Under the regime of the great literary periodicals the prosperity of
literary men would be much greater than it actually is, if the
magazines were altogether literary. But they are not, and this is one
reason why literature is still the hungriest of the professions.
Two-thirds of the magazines are made up of material which, however
excellent, is without literary quality. Very probably this is because
even the highest class of readers, who are the magazine readers, have
small love of pure literature, which seems to have been growing less
and less in all classes. I say seems, because there are really no
means of ascertaining the fact, and it may be that the editors are
mistaken in making their periodicals two-thirds popular science,
politics, economics, and the timely topics which I will call
contemporaries; I have sometimes thought they were. But however that
may be, their efforts in this direction have narrowed the field of
literary industry, and darkened the hope of literary prosperity kindled
by the unexampled prosperity of their periodicals. They pay very well
indeed for literature; they pay from five or six dollars a thousand
words for the work of the unknown writer, to a hundred and fifty
dollars a thousand words for that of the most famous, or the most
popular, if there is a difference between fame and popularity; but they
do not, altogether, want enough literature to justify the best business
talent in devoting itself to belles-lettres, to fiction, or poetry, or
humorous sketches of travel, or light essays; business talent can do
far better in drygoods, groceries, drugs, stocks, real estate,
railroads, and the like. I do not think there is any danger of a
ruinous competition from it in the field which, though narrow, seems so
rich to us poor fellows, whose business talent is small, at the best.
The most of the material contributed to the magazines is the subject of
agreement between the editor and the author; it is either suggested by
the author, or is the fruit of some suggestion from the editor; in any
case the price is stipulated beforehand, and it is no longer the custom
for a well-known contributor to leave the payment to the justice or the
generosity of the publisher; that was never a fair thing to either, nor
ever a wise thing. Usually, the price is so much a thousand words, a
truly odious method of computing literary value, and one well
calculated to make the author feel keenly the hatefulness of selling
his art at all. It is as if a painter sold his picture at so much a
square inch, or a sculptor bargained away a group of statuary by the
pound. But it is a custom that you cannot always successfully quarrel
with, and most writers gladly consent to it, if only the price a
thousand words is large enough. The sale to the editor means the sale
of the serial rights only, but if the publisher of the magazine is also
a publisher of books, the republication of the material is supposed to
be his right, unless there is an understanding to the contrary; the
terms for this are another affair. Formerly something more could be
got for the author by the simultaneous appearance of his work in an
English magazine, but now the great American magazines, which pay far
higher prices than any others in the world, have a circulation in
England so much exceeding that of any English periodical, that the
simultaneous publication can no longer be arranged for from this side,
though I believe it is still done here from the other side.