forfeits that, it begins to

+lose. Its very foundations begin to become

+insecure.</p>

+

+<p>Commercial as this generation of writers

+may be, almost every writer of books

+has an ambition to win literary esteem.

+They want dignity. They seek reputation

+on as high a level as possible.

+“The trouble with the whole business”

+(I quote from a letter from a successful

+novelist) “is that novel-writing has become

+so very common. ‘Common’ is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68">68</a></span>

+the word. It is no longer distinguished.

+What I want is distinction. Money I

+must have—some money at least; but

+I want also to be distinguished.” That

+is a frank confession that almost every

+writer makes sooner or later.</p>

+

+<p>Now, when a publishing house forfeits

+distinction it, too, becomes common,

+and loses its chance to confer a certain

+degree of distinction. And literary

+“drummers” have this effect—authors

+who can confer distinction shun their

+houses. The literary solicitor, therefore,

+can work only on a low level; and the

+houses that use him are in danger of

+sinking to a low level.</p>

+

+<p>The truth is, it is a personal service

+that the publisher does for the author,

+almost as personal a service as the physician

+does for his patient or the lawyer

+for his client. It is not merely a commercial

+service. Every great publisher knows

+this and almost all successful authors

+find it out, if they do not know it at first.</p>

+

+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69">69</a></span>

+The ideal relation between publisher

+and author requires this personal service.

+It even requires enthusiastic service.

+“Do you thoroughly believe in

+this book? and do you believe in me?”

+these are the very proper questions that

+every earnest writer consciously or unconsciously

+puts to his publisher. Even

+the man who writes the advertisements

+of books must believe in them. Else his

+advertisements will not ring true. The

+salesmen must believe what they say.

+The booksellers and the public will soon

+discover whether they believe it. They

+catch the note of sincerity—the public

+is won; the author succeeds. Or they

+catch the note of insincerity and the

+book lags.</p>

+

+<p>This is the whole story of good publishing.

+Good books to begin with, then

+a personal sincerity on the part of the

+publisher. And there is no lasting substitute

+for these things.</p>

+

+<p>The essential weakness in most of even<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70">70</a></span>

+the best publishing houses of our day is

+the lack of personal literary help to

+authors by the owners of the publishing

+houses themselves. Almost every writer

+wishes to consult somebody. If they do

+not wish advice, they at least wish sympathy.

+Every book is talked over with

+somebody. Now, when a publishing

+house has a head—an owner—who will

+read every important manuscript, and

+freely and frankly talk or write about it,

+and can give sympathetic suggestions,

+that is the sort of publishing house that

+will win and hold the confidence of the

+best writers. From one point of view the

+publisher is a manufacturer and salesman.

+From another point of view he

+is the personal friend and sympathetic

+adviser of authors—a man who has a

+knowledge of literature and whose judgment

+is worth having. A publisher who

+lacks the ability to do this high and intimate

+service may indeed succeed for a

+time as a mere manufacturer and seller<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71">71</a></span>

+of books; but he can add little to the

+best literary impulses or tendencies of

+his time; nor is he likely to attract the

+best writers.</p>

+

+<p>And—in all the noisy rattle of commercialism—the

+writers of our own generation

+who are worth most on a publisher’s

+list respond to the true publishing

+personality as readily as writers did

+before the day of commercial methods.

+All the changes that have come in the

+profession, therefore, have not after all

+changed its real character as it is practised

+on its higher levels. And this rule

+will hold true—that no publishing house

+can win and keep a place on the highest

+level that does not have at least one man

+who possesses this true publishing personality.</p>

+

+<p>There is much less reason to fear the

+commercial degradation of many other

+callings than the publishers’.</p>

+

+<p>A louder complaint of commercialism

+has been provoked by the unseemly<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72">72</a></span>

+advertising of novels than by any other

+modern method of publishers. Now this

+is a curious and interesting thing. A

+man or woman writes a story (let us call

+it a story, though it be a mild mush of

+mustard, warranted to redden the faded

+cheeks of sickly sentimentality) which,

+for some reason that nobody can explain,

+has the same possibilities of popularity

+as Salvation Soap. A saponaceous

+publisher puts it out; he advertises

+it in his soapy way; people buy it—sometimes

+two hundred or three hundred

+thousand of them.</p>

+

+<p>Behold! a new way has been found to

+write books that sell, and a new way to

+sell them. Hundreds of writers try the

+easy trick. Dozens of minor publishers

+see their way to fortune. But the trick

+cannot be imitated, and the way to

+fortune remains closed. It is only

+now and then that a novel has a big

+“run” by this method. The public

+does not see the hundreds of failures.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73">73</a></span>

+It sees only the occasional accidental

+success.</p>

+

+<p>There is no science, no art, no literature

+in the business. It is like writing

+popular songs: One “rag-time” tune

+will make its way in a month from one

+end of the country to the other. A hundred

+tune-makers try their hands at the

+trick—not one of their tunes goes. The

+same tune-maker who “scored a success”

+often fails the next time. There

+is, I think, not a single soap-novelist who

+has put forth a subsequent novel of as

+great popularity as his “record-breaker,”

+and several publishing houses

+have failed through unsuccessful efforts

+at the brass-band method.</p>

+

+<p>This is not publishing. It is not even

+commercialism. It is a form of gambling.

+A successful advertising “dodge”

+makes a biscuit popular, or a whiskey, or

+a shoe, or a cigarette, or anything. Why

+not a book, then? This would be all that

+need be said about it but for the “literary”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74">74</a></span>

+journals. They forthwith fall to

+gossiping, and keep up a chatter about

+“great sellers,” and bewail commercialism

+in literature, until we all begin to

+believe that the whole business of book-writing

+and book-publishing has been

+degraded. Did it ever occur to you that

+in the “good old days” of publishing

+there were no magazines that retailed

+the commercial and personal gossip of

+the craft?</p>

+

+<p>As nearly as I can make out the publishing

+houses in the United States that

+are conducted as dignified institutions

+are conducted with as little degrading

+commercialism as the old houses whose

+history has become a part of English

+literature, and I believe that they are

+conducted with more ability. Certainly

+not one of them has made a colossal fortune.

+Certainly not one of them ever

+failed to recognize or to encourage a high

+literary purpose if it were sanely directed.

+Every one of them every year<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75">75</a></span>

+invests in books and authors that they

+know cannot yield a direct or immediate

+profit, and they make these investments

+because they feel ennobled by trying to

+do a service to literature.</p>

+

+<p>The great difficulty is to recognize

+literature when it first comes in at the

+door, for one quality of literature is that

+it is not likely even to know itself. The

+one thing that is certain is that the critical

+crew and the academic faculty are

+sure not to recognize it at first sight.

+To know its royal qualities at once under

+strange and new garments—that is to be

+a great publisher, and the glory of that

+achievement is as great as it ever was.</p>

+

+<hr />

+

+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79">79</a></span></p>

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V<br />

+

+<span class="subhead">HAS THE UNKNOWN AUTHOR A

+CHANCE?</span></h2>

+</div>

+

+<blockquote>

+

+<p class="hang"><i>A Popular Illusion Based on “Graustark” and

+“David Harum” Dispelled—Publishers Blunder

+More Often in Welcoming Than in Rejecting

+Manuscripts of the “New Man”—Guess Work

+Enters Largely Into the Fate of a Novel—How

+Publishers Judge Manuscripts and How “Reading”

+Is Done.</i></p></blockquote>

+

+<p>It will probably always be believed by

+many persons that publishing houses do

+not give careful attention to book manuscripts

+that come from strangers. The

+case of “David Harum” did much to fix

+this notion in the public mind. The

+manuscript was declined by three or

+four publishers before it was accepted by

+the Appletons. Its declination was an

+evidence of bad financial book-judgment,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80">80</a></span>

+but it is not proof that it was

+carelessly considered. Most publishers’

+readers are literary folk, pure and simple.

+Not one in a hundred has a good

+financial judgment of a manuscript. As

+a literary product, judged by academic

+standards, there was not much in “David

+Harum” to commend it. The publishers

+who rejected it acted on the readers’

+reports. When it went to the Appletons,

+somebody was shrewd enough to

+see that if it were shortened and put in

+somewhat better form, it would have a

+commercial value. A publishing judgment

+was passed on it there and not

+merely a conventional literary judgment.</p>

+

+<p>Or, take the case of “Graustark.” It

+was declined at least by one publisher.

+There is, perhaps, not a “literary”

+reader in the world who would have

+commended it in manuscript, or (for

+that matter) who will commend it now.

+It does violence to every literary canon.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81">81</a></span>

+But a Chicago publisher, by some divine

+or subterranean suggestion, saw a

+chance for it. Its roughest edges were

+hewn off with an axe, and it was put

+forth. There have now appeared four

+“Graustark” books, three of which have

+each sold perhaps a hundred times as

+many copies as Mr. Howell’s latest novel

+will sell.</p>

+

+<p>The difference between a mere literary

+judgment and a publishing judgment indicates

+the greatest weakness in the organizations

+of most publishing houses.

+The publisher himself is usually a business

+man. He has to concern himself

+with the financial work of his house—with

+the manufacture and the sale of

+books. In a great measure he relies, for

+his judgment of literary values, on his

+advisers and readers. As a rule these

+advisers and readers are employed men

+or women. They know nothing about

+what may be called the commercial

+value of books. Many of them know<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82">82</a></span>

+nothing about the losses or the profits on

+the books that they have commended.

+They have had no experience in selling

+books. These facts indicate the wrong

+organization of most publishing houses.

+Yet the faithfulness that they show to aspiring

+authors is amazing; they plough

+conscientiously through thousands of

+manuscripts looking for the light of

+some possible genius, and they commend

+dozens of books where their employers

+accept a single volume.</p>

+

+<p>But the publisher does acquire a sort

+of sixth sense about a book. He may or

+he may not know literary values, but he

+comes to have a peculiar sort of knowledge

+of the commercial possibilities of

+books. If he takes “literary readers’”

+judgments and does not read

+manuscripts himself, he will now and

+then let a “David Harum” pass through

+his hands. To avoid such mistakes

+every publishing house has at least two

+readers, and these read manuscripts independently<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83">83</a></span>

+of one another. The publisher

+then makes his judgment from

+them both, or perhaps from a third reading

+by a specialist, if the manuscript

+seem good enough to warrant a third

+reading.</p>

+

+<p>The mistake of permitting a profitable

+manuscript to be rejected does not come,

+therefore, from inattention to the work

+of strangers, but from sheer fallibility of

+judgment. And the work of strangers

+is very carefully considered in every

+publishing house that I know anything

+about. Every publisher in these days is

+just as eager to get a new good writer on

+his list as any unknown writer is eager to

+get a publisher; and no manuscript

+above the grade of illiteracy is neglected.</p>

+

+<p>A “first reader”—a man of all around

+general knowledge of books, and he

+ought to be a man full of hard common-sense,

+common-sense being worth more

+than technical literary knowledge—the

+“first reader” examines the manuscript.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84">84</a></span>

+If it be a shopworn piece of commonplace

+work, obviously hopeless, he may

+not read it from preface to end, but he

+must say in his written report whether

+he has read it all. Whether he condemn

+it or approve it, it is examined or read by

+another reader. If both these condemn

+it as hopeless, the publisher declines it

+without more ado.</p>

+

+<p>The greater number of manuscripts

+that come to publishing houses are hopeless.

+Three-fourths of them, or more,

+are novels that have been written by

+lonely women or by men who have no

+successful occupation; and most of

+these are conscious or unconscious imitations

+of recent popular novels. It does

+not require very shrewd judgment to see

+that they are hopeless. But it does require

+time. If they are above the grade

+of illiteracy somebody must read a hundred

+pages or more to make sure that

+the dulness of the early chapters may

+not be merely a beginner’s way of finding<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85">85</a></span>

+his gait. And many of these manuscripts

+go from publishing house to publishing

+house. There are, I should say, a

+thousand hopeless novels in manuscript

+at all times making this weary journey.</p>

+

+<p>Sometimes one comes back to the

+same publisher a second time, the author

+having perhaps not kept an accurate

+record of its itinerary. Sometimes it

+comes back a year later, somewhat

+changed. There is one novel-manuscript

+that has come to me four times within

+two years, every time in a somewhat

+different form, and twice with different

+titles—obviously to fool the “careless”

+publisher.</p>

+

+<p>While very few mistakes are made or

+are likely to be made with these manuscripts

+that two readers independently

+declare hopeless, the class next to these

+require a great deal of work and care.

+This class includes those books by unknown

+writers that are not bad. One

+reader will say that they are worth considering.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86">86</a></span>

+The next reader will say that

+they have some sort of merit. Then the

+publisher must go slowly. A third person

+must read them. If the publisher be

+an ideal publisher, he will read them

+himself. (The weakness of most American

+publishing houses of this generation

+comes just here—the publisher himself

+does not read many manuscripts.)</p>

+

+<p>In the best publishing houses (this, I

+know, is the habit of three) the reports

+on books of this class are all read at a

+meeting of the firm, or (better) at a

+meeting of the firm and of the heads of

+departments. At such a meeting the

+judgment of a sensible man who is at the

+head of the sales department of a publishing

+house is very useful. He knows

+by his everyday work what sort of books

+the public is buying. Some of them are

+books that the “literary” world knows

+nothing about or has forgotten.</p>

+

+<p>And three or four or five men, by a

+little discussion, can reach a clearer and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87">87</a></span>

+saner judgment about a book from the

+reports of three or four readers than the

+readers themselves can reach or than

+any one man or any two men who consider

+the reports could reach. There is

+no subject in the world about which a

+conference is likely to be more helpful.

+One man’s judgment about the publishing

+quality of a book may easily be

+wrong. The judgment of two men may

+be wrong if they look at it from the same

+angle or with the same temperament.

+But the judgment of three, or four, or

+five men, if they have the facts before

+them and if they indulge in frank discussion,

+is very seldom wrong. No book

+on which serious work has been done

+ought to be rejected or accepted without

+the benefit of the independent reports of

+two or three sensible persons who have

+carefully read it, and without the discussions

+of these reports by three or four

+other persons of experience and judgment.

+And in at least three American<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88">88</a></span>

+publishing houses every manuscript of

+any value or promise runs a course of

+hopeful consideration such as this; for

+the publisher wants good new books, he

+wants good new writers; and he wants

+them badly. Half a dozen popular

+writers will build a publishing house.

+It is, therefore, doubtful whether any

+other business is so carefully conducted

+with reference to its sources of supply.</p>

+

+<p>In fact, all publishers make many

+more mistakes in accepting books than

+in declining them. They accept many

+books from new writers that they hope

+may possibly succeed, but in which they

+have not very strong faith. It is the

+book manuscripts of this class that

+cause the most work and the greatest

+trouble—the class that may possibly

+succeed. A book of this class by a new

+writer who shows cleverness or some

+other good quality is often accepted in

+the hope that the author may do better

+with the next book. It is accepted as an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89">89</a></span>

+encouragement and as a hope; it chiefly

+is for this reason that so many books are

+published that are barely good enough

+to warrant publication. The publisher

+is trying to “develop” an author.</p>

+

+<p>Sometimes this method succeeds; for

+it sometimes happens that a good writer

+writes a first book that is merely a promise

+of later achievement. But this does

+not often happen. In most cases the second

+book is no better than the first—or

+is worse. Then the publisher loses and

+the writer is seldom heard of again. The

+number of one-novel writers scattered

+over the land would surprise the world if

+it were known. There is no rule about

+literary production to which there are

+not an embarrassing number of exceptions.

+But in most cases a successful

+writer starts with a successful book.

+The hope that the second book will be

+better is one of the rocks on which many

+publishing ventures wreck.</p>

+

+<p>But if the publishers put forth a number<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90">90</a></span>

+of commonplace books (chiefly

+novels) from a false hope that they may

+thus develop good writers, they also do a

+service of the opposite kind. They save

+the long-suffering public from many

+worthless books. For if the public had

+thrust upon it all or half or a tenth of the

+books that are written, what a dull

+world we should have!</p>

+

+<p>When a book-manuscript has been rejected,

+the delicate task comes next of

+informing the author. This task is

+seldom done as well as it ought to be. It

+is almost impossible for a publisher—who

+receives and rejects manuscripts as

+a matter of business—to put himself in

+the place of a writer who has spent

+lonely weeks in her work. To send a

+mere business note is almost an insult.

+Yet what more can the publisher write?

+He does not dare write hopefully. If he

+does he will give a degree of encouragement

+that is dishonest. Yet the author

+expects a long and explicit letter telling<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91">91</a></span>

+why the manuscript is unavailable. If

+she does not receive such a letter she

+jumps to the conclusion that her manuscript

+has not had fair consideration.

+Publishers’ letters of rejection are the

+chief cause, I suspect, of the persistent

+notion that they are careless in the examination

+of manuscripts.</p>

+

+<p>Every letter of declination ought to be

+written by a skilful man—a diplomatist

+who can write an unpleasant truth without

+offence. Every such letter ought to

+be written with a pen. No general form

+ought to be used. Yet in only one of the

+publishing houses whose habits I know

+is this degree of care taken. The consideration

+of manuscript from strangers

+is careful and conscientious, but letters

+of rejection are often perfunctory.</p>

+

+<p>To sell a novel that has the mysterious

+quality of popularity in it is not difficult.

+Properly launched, it sells itself. To sell

+a novel that lacks the inherent quality of

+popularity—that is almost impossible.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92">92</a></span>

+Apparently it has sometimes been done,

+but nobody can be sure whether the

+result after all was due to the book or

+to the salesman. Every publisher has

+proved, over and over again, to his disgust,

+that he cannot make the people

+buy a novel that they do not want; and

+when a novel appears (no better novel)

+that they do want, the novel-readers

+find it out by some free-masonry and

+would buy it if the publishers tried to

+prevent them.</p>

+

+<p>Nobody has discovered a rule—to say

+nothing of a principle—whereby the

+popularity of a novel by a new writer

+may be determined. If it be a really

+great, strong book, of course it is easy to

+understand that it will sell; but whether

+it will sell 10,000 copies or 100,000 nobody

+knows. If it be a slapdash dime-novel,

+full of action, it is easy to guess

+that it will sell; but whether 5,000 or

+500,000 nobody knows. Sometimes a

+book of the sheerest commonplace happens<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93">93</a></span>

+to hit the public mood at the happy

+angle and sells beyond all expectation.

+The truth is, every new novel by an unknown

+writer presents a problem peculiar

+to itself; and in advertising it and offering

+it for sale, every book’s peculiar

+problem must be studied by itself.</p>

+

+<p>The whole question is a subtle social

+one. Who could have foretold popularity

+for “pigs in clover,” rather than for

+some other silly puzzle; or for ping-pong;

+or for women’s hats of a certain

+grotesque construction? The popular

+whim about novels is like the whims for

+these things. And a popular novel

+passes as quickly as any other fashion.

+The story has been many times told of

+the sudden falling off of the demand for

+“Trilby”—so sudden that the publishers

+had a large number of copies left on

+hand which could not be sold at all except

+as waste paper. Every publisher is

+afraid to publish very large editions of

+any very popular novel; for they have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94">94</a></span>

+all had an experience parallel to this experience

+with “Trilby.”</p>

+

+<p>But other kinds of books are less

+capricious than novels; and the business

+of the publisher has been reduced more

+nearly to a science in dealing with books

+of information. Several publishers, for

+example, have series of little books

+made of selections from English and

+American classics. Many of them have

+sold well; but some of them have sold by

+the million and others just as good and

+just as attractive have stopped at the

+ten-thousand limit or at a lower limit.

+The difference is with the skill with

+which they were put on the market.

+Sometimes an ingenious “scheme” will

+sell information books in great numbers;

+and it often happens that the worst of

+three or four books on the same subject

+and published for the same price, becomes

+far better known than the other

+better books.</p>

+

+<p>As a theoretical proposition it seems<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95">95</a></span>

+plain that the publisher who will spend

+the most money in newspaper advertising

+will sell the most books. Authors

+not infrequently take up this notion.

+Sometimes it is true; for sometimes

+newspaper advertising will cause a great

+demand for a book. But this is not true

+with every book. And most recent publishing

+failures have been due—in a

+great measure, at least—to prodigal advertising—or,

+perhaps, to misdirected

+advertising.</p>

+

+<p>Every book is a problem unto itself.

+The wise publisher so regards it from the

+beginning; and he makes his plans for

+every book to suit its peculiar case and

+not another. All the long road from

+author to reader, the book—any book—presents

+a series of interesting, original

+problems. Many of them are very fascinating

+problems. They call for imagination,

+fertility, ingenuity. The

+reason why few authors or authors’

+societies or other persons who have not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96">96</a></span>

+been definitely trained to publishing

+fail, is that they are too likely to regard

+publishing as a mere routine business—a

+business of manufacturing a certain product

+and then of offering it for sale.

+They forget that every book—and even

+every edition of every book—presents a

+problem that was never presented before

+since the world was made. And

+when its sympathetic ingenuity and inventiveness

+fail, a publishing house begins

+to become a mere business and the

+drying-up period is not far off.</p>

+

+<p>But no publishing house fails because

+it does not examine manuscripts carefully.

+There is no other business that I

+know of that is done more seriously; and

+the mistakes made are fewer than the

+public thinks. They are mistakes of

+judgment and not of carelessness.</p>

+

+<hr />

+

+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99">99</a></span></p>

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI<br />

+

+<span class="subhead">THE PRINTER WHO ISSUES BOOKS

+AT THE AUTHOR’S EXPENSE</span></h2>

+</div>

+

+<blockquote>

+

+<p class="hang"><i>A Heartless Pirate Who Preys Upon the Unsophisticated

+and Ambitious Writer—The Contract

+in Which This Sort of “Publisher” Cannot

+Lose—The Inevitable Disappointment—How

+the Publication by Even a Responsible

+House of a Book That Sells Poorly Injures the

+House.</i></p></blockquote>

+

+<p>An innocent and ambitious good

+woman sent to me last year a form of

+contract that a printer who pretended

+to be a publisher had sent her to

+sign for the publication of a novel. In

+its unessential clauses it was like the

+usual publisher’s contract; but it required

+the author to pay in advance a

+fixed sum for the plates and for the

+manufacture of one thousand copies;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100">100</a></span>

+and this sum was just about twice what

+they should cost him. Then he was to

+pay her not the usual ten or even fifteen

+per cent. royalty, but fifty per cent. on

+all copies sold—as well he might; and,

+if at the end of a year the book had

+ceased to sell, she was bound to buy the

+plates from him at half cost. The

+meaning of all this translated into

+figures, is this: The plates would cost

+him $250, for he does cheap work; a

+thousand copies of the book would cost

+him $200, for he makes cheap books;

+total, $450. She would pay him in advance

+$900. He has a profit so far of

+$450. He does not expect to sell any

+of the books. Her friends would buy

+perhaps as many as two hundred copies.

+They would not be on sale at the bookstores—except

+in her own town. At

+the end of the year she would pay him

+again for the plates half what he charged

+her at first—which is just what they

+cost him. By this time she would have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101">101</a></span>

+paid just three times their cost to him.

+His outlay in the whole transaction

+would be:</p>

+

+<table class="narrow nopad intact" summary="Publishing accounting">

+  <tr>

+    <td class="tdl">For plates</td>

+    <td class="tdr">$250</td></tr>

+  <tr>

+    <td class="tdl">For 1000 copies</td>

+    <td class="tdr">200</td></tr>

+  <tr>

+    <td> </td>

+    <td class="tdr">——</td>

+    <td class="tdr">$450</td></tr>

+  <tr>

+    <td class="tdl">His income would be: Her prepayment</td>

+    <td class="tdr">900</td></tr>

+  <tr>

+    <td class="tdl">Her purchase of the plates a year later</td>

+    <td class="tdr">250</td></tr>

+  <tr>

+    <td> </td>

+    <td> </td>

+    <td class="tdr">——</td></tr>

+  <tr>

+    <td></td>

+    <td class="tdr">——</td>

+    <td class="tdr">1150</td></tr>

+  <tr>

+    <td class="tdl">His profit</td>

+    <td> </td>

+    <td class="tdr">$700</td></tr>

+</table>

+

+<p>He would not have even to make any

+outlay of capital. She supplies the capital

+and he makes his $700 profit by

+writing her a few letters. If any of the

+books were sold he would receive also

+half what they brought. She would

+have spent $1150, less what she received

+for the few copies that were sold.

+Her book would not have been published—only

+printed at an excessive

+cost.</p>

+

+<p>There are several “publishers” who

+seem to do a prosperous brief business

+of this kind by preying upon inexperienced<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102">102</a></span>

+and disappointed authors. It

+is only by accident they ever get a book

+that sells; and they hardly pretend to

+put books on the market, for of course

+the booksellers will not buy them. A

+really good book would, therefore, in

+their hands be buried. The public

+would never find it out. They print a

+large number of the novels that the real

+publishers decline.</p>

+

+<p>The long list of books—chiefly novels—that

+these pseudo-publishers put out

+tells a sad tale of misdirected energy

+and of disappointed hopes. A man—oftener

+it is a woman—conceives the

+notion of writing a novel. She works

+alone. She shuts herself off from life

+about her. Any human being who

+spends months at a self-imposed secret

+task becomes profoundly, even abnormally

+interested in it. The story grows—or

+flows; for the author becomes

+more fluent as she goes on. She is likely

+to accept all the stories of extraordinary<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103">103</a></span>

+successes that she reads in the literary

+journals as if they were common successes.

+She goes on working by herself

+with no corrective companionship. At

+last she sends it to a real publisher and

+gets a disappointing decision. She

+imagines a thousand reasons why she is

+not appreciated. She sends it to another,

+and so on. The story of the

+wanderings of “David Harum” in manuscript

+has given courage to thousands

+of worthless novels—a courage to travel

+to the last ditch, and the last ditch is the

+pseudo-publisher. “Yes,” he writes,

+“it is an unusual story;” and he will

+be greatly honored to publish it, and

+sends one of his remarkable contracts.</p>

+

+<p>To get the book published by anybody

+will bring her recognition, she

+thinks. The public will be kinder than

+the publishers. She takes the risk—sometimes

+goes into debt to do so. That

+is the end of the book, and in most cases

+the end of the author’s career. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104">104</a></span>

+work begun in loneliness has ended in

+oblivion—wasted days, wasted dollars,

+wasted hopes.</p>

+

+<p>Yet what is an author to do who believes

+in his own work when it is refused

+by the regular publisher? Publish it

+himself or let it remain in manuscript.

+Never permit it to be brought out by a

+publisher to whom any suspicion attaches.</p>

+

+<p>There is not much danger (I do not

+believe there is any danger) that a manuscript

+of any value whatever will under

+present conditions fail to find a legitimate

+purchaser. But one way out of

+the difficulty that authors often seek is

+to propose to a legitimate publisher to

+publish his book at the writer’s expense;

+and it is not apparent to the

+layman why the publisher cannot afford

+to make such arrangements. “If the

+author pays the bill,” he says, “the publisher

+will surely lose nothing.” But the

+publisher does lose, and loses heavily,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105">105</a></span>

+every time he publishes a book that is

+not successful in the market. A publisher

+cannot afford to accept a book

+that will not itself earn a profit. If the

+author pay all the cost and a good

+profit besides, even this does not change

+the case; for unsalable books clog the

+market and stop the wheels of the publisher’s

+whole trade. He soon begins to

+lose influence and standing in the book

+trade. The jobbers buy new books

+from him in smaller quantities. The

+booksellers become suspicious of his

+judgment.</p>

+

+<p>Last year, to give a true instance, a

+publisher put out four new novels by

+four new writers. His salesmen and his

+advertising man announced them as

+good books. They made enthusiastic

+estimates of them. The book dealers

+ordered liberally. Three out of the

+four failed to make any appreciable

+success. The dealers had many copies

+of them left on hand. This year, when<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106">106</a></span>

+the same publisher brought out two

+more new novels by two more new

+writers, his salesmen met with incredulity

+and indifference. The booksellers

+said to them with a sad smile, “We’ll

+swap copies of your last year’s novels

+for these.”</p>

+

+<p>Now it so happens that both of these

+new books of this year are good and

+popular. A demand for them was made

+as soon as the reviews appeared and

+people began to read them. But the

+booksellers were ill supplied. They

+would order only a few copies at a time—or

+none. Thus the good books of this

+year suffered because the publisher’s

+dull books of last year failed to bring

+profit or satisfaction to anybody. They

+stood in the way of this year’s better

+books.</p>

+

+<p>While, therefore, no legitimate publisher

+wishes to reduce his business to a

+mere commercial basis, and while he is

+eager to maintain the dignity of his profession—must<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107">107</a></span>

+maintain it in fact—and

+do as high service as possible to the

+literary production of his time; yet he

+cannot load down his list with many

+books that have not a good commercial

+reason for existence.</p>

+

+<p>The plausible proposition which is so

+often made in these days of universal

+authorship—to publish books at the

+author’s expense—is for these reasons

+not a sound proposition. If the book

+succeeds there is no reason why the

+author should make the investment.

+If it fail, the publisher loses, even though

+the author settle the bill; and he loses

+heavily.</p>

+

+<p>A writer who asks a publisher to

+bring out a book that has no commercial

+reason for existence is asking him

+to imitate the “fake” publisher. The

+“fake” publisher could not make a living

+(since he has no character and cannot

+sell books) except by cash payments

+from his authors. As soon as the publisher<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108">108</a></span>

+begins to receive cash payments

+from his authors (be the basis ever so

+legitimate) he begins to clog up the outlets

+for his product. He has taken the

+first step towards “fake” publishing.</p>

+

+<p>In a word, commercially unprofitable

+books may be printed, but they cannot

+be published without ruining the machinery

+that they are run through. He

+is the best publisher who has the largest

+proportion of good books on his list

+(whether his list be long or short) that

+are at the same time alive in the

+market.</p>

+

+<p>There are—let it be said as an exception—a

+few classes of books that every

+publisher wishes to have on his list in

+spite of the fact that they cannot be

+made profitable, such as works of great

+scholarship or monumental works that

+have a lasting value. It is legitimate

+that the writers or the societies or organizations

+under whose directions such

+books were written should pay or share<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109">109</a></span>

+the cost of their manufacture. But few

+such works yield a profit at last to either

+publisher or author. And they are not

+made to clog the book market. They

+are sold only to special classes of readers.</p>

+

+<p>A book is a commodity. Yet the moment

+it is treated as a mere commodity

+it takes severe revenge on its author and

+on its publisher.</p>

+

+<p>These pseudo-publishers sometimes

+solicit manuscripts from ignorant writers.

+They have veiled advertisements

+in the literary journals. Ignorance and

+ambition is a susceptible combination.

+Several years ago one of these plausible

+swindlers bribed a reader in one of the

+larger publishing houses to report to

+him the names of all the writers whose

+novels were declined there. The fakir

+then plied them with circulars and

+letters.</p>

+

+<p>While I have been writing about publishing

+swindles I have been reminded

+of the accusation brought several years<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110">110</a></span>

+ago against publishers—especially English

+publishers—that the temptation to

+fraud was too strong to be resisted by

+any but the most upright and successful

+men. An author gives his book to his

+publisher. Twice a year the publisher

+makes a report—pays royalties on the

+number of books that he has reported as

+sold. There is no way whereby the

+author can verify the publisher’s reports.

+He has to take his word for it.

+Even if the author or someone who

+acted for him were to see the publisher’s

+books, he could learn nothing, for the

+publisher’s bookkeeping is a very complicated

+thing; and reports of book

+sales could easily be “doctored.”</p>

+

+<p>The chance for fraud does exist. But

+the first wish of every normal man in the

+business, even if he lacks vigorous honesty,

+is to make his reports of sales to

+his author as large as possible. This

+wish is too strong to be overcome by

+anything less than the most hopeless<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111">111</a></span>

+moral depravity. A publisher who

+should commit the crime of making

+false reports to his authors would be a

+monstrosity. Yet the contention that

+Sir Walter Besant made in England for

+so many years, that the publishing business

+was conducted without such checks

+and verifications as are applied to other

+business transactions was true; and I,

+for one, see no practical remedy for it.</p>

+

+<p>Moral: Select your publisher with

+care; make sure that he is honest (by

+far most of us are); then trust him.

+But steer clear of all “fake” publishers

+and “agents.”</p>

+

+<hr />

+

+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115">115</a></span></p>

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII<br />

+

+<span class="subhead">THE ADVERTISING OF BOOKS STILL

+EXPERIMENTAL</span></h2>

+</div>

+

+<blockquote>

+

+<p class="hang"><i>Publishers Are Uncertain as to the Amount of

+Sales Made in That Way—How the Book Business

+Differs from the Shoe Trade, for Example—The

+Problem of How to Get the Books Before

+the People Is at the Root of All Other

+Book Trade Questions—Why the Book Canvasser

+Is Still Necessary—A Vast Field Waiting

+for Development.</i></p></blockquote>

+

+<p>About the advertising of books, nobody

+knows anything. The most that

+can be said is that some publishers are

+making very interesting experiments.

+But nobody has yet worked out a single

+general principle that is of great value.

+The publishers themselves frankly confess

+that they do not know how to advertise

+books—except a few publishers

+who have had little experience.</p>

+

+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116">116</a></span>

+The fundamental difficulty of course

+is that hardly any two books present the

+same problem. Find a successful advertising

+plan for one book—it will not

+be a good plan for another. This fundamental

+difficulty marks the difference,

+for instance, between books and shoes.

+When a shoe merchant finds out by experiment

+how to describe his shoes and

+in what periodicals to print his description,

+his problem is solved. Recently

+several publishers discovered a successful

+way to advertise a novel. They

+tried the same plan with another novel

+and another. But it’s hit or miss. I,

+for one, would give much to know how

+often it has been “miss.”</p>

+

+<p>The old-fashioned way was to insert

+a brief, simple, dignified announcement

+of every book, as is still done in The

+Spectator, of London, for example.

+Good; but such an announcement

+doesn’t go far. A very few thousand

+persons see it. They wait until the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117">117</a></span>

+books are reviewed or till some friend

+or authority speaks about them. For

+this perfectly good reason some publishers

+do not insert many advertisements

+in those publications that go only to the

+literary class—they are to a degree superfluous.

+Those that are inserted are

+inserted to give the publishers and the

+books a certain “standing,” and to

+keep pleasant the relations between the

+publishers and these journals.</p>

+

+<p>Then come, of course, the monthly

+popular magazines. They reach a very

+much wider class of readers, and to advertise

+books in them is a logical procedure.

+But their advertising rates are

+almost prohibitory. The margin of

+profit on books is very small. There

+is not money enough in the business to

+warrant extensive and expensive magazine

+advertising. The result is the publishers

+put their announcements of perhaps

+a dozen new books on a single advertising

+page of the magazines, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118">118</a></span>

+they cannot, in this restricted space,

+say enough about any particular book

+to make the advertisement effective.</p>

+

+<p>Then there are the daily papers. One

+or two of the best dailies in every large

+city are used by the publishers for announcements

+of new books. They cannot

+afford more—except in the case of

+those novels which may reach enormous

+editions. Given a novel that will sell

+100,000 copies or more, and you have

+enough possible profit to warrant a

+good deal of advertising. But during

+this calendar year only two novels (perhaps

+three) have new editions of more

+than 100,000 copies. What is a publisher

+to do, then, who has a novel that

+will sell 10,000 copies, or 20,000 copies

+and no more? Can he make it sell

+50,000 or 100,000 by spending a large

+sum in advertising it? Perhaps, once

+in ten times, or once in twenty times;

+but not oftener.</p>

+

+<p>Five or six publishing houses spend<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119">119</a></span>

+more than $50,000 a year, each, in advertising.

+Two spend a good deal more

+than this sum; and one is reported as

+saying that he spends $250,000. These

+are not large sums when compared with

+the sums spent for advertising other

+wares. But an advertisement of a shoe

+published to-day will help to sell that

+shoe next year. The shoemaker gets a

+cumulative effect. But your novel advertised

+to-day will be dead next year.

+You get no cumulative effect. When

+I say, therefore, that no publisher has

+mastered the art of advertising books,

+I tell the literal truth. They all run

+against a dead wall; and they will all

+tell you so in frank moments.</p>

+

+<p>The study of the problem of advertising

+books takes one far afield. What

+quality in a book makes it popular anyhow?

+Even if you are wise enough to

+know that (and you are very wise if you

+do know that) the question arises

+whether advertising is necessary. There<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120">120</a></span>

+have been as many popular books sold

+in large editions without advertising as

+with it. If your book is really popular

+it may sell anyhow. I could make a

+long list of such books, and a still longer

+list of books that extensive advertising

+did not sell—books which seemed to

+their publishers to have the quality of

+great popularity.</p>

+

+<p>The question carries us further back

+still. Let us take the analogy of the

+shoemaker again. He has shoe stores

+within reach of the whole population.

+There is not a village in the land where

+there is not a store in which shoes are

+sold. The manufacturers’ salesmen find

+this distributing machinery ready to

+their hands. If a man in Arkansas or

+in Montana or in Florida wants a pair of

+shoes, he is within reach of a place where

+he may buy them. Not so with books.

+There are few bookstores. Two or

+three per cent. of the population (perhaps

+less) live within convenient reach<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121">121</a></span>

+of bookshops. True, a book may be

+ordered by mail. But so may a pair of

+shoes. But this is not a good substitute

+for a store, where a man may see the

+book. The mail-order business will

+always be secondary to direct sales.

+But, since bookstores are so few, the

+book-distributing machinery is wholly

+inadequate. The publisher has no effective

+way yet to reach his normal public

+with his wares.</p>

+

+<p>There is nobody to blame, perhaps.

+Surely, it would not be a profitable

+undertaking for any man or woman to

+buy a stock of books and to open a store

+in a small town. What is the remedy,

+then?</p>

+

+<p>The simple truth is, here is one of the

+problems of distribution that have not

+yet been solved. There are throughout

+the land another one hundred thousand

+persons who would buy any novel of

+which one hundred thousand have been

+sold, if they could see the book and hear<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122">122</a></span>

+about it—if it were intelligently kept

+for sale where they would see it. This

+is a self-evident proposition. But nobody

+has yet found a way thus to distribute

+a book. And (this is the point) until

+better distributing machinery is organized,

+it will not pay publishers to advertise

+with as prodigal a hand as shoemakers

+and soapmakers use in making

+their wares known.</p>

+

+<p>It is this lack of proper distributing

+machinery that has made possible the

+career of the book-agent. There are no

+shoe peddlers. Almost all the publishing

+houses—all the important houses—employ

+book peddlers. The business is

+generally regarded as a—nuisance, to say

+the most for it. But, from the publisher’s

+point of view, it is a necessity. And

+this is the crude way whereby it is

+sought to remedy the radical deficiency

+of proper distributing machinery. Of

+course, the book-agent method has its

+obvious disadvantages. It is not a dignified<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123">123</a></span>

+occupation, as most agents practise

+it. The most dignified members of

+the community, therefore, do not take

+it up. In every case it is not even the

+trustworthy members of the community

+that take it up. Again, the agent must

+be paid; and this is a very costly

+method (to the purchaser) of buying

+books. The purchaser pays half his

+money for the books; the other half for

+being persuaded to buy them.</p>

+

+<p>And (to take a broad, economic view

+of the subject) the book peddler surely

+cannot be considered the final solution

+of the problem of a proper distribution

+of books. At some time in the future,

+when the country is three or four times

+as densely settled as it now is, there will

+be book stores in all towns. There may

+still be need for the persuasiveness of

+the agent, for some of the most successful

+of them now do their best work in

+cities within sight of good book shops.

+But the point is, few book-agents sell<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124">124</a></span>

+new books, and few of them sell single

+books: they usually sell books in sets.

+The problem, therefore, of the proper

+distribution of the four or five really

+good books that my publishing house

+has put out this fall still remains unsolved

+and, though I advertised them

+in all magazines and newspapers, I

+should not effectively reach the attention

+of one-fifth or one-tenth of the possible

+buyers of them. I should simply

+spend in advertising the profit that I

+may make on the copies that I sell with

+a reasonable publicity through the regular

+channels. I do insert advertisements

+of them for three or four reasons—with

+the hope of helping their sales; to keep

+the public informed of the activity of our

+publishing house; to please the press;

+and—to please the authors of the books.

+But I know very well that I am working

+(as every publisher is working) in a business

+that has not yet been developed,

+that is behind the economic organization<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125">125</a></span>

+of other kinds of manufacturing and selling,

+that awaits proper organization.</p>

+

+<p>Figure it out yourself. Here is a

+book of which eighty thousand copies

+have been sold through “the trade;”

+that is, through the book stores. Our

+salesmen have visited every important

+bookseller from Portland, Me., to Portland,

+Ore., and from Duluth to New

+Orleans. We have spent quite a handsome

+sum in advertising it. Four-fifths

+of these eighty thousand copies were

+sold in a few months after its publication.

+The booksellers said that they

+could sell many more if we would advertise

+it more. We did so. By this

+time our salesmen were making another

+trip. No, they would not buy more,

+thank you; it is a little slow now. The

+second effort at advertising did not

+cause it to “move” in the market. The

+demand is slow yet. In other words,

+the demand for it that could be supplied

+by the existing book stores was practically<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126">126</a></span>

+exhausted. Our second advertising

+effort was a waste of money. We

+have frankly to confess that we do not

+know how to sell more copies of this

+book until the time comes when it may

+be put into a “set” and sold by book

+agents. This is the same as to say that,

+the few existing book stores utilized,

+there is no organized machinery for finding

+more buyers except the book agent.</p>

+

+<p>Yet it is obvious that a wholesome

+book (as this is) which eighty thousand

+persons have bought would please eighty

+thousand other persons of like minds

+and taste if we had any way to find these

+second eighty thousand persons. They

+exist, of course. But they live out of

+easy reach of the book stores. The

+book agents will find them several years

+hence.</p>

+

+<p>I have (I think) shown why there can

+never be a publishers’ trust, or “combine,”

+because the relation of the publisher

+and the author is a personal relation<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127">127</a></span>

+as intimate and personal as the relation

+of a physician to his patient or of a

+lawyer and his client. But, after a book

+has been sold and has become a commodity,

+the problem is a different one.

+The booksellers have perceived this;

+and they have made ineffective efforts

+to “combine.” They have failed because

+they have not made plans to widen

+the existing market. An organization

+of those that exist is not enough. The

+real problem is to extend their area, to

+find book-buyers whom they do not now

+reach.</p>

+

+<p>Perhaps all this is very dull—this

+trade talk. But a publisher who is

+worthy of his calling regards himself as

+an educator of the public; and he has

+trade reasons and higher reasons as well

+for wishing to reach as many buyers of

+his good books as he possibly can. He

+knows (and you know, if you know the

+American people) that the masses even

+of intelligent folk have yet hardly fairly<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128">128</a></span>

+begun to buy books. Go where you

+will among the people and you will find

+few books—pitifully few. We are just

+coming into a period when book-buying

+is even beginning to become general.

+The publishers of a generation hence will

+sell perhaps ten times as many good

+books as are sold now—surely, if they

+find in their day distributing machinery

+even half adequate.</p>

+

+<hr />

+

+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131">131</a></span></p>

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII<br />

+

+<span class="subhead">THE STORY OF A BOOK FROM AUTHOR

+TO READER</span></h2>

+</div>

+

+<blockquote>

+

+<p class="hang"><i>The Divers Problems Which Constantly Arise—Every

+Step of the Way Beset with Expense, So

+That the Publisher Is Amazed When He Finds

+a Surplus—Why Books of Large Sale Are Hard

+to Get—The Publisher as Anxious as the Public

+to Print Better Books.</i></p></blockquote>

+

+<p>The wonder is (and in my mind it

+grows every year) how the publishers of

+books make enough money to keep their

+shops going. When I look at my own

+ledgers (ledger, by the way, is become a

+mere literary word, for we now all keep

+accounts on cards and not in books)—whenever

+I look at my own cards and

+see a profit, I am astonished as much as

+I am gratified. Every other publisher in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132">132</a></span>

+America, if he have a normal and simple

+mind such as fits the calling, has the

+same emotion. Let me say, lest I appear

+“simple” in another sense, that our

+cards have, miraculously enough, generally

+shown very satisfactory profits,

+but the astonishment never becomes

+less.</p>

+

+<p>See what a long series of processes, or

+adventures, if you will, a book must go

+through between the writer and the

+reader; every step costs money; and

+the utmost possible profit is small. Suppose

+it be a novel. “Book” means

+“novel” these days in “literary” circles

+and journals. Heaven bless our shallow

+gabble called “reviews.” A novel comes

+to the publisher in fairly good English.

+The English doubtless is the author’s,

+but the punctuation and capitals are the

+“typewriter-lady’s” own. It must be

+read by one person; and, if that person’s

+report have a ray of hope, it must be

+read by another; perhaps by a third.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133">133</a></span>

+These “readers” cost money—alas! too

+little money. They are generally literary

+persons who have failed, and there is

+something pathetic about their occupation.

+Then, after two or three readers

+have reported on it, I have to read it—in

+our particular shop, in any shop,

+somebody “higher up” must read it—especially

+if it come from a new writer.</p>

+

+<p>Then we have to correspond with the

+author or have interviews with h—er.

+All this takes time, and the cost of this

+service rolls up. Somebody must next

+go over the manuscript to prepare it for

+the printer—to make sure that the

+heroine’s name is spelt the same way all

+through and so forth and so forth. With

+the processes of manufacture I need not

+weary you. Only I must say that a bad

+manuscript can be put into legible type,

+and that type cast into solid metal

+blocks ready for the press with a rapidity

+and cheapness that rank among the

+mechanical wonders of the world.</p>

+

+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134">134</a></span>

+By this time the artist has appeared,

+if the novel is to be illustrated. Book

+salesmen will tell you that pictures help

+to sell novels, and they ought to know.

+But I venture to say that you haven’t

+seen three new novels in ten years whose

+illustrations conveyed anything but confusion

+to your mind. The conventional

+illustration of the conventional novel

+marks the lowest degradation of the

+present-day publisher. We confess by

+these things that we are without character

+or conviction. But the artist has

+the benefit of the commercial doubt on

+his side. He has also the vanity of the

+author. And he gets his fee—200, 300

+or 500 good dollars or more—and the

+publisher pays the bill. Another artist

+makes a design for the cover.</p>

+

+<p>Paper, printing, binding—all these

+are commonplaces, worthy of mention

+here only because they roll up the cost.

+But there are other steps in the book’s

+journey that the public knows less<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135">135</a></span>

+about. For instance, as soon as the first

+chapter has been put into type and a

+cover made, “dummies” of the book are

+got ready. A “dummy” of a book is a

+sort of model, or sample, of it. The

+cover is the cover that will appear on the

+finished novel; the titlepage is the novel’s

+titlepage; and the first chapter is as it

+will be when the book is published.

+But the rest is blank paper. This

+“dummy” shows the physical size and

+appearance of the book.</p>

+

+<p>The travelling salesmen take these

+dummies and begin their work. They go

+to all the jobbers and book dealers, explaining

+to them the charming qualities

+of this newly discovered novelist, and

+taking orders for the books. By the time

+they come home and their advance

+orders are added up, the book is ready

+to go to press; and the publisher knows

+what his “first sale” will be. Meantime

+(not to lose the thread of my story) all

+this travelling and soliciting of orders<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136">136</a></span>

+have cost a good deal of money. The

+public has not yet seen a copy of the

+book nor even so much as heard of it nor

+of the “talented young author.”</p>

+

+<p>But now the machinery for publicity

+is put in action. Sly little literary notes

+about the book and the author begin to

+appear in the newspapers. These, too,

+have come from the publisher. From

+whom else, pray, could they come? But

+they mean that the publisher has to

+maintain a literary bureau. The man

+who writes these news notes and the advertisements

+of the book and other

+things about it is a man of skill, if he do

+his work well; and he, too, costs the

+publisher a good salary. When he begins

+to put forth advertising—how much

+shall he spend on this new novel by an

+unknown writer? How much shall you

+risk at Monte Carlo? Your upright man

+will risk nothing at Monte Carlo. I have

+sometimes thought that your upright

+publisher, if there be one, would risk<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137">137</a></span>

+nothing in advertising a new book by an

+unknown writer, until the book began itself

+to show some vitality in the market.</p>

+

+<p>But—to go back—as soon as the book

+is ready, review copies, of course, are

+sent to the newspapers and the literary

+journals (to appear a little later in the

+second-hand book-shops for sale at reduced

+prices.) All this activity requires

+clerks, typewriters, bookkeepers, postage-money—a

+large office, in fact.

+There are many posters, circulars—there

+is as much machinery required to

+sell a book as to sell a piano or an automobile.</p>

+

+<p>From the starting-point, where the

+book was an ill-written manuscript, to

+the delivery of it to the bookseller, the

+publisher has less than 50 cents a copy to

+pay for this whole journey and to save

+something for profit if he can. Therefore

+I say that publishers who do succeed

+are among the most astute managers

+of industry.</p>

+

+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138">138</a></span>

+Lest I seem to “boast rather than to

+confess,” I come back to the starting-point,

+which was this—that the publishers’

+calling is not a very profitable

+one; not a profitable one at all except in

+fair weather and with a good skipper.</p>

+

+<p>The truth is, publishing is too important

+a profession and our publishing

+houses are too important as institutions

+to be at the mercy of present conditions.

+The making of schoolbooks and the

+vending of standard old books in sets,

+which are useful vocations, but are not

+publishing proper, are now done best by

+firms and companies that do nothing

+else. Hence publishing proper—the

+bringing out of new books—must find a

+safer basis than the present conventional

+profit. It will find this safer basis in two

+ways.</p>

+

+<p>The first and obvious way is to secure

+books that have an enormous popularity.

+This is the effort of nearly all the

+publishing houses to-day. If a novel<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139">139</a></span>

+reach an edition of 100,000 copies, there

+is a good profit in it as matters now

+stand. And a novel, or other book, that

+will be bought by 100,000 persons ought

+not to be sold for more than such books

+now fetch. But there are not enough

+such books to go around; and the least

+worthy publishing house is as likely to

+secure them as the most worthy. A permanent

+institution, therefore, cannot be

+built on these or on the hope of them.

+They are the accidents of the calling.</p>

+

+<p>The other way to maintain a worthy

+publishing institution is to publish

+worthy books, to manufacture them

+well, to do every piece of work that is

+done on them or that is done for them in

+the most conscientious way—to keep

+bookmaking as a fine art, to keep bookselling

+a dignified profession, to keep the

+selection of books to publish on the high

+level of scholarly judgment. This done,

+a publisher may set his prices higher—must

+set his prices higher, for he does a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140">140</a></span>

+higher and more costly service to society.

+Excellent and worthy of all praise

+as is some of the publishing work of this

+sort that is now done, a beginning has

+hardly yet been made. There is a demand,

+or a dormant demand can be

+awakened, for books that have merit (I

+mean new books as well as old) of better

+manufacture than we now often see.

+They must be sold for higher prices, of

+course.</p>

+

+<p>This is the same as to say that just as

+a three-dollar shoe is made for most feet

+that tread this weary continent, but a

+five-dollar shoe is made for an increasing

+number of feet that prefer ease to economy,

+so we are becoming rich enough

+and wise enough to pay two dollars, or

+three dollars, or five dollars for a good

+new book that shall have large and beautiful

+type, good paper, good margins,

+good binding—shall be a work of art in

+its manufacture as well as in the quality

+of its contents. The public gets its good<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141">141</a></span>

+books too cheap; and the reason is plain.</p>

+

+<p>It was only the other day that the

+publishers discovered the possibility of

+securing book after book that would run

+into large editions. A novel-reading

+democracy—a public-school democracy—is

+a new thing. It is an impressive

+thing. It made new and big markets,

+and we all rushed after it. Cheapness

+and great editions became the rage.

+Writers wrote for the million; publishers

+published for the million. Cheap

+books became the fashion. All very

+well—this widespread effort, this universal

+reading. But it has not radically

+changed human nature nor even the

+permanent foundations of the profession

+of publishing. We shall come back

+to higher and better work—some of us

+will, at least.</p>

+

+<p>Bring the subject home to yourself.

+What do you want for your book

+money? Not the latest “big seller.”

+You may buy that to entertain you on a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142">142</a></span>

+railway journey. But if you bring it

+home at all, you send it away at Christmas

+to some country library. What you

+want in your own library for your book-money

+are good books, made at least as

+well as the furniture in the room; and

+you want the new books of permanent

+value. You are sometimes disgusted

+when you look over the publishers’ catalogues

+to find so few books of this kind.</p>

+

+<p>Your publishers, too, are becoming

+weary of having such catalogues; and as

+soon as we rediscover the old truth that

+there is a permanent demand for just

+the kind of books that you want, we

+shall turn to a more generous encouragement

+of them. Men who might do better

+work will then cease trying to write

+“best sellers.” But you must pay the

+price. Since you have become accustomed

+to buy new books at $1.50 a volume,

+you are somewhat reluctant to pay

+$2 or $4 for a new book. You must

+break yourself of that habit. In a word,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143">143</a></span>

+you must become at least as generous to

+your publisher as you are to your shoemaker;

+and then the change will take

+place.</p>

+

+<p>By a similar course of reasoning (and

+it is sound) you may discover that you

+are yourself to blame for what our writers

+write and our publishers publish—in

+a measure at least; and, whenever you

+want better books, better books will be

+ready for you. For the publisher and

+even the author are but human after all;

+and in the mood that has possessed us

+all for a decade or two—since presses

+and paper became so cheap—we have

+perhaps worshipped mere numbers. I

+have published some books only because

+thousands and thousands of persons

+would read them. You have read them

+simply because thousands of other people

+were reading them and for no better

+reason. Perhaps our sins have not been

+heinous. But, if you are so stubbornly

+virtuous as to cry shame at me, I promise<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144">144</a></span>

+you this: I will reform on the day

+that you yourself reform; but you must

+first signify repentance. For you—the

+public—are after all our masters.</p>

+

+<hr />

+

+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147">147</a></span></p>

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX<br />

+

+<span class="subhead">THE PRESENT LIMITS OF THE BOOK

+MARKET</span></h2>

+</div>

+

+<blockquote>

+

+<p class="hang"><i>In Spite of the Many Books Issued and the Many

+“Large Sellers,” the People Are Very Poorly

+Equipped with Good Books—Circulating Libraries

+and the Sale of Books—Many Neglected

+Subjects on Which Successful Books Could be

+Written—The Lack of Good Writers the Main

+Source of Poor Sale of Books.</i></p></blockquote>

+

+<p>How large the book market is, nobody

+knows. Still less does anybody know

+how large it may become, say, in another

+decade of our present prosperity and

+spread of intelligence. Beyond any

+doubt more books are bought in the

+United States than in any other country.

+Yet it is a constant surprise to discover

+how ill supplied the mass of the

+people are with good books. But the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148">148</a></span>

+enormous increase of the market in recent

+years gives hope of a still greater increase

+to come. The number of books

+published every year in the United

+States and in the United Kingdom is

+about the same, but more American

+than English books run to large editions.</p>

+

+<p>Leaving out fiction, which is the spectacular

+and sensational part of publishing,

+books of reference, of standard

+literature, of history, of applied science

+and even of poetry are sold in constantly

+increasing quantities. The public hears

+little of these because the literary journals

+pay little attention to them. There

+is, for instance, one publisher of subscription

+books who now adds few books

+to his list of which he does not expect to

+sell 100,000 copies. He has agents in

+every part of the United States, and

+they probably sell more books in a year

+than all the publishing houses in the

+United States put together sold thirty

+years ago—excluding textbooks, of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149">149</a></span>

+course. Last year a literary man went

+to a remote railway station, 1,000 miles

+from Boston or New York, to shoot

+quail. One day he saw men unloading

+boxes of books from a freight car on the

+side track. The wonder was that there

+should be even a freight car in that corner

+of the woods; and that the freight

+car should be filled with books was simply

+incredible. But there were wagon

+loads of Thackerays, of Dickenses, of

+Eliots, and even of sets of the poets,

+fairly well-printed, fairly well-bound

+volumes which had been sold to the

+country folk for miles around. Perhaps

+there has been more money spent for

+encyclopædias and dictionaries than

+Noah Webster could compute, these last

+ten years. The book market, therefore,

+is very much bigger than persons who

+live outside the book selling world are

+likely to think.</p>

+

+<p>Still, relatively it is small. The largest

+retail book store in the country is a department<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150">150</a></span>

+store in New York or Philadelphia;

+but the book department is not

+considered one of the important parts of

+the store. The much-abused department

+store, by the way, has done much

+to bring a new class of persons to acquire

+the book-buying habit. It has made

+books common merchandise for the first

+time. Since the “Century Dictionary,”

+to take a definite example, was thus

+made common merchandise, the sets of

+it that have been sold are incomparably

+more than were ever sold in any other

+way. Yet how small the book market

+yet is, is shown by this fact—that a novel

+of which one hundred thousand copies

+are sold reaches only one person in every

+eight thousand of the population.</p>

+

+<p>Do circulating libraries lessen book

+sales? Yes, I dare say they do. But you

+will find that the publishers do not complain

+of them. They are disposed to accept

+the comforting doctrine that everything

+which encourages the reading of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151">151</a></span>

+books in the end helps the sale of them.

+In the end—yes. But for the moment

+probably no.</p>

+

+<p>One man will tell you that he used

+regularly to buy a novel a week—sometimes

+two novels. He was a pretty good

+customer of the publishers; for fifty-two

+novels a year is about as many as the

+most avaricious publisher could reasonably

+expect one man to buy. But now

+he says he does not buy three a year. A

+circulating library will for $5 bring him

+all he wants. The publishers have,

+therefore, lost him as a good customer.

+On the other hand it is a working theory

+that every subscriber to a circulating

+library who reads a novel and talks

+about it at the woman’s club may induce

+somebody to buy a copy who otherwise

+would never have heard of it. At any

+rate, the total number of novels, or of

+books of other sorts, now sold is not less

+than the number that was sold before

+the libraries found subscribers. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152">152</a></span>

+discussion is, after all, a vain one. The

+publisher and the author must do the

+best they can by the help of the libraries

+or in spite of them.</p>

+

+<p>Yet I am sure that the great widening

+of the market for which we are all looking

+will be found, when it is found, not

+by any special machinery or mechanical

+device; but the person who will really

+find it—or make it—will be a great

+writer. Whenever books are written

+that are interesting enough to compel

+the attention of the whole people, the

+poorest publishing house can sell them.

+The secret of success, after all, is the

+secret of writing books that touch

+masses of men deeply and directly. We

+have much to learn from the careers of

+such books as “Progress and Poverty”

+and “Looking Backward.” They

+reached their great sale not by the ingenuity

+of their publishers, nor by their

+literary merit, but only because they

+carried messages to many minds. However<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153">153</a></span>

+delusive these messages may be,

+they were sincere. The truth is that

+the publisher (exalt him as I am trying

+my best to do) is, after all, only a piece

+of machinery. The real force that

+makes itself felt in the world that has to

+do with books is the initial force of the

+men and women who write. Whenever

+a great mind, or a great sympathy, be

+found which puts forth an appeal or a

+hope in the form of a book that has the

+power to touch those emotions or aspirations

+that all men have in common—then

+the trick’s done. The mechanical

+plans that we make have power to carry

+only as far as the book has strength to

+go. If I had five great living writers on

+my list, my publishing task would be

+easy.</p>

+

+<p>For the broadening of the book market,

+then, what we need is writers—writers

+of the proper quality. Of

+novels, we have enough and to spare,

+such as they are. But not of good books<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154">154</a></span>

+of other sorts. Let us take a hint from

+the novel writers. Twenty years ago or

+less the American public was amusing

+itself with novels written by English

+writers. But about that time came

+those story tellers, a whole army of

+them, who began to write about life in

+different parts of our own country. Of

+New England, Miss Jewett and Miss

+Wilkins and Mrs. Austin and many

+more; in the Middle West, Mr. Garland,

+Mr. Churchill, Mr. Tarkington and half

+a hundred more; in New York, the

+author of “David Harum,” Mr. Frederick,

+Mr. Bacheller and others; of the

+South, Mr. Page, Miss Johnston, Miss

+Glasgow and more; and there are California

+stories in profusion. In other

+words, an army of men and women began

+about the same time to write stories

+of local history and manners.</p>

+

+<p>Now there are other subjects that

+need to be written of just as much. One

+such subject is science. The world is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155">155</a></span>

+flooded with popular books about

+science, but nearly all of them fail either

+in being accurate or in being popular.

+There is a better opportunity now than

+there ever was before for a man who

+really knows the most recent and scientific

+achievements, and who can write in

+the language of the people. To many

+people, “authoritative books” are dry

+books, but this is not what I mean. Such

+books as I have in mind can be written

+only by men of the best scientific equipment,

+but they can be written only by

+men who have also a great deal of literary

+skill.</p>

+

+<p>Another great subject about which

+good books are needed is—you may not

+believe this—American history. Our

+political history has got itself pretty

+voluminously written, and there is no

+lack of slapdash books in distant imitation

+of Green’s “Short History of the

+English People.” But most of these

+have been prepared out of newspaper<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156">156</a></span>

+files by men who would not take their

+task seriously or who were not well prepared

+either in matured knowledge or in

+literary skill to produce them. Then,

+too, geographically considered, the history

+of less than one-fourth of our territory

+has not yet been written. Southern

+history, for example, is utterly unknown.</p>

+

+<p>It would be easy to name a half-dozen

+other great subjects which writers who

+now bring their manuscripts to the publishing

+houses are neglecting. If, therefore,

+men and women who have the literary

+gift, even to a reasonable degree,

+and who have literary ambition, would

+frankly seek those two or three publishers

+who are real publishers and would

+prove their ability to do serious work of

+this sort they would be almost sure to

+find satisfactory careers before them.

+Of course, one disadvantage of such

+work is that during its early stages no

+very large financial returns can be expected.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157">157</a></span>

+But if the work were done well

+enough it would pay in the end—pay

+more money by far than a professorship

+in science or in history or in literature

+pays.</p>

+

+<p>All this leads me to this general remark—that

+the writing public does not

+take the trouble to find out who the real

+publishers are. There is a lack of coöperation

+between publishers and writers

+in what may be called the formative

+period of the writer’s lives. A man who

+writes a book sends it to some publishing

+house that is chosen by accident or

+by personal acquaintance or by whim.

+The public seems to think that one publishing

+house is as good as another. If a

+writer’s first volume in this way falls

+into the hands of a publisher who does

+not make the acquaintance of the writer,

+or who cannot make an appraisal of his

+ability and promise, and who does not

+understand him, then the writer, after

+an initial failure, of course, becomes discouraged.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158">158</a></span>

+On the other hand, all the

+publishers are so eager to get books that

+they accept work which is not properly

+done, and on their part fail to put themselves

+into such a relation to young

+authors as would help them to their

+normal development.</p>

+

+<p>If a man or woman, therefore, proposes

+to enter upon a literary career his

+first duty is to make the acquaintance

+of a real publisher, to be as frank with

+him as one must be with one’s physician

+or one’s lawyer. If two such men work

+together seriously and without too great

+haste the best results will be achieved

+for both, and the best results are not

+likely to come in any other way.</p>

+

+<p>If you start, then, to gossip intelligently

+about the book market or about

+anything else with which a publisher

+has to do, and if you gossip long enough,

+you will come back to the starting point

+of the whole matter. What do we do or

+can we do to encourage the writing of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159">159</a></span>

+good books? And now we’ve run on a

+subject as deep as a well and as wide as a

+door. In the multitude of counsellors

+about it there is confusion. In the only

+other “confession” that is to follow this

+I shall try to show how ignorant and

+mistaken all those are who differ with

+me about this fundamental subject.</p>

+

+<hr />

+

+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163">163</a></span></p>

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X<br />

+

+<span class="subhead">PLAIN WORDS TO AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS</span></h2>

+</div>

+

+<blockquote>

+

+<p class="hang"><i>It Pays the Author to Be Honest and Frank with

+His Publisher, Who Is, After All, His Best

+Friend—Some Recent Instances of a Discouraging

+Sort—The Need of Greater Dignity and

+Statesmanship Among Publishers—The Obligation

+of Ministering to the Higher Impulses

+of the People.</i></p></blockquote>

+

+<p>I am flattered by hearing that a

+prominent publishing house wishes to

+print these rambling “confessions” in a

+pamphlet, to send to persons who write

+books; “for,” says this house, “they

+tell some plain facts that authors ought

+to know.” I hope so; and, for my part,

+I am not averse to publishers knowing

+them either. For instance, the wretched

+smallness of one sinner among the publishers<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164">164</a></span>

+came to light to-day. Here is

+the unpleasant story:</p>

+

+<p>A year and a half ago I published the

+first novel by a young author. He is a

+promising writer and his story was a

+good one. We sold it in fairly satisfactory

+numbers. We advertised it,

+“exploited” it—did the best we could.

+We invited the author to come and see

+us. We took him into our confidence.

+We have regarded him as our partner,

+so far as his book is concerned. We

+have had a continuous correspondence.

+We have exchanged visits a time or two.

+He paid me the compliment to ask my

+advice about his next story. We have

+become good friends, you see; and we

+are as helpful to each other as we know

+how to be. Now his second novel is

+finished. In a letter that came from

+him to-day he informed me that another

+publishing house (I have a great mind

+to write the name of it here) has made

+him a very handsome offer of serial publication,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165">165</a></span>

+provided, of course, that they

+may also publish the book!</p>

+

+<p>Now, if the young author wishes to go

+browsing in these new pastures, I have

+no power or wish to prevent him. I

+cannot serve him—or do not care to

+serve him—if he is unwilling that I

+should. But I was nevertheless very

+grateful when he wrote, “Of course, I

+prefer you. I hope you have never

+thought me unloyal.”</p>

+

+<p>If publishing his first book had been

+a mere job done under contract, a commercial

+job and nothing more—that

+would have been one thing. But that’s

+not publishing. What I did was to

+give the man the unstinted service of

+our house, as publishers, as advisers, as

+friends. We print and advertise and

+sell his books—yes, to the very best of

+our ability. But we do more. We try

+to make friends for his book and for him

+throughout the reading world. We all

+take a personal interest in him and in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166">166</a></span>

+his future. We invest our money, our

+good will, our work, our experience, our

+advice, our enthusiasm in him and in

+his future. This service (except the investment

+of money) is not a matter of

+contract. It is a personal, friendly service.

+If the service had not been successful,

+he would have had a perfect

+right to come and say that he feared

+that we did not serve him well and to

+go away from us. That would have

+been frank and honorable. Even, since

+we did succeed and have become friends,

+he could still go to another publisher.

+Yet, I maintain, if he had, he would

+have shown himself a man of blunt

+appreciation and dull honor. And the

+publisher who tried to win him away

+did a trick unworthy of the profession.</p>

+

+<p>This is my last story about a publisher;

+and the moral is plain, alike to

+publisher and to author.</p>

+

+<p>And now I will tell my last story<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167">167</a></span>

+about an author, the moral of which also

+is plain:</p>

+

+<p>There is an author for whom we have

+published two books, and they have

+been uncommonly successful. A little

+while ago he finished his third book.

+He wrote that many publishers had solicited

+it, that he had had several handsome

+offers, that he needed a large sum

+of money. Would we make a big advance

+payment? He disliked to mention

+the subject, but business was business

+after all. Now I had been at that

+man’s service for several years. Day

+and night, he had sought my advice.</p>

+

+<p>Well, we were cajoled into making a

+big advance payment—about half as

+big as he first asked for; and the contract

+was signed. Two days later, I

+met another publisher under conditions

+which invited free and friendly talk;

+and I told him this story. The publisher

+smiled and declared that that

+author had approached him and asked<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168">168</a></span>

+how much he would give for this very

+book!</p>

+

+<p>Men and brethren, we live in a commercial

+age. I suspect that, if we knew

+history well enough, we should discover

+that all ages have been commercial, and

+that all our predecessors had experiences

+like these. For ungrateful men have

+written books for many a century, I

+have no doubt; and we know that

+Barabbas was a publisher. But let us

+lift an honorable calling to an honorable

+level. Hence these frank “confessions.”

+And, if any publisher wishes to reprint

+them to send to authors, or any author

+to send to publishers, they both have

+my permission. For dignity and honor

+thrive best in an atmosphere of perfect

+frankness.</p>

+

+<p>Thinking over the behavior of authors

+and publishers to one another, I am

+obliged to confess that, while the peanut

+methods that I have just described

+are not common enough to cause us to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169">169</a></span>

+despair, the truth is that the whole

+business is yet somewhat unworthily

+conducted. I mean that it is conducted

+on too low a plane. For what

+is it that we are engaged in?</p>

+

+<p>The writers of good books are among

+the greatest benefactors of society; and

+the publishers of good books, if publishing

+be worthily regarded and properly

+done, is a necessary and complimentary

+service. The publisher is the partner, the

+helper of the author and his high servant

+or minister to the people. It is work

+worthy of large men and of high-minded

+men. Honest men we are—those

+of us who conduct the publishing

+houses that are in good repute. But I

+sometimes think that we miss being

+large men; for we do not do our business

+in (shall I say?) a statesmanlike

+way. We imitate the manners of tradesmen.

+We speak in the vocabulary of

+tradesmen. We are too likely to look

+at small projects as important—to pay<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170">170</a></span>

+our heed to the mere tricks of our trade—and

+to treat large enterprises, if we

+have them, as if they were but a part

+of the routine. A good book is a Big

+Thing, a thing to be thankful to heaven

+for. It is a great day for any of us when

+we can put our imprint on it. Here is

+a chance for reverence, for something

+like consecration. And the man or the

+woman who can write a good book is a

+form of capital infinitely more attractive

+than a large bank account or a great

+publishing “plant.” Yet, if we regard

+an author simply as “capital,” we are

+not worthy to serve him. The relation

+leads naturally to a friendly and helpful

+attitude. We know something about

+books, about the book-market, about

+the public, that no author is likely to

+know. With this knowledge we can

+serve those that write. And with our

+knowledge of the author and of his work,

+we can serve the public. It is our habit

+to keep our accounts with authors accurately,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171">171</a></span>

+to pay them promptly, to receive

+them courteously when they call,

+to answer their letters politely and

+sometimes to bore them with formal

+dinners at our clubs, before they sail

+for Europe. But how many of us really

+know the intellectual life of any author

+whose books we print and supply a

+stimulus to his best plans?</p>

+

+<p>And the authors? How little they

+know about us or about publishing!

+They seem to select publishers by whims

+and not often by knowledge. I know a

+writer of good books who is at this moment

+seeking his third publisher. One

+of the others failed. The other displeased

+him. And now he is thinking

+of giving his next book to a third publisher

+who also will fail within five

+years, or I am no prophet. Yet I am

+hindered by courtesy from telling him

+so. Why the man has not by this time

+found a personality among the publishers

+who has a soundly constructed business<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172">172</a></span>

+and at the same time a helpful

+intellectual appreciation of his work, I

+cannot understand. He, too, is looking

+at a great matter in a small way.</p>

+

+<p>Therefore I am led to write down

+these rules for an author to follow when

+he looks for a publisher:</p>

+

+<p>Find out whether the publishing

+house that you have in mind be financially

+sound. The commercial agencies

+will tell you, or will tell any commercial

+friend who may make inquiry for you.

+And find out who the real owners of the

+house are.</p>

+

+<p>Then find out who conducts it. If it

+is conducted by a lot of hired “literary”

+men, avoid it. They are, most of them,

+men who have failed at authorship;

+they “read” and “advise” for salaries;

+and most of them know nothing about

+the houses that they serve. They are

+not principals, but (as Henry George

+once called them) “literary operatives.”

+I mean to say nothing harsh about a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173">173</a></span>

+well-meaning, hard-working class of

+men. But if you have a good book, you

+wish to find not a “literary operative,”

+but a real publisher.</p>

+

+<p>Having found a real publisher, you

+will expect him to read your book himself.

+I am assuming that you have an

+important book. When he has read it,

+he will talk to you about it frankly.

+When I say frankly, I mean frankly. If

+he is himself a real man and knows men

+and books, he will not retail hack literary

+phrases to you. He will talk good

+English and good sense straight out of

+his intelligence to your intelligence, with

+no nonsense such as reviewers write in

+the “literary” magazines. He will become

+your intellectual friend.</p>

+

+<p>Having found such a man, give him

+your book and leave him to work out

+the details of publishing. He will be

+proud to serve you. You will discover

+as your acquaintance ripens, that he has

+your whole career as a writer in his mind<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174">174</a></span>

+and plans. He will shape his whole

+publishing activities to your development

+and to the development of other

+writers like you.</p>

+

+<p>Then—if you are capable of writing

+great books—you will discover that you

+have set only natural forces at work for

+your growth and for your publisher’s

+growth; and the little artificial tricks of

+the trade whereby a flashy story has a

+“run”—into swift oblivion—will pass

+from your mind and from his. You

+will both be doing your best work.</p>

+

+<p>After all, the authors of any generation

+generally have the publishers that

+they deserve to have; and this axiom

+is reversible. For my part, while I am

+as glad as Podunk, Exploitem &amp; Company

+to have novels that will sell 100,000

+copies, provided they give clean and

+decent amusement, I take no permanent

+interest in anything that comes this

+month and goes the next; nor does any

+serious man. My wish and aim is to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175">175</a></span>

+become a helpful partner of some of the

+men and women of my generation who

+can, by their writings, lay the great

+democracy that we all serve under obligations

+to them for a new impulse. By

+serving them, I, too, serve my country

+and my time. And, when I say that

+this is my aim and wish, I could say with

+equal truth that it is the aim and wish

+of every other real publisher. But, as

+every good physician constantly wonders

+at the ignorance and credulity of

+otherwise sensible men who seek quacks,

+so I wonder at the simplicity of many

+respectable writers of books in seeking

+publishers. Of downright quacks in the

+publishing world, there are not many.

+But there are incompetents a-plenty and

+a fair share of adventurers.</p>

+

+<p>We shall both—authors and publishers—get

+the proper cue if we regard the

+swarming, eager democracy all about us

+as a mass of constantly rising men and

+women, ambitious to grow, with the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176">176</a></span>

+same higher impulses that we feel in our

+best moods; and if we interpret our

+duty as the high privilege of ministering

+to these higher impulses and not to their

+lower senses, without commercialism on

+one side and without academicism on

+the other, men among men, worthy

+among the worthy, we may make our

+calling under such a conception a calling

+that leads.</p>

+

+<div class="chapter"><div class="transnote">

+<h2 class="nobreak p1"><a id="Transcribers_Notes"></a>Transcriber’s Notes</h2>

+

+<p>Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant

+preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.</p>

+

+<p>Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced

+quotation marks retained.</p>

+

+<p>Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.</p>

+

+<p>Redundant chapter titles were removed by Transcriber.</p>

+</div>

+</div>

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+<pre>

+

+

+

+

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+</body>

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