HAVING trespassed so far on the patience of the reader, I may as well
presume a little further, and indulge in a few reflections.
First, from the investigations and observations of the last two
years, I infer that authors are very much to blame in their business
dealings. By their inexactness, their indifference, their unreasonable
and indolent trust, and their excessive monetary stupidity, they not
only become an easy prey of, but they offer a direct temptation to the
cupidity of publishers. Not a single author to whom I appealed showed
the slightest reluctance to answer my questions, nor, I may almost
add, the slightest ability to answer them adequately. For instance,
the points I wished to ascertain were whether a writer was paid by
percentage or by a fixed sum: what was the percentage and what the
fixed sum: and whether during or subsequent to the year 1764 any change
was made in the mode or rate of payment.
See now how charmingly the authors met my points.
Says one, "Brummell and Hunt never published but ---- with me and I
received on this the usual beggarly percentage;" leaving me entirely in
the dark as to what was the beggarly percentage.
Says another: "What terms do I make with B. & H.? Yes, with all my
heart. In regard to ----, they print and sell and allow me a certain
sum on all copies sold;" but with the greatest inclination in the world
giving me no hint of the amount of that "certain sum."
Says another: "Brummell & Hunt have, I believe, allowed me ten per
cent. on the retail price of my books. That was the first arrangement
at least, but I must confess I never look at their statements of
account."
Says a fourth: "I have always received a percentage.... I remember no
change in 1764, unless that B. & H. about that time (perhaps earlier)
without my asking it, raised the sum they paid me for ----, etc.... The
interests of authors and publishers are identical--a fact which they
understand better than we do."
Yet the firm testified of this very writer that they had written
agreements to pay him percentage, and that when prices advanced they
waived the percentage, and paid him a certain (lower) sum per volume.
A fifth says: "I have not the least objection in the world in replying
to your letter in the most straightforward way.... I have been
contented with ten per cent. on the retail price of my printed books."
Yet the written contracts of this writer showed every variety of
arrangement from twenty per cent. downward.
A sixth says: "Messrs. B. & H. have published four books for me.... The
three first named sell for $1.25, and I receive twelve cents each copy."
But Messrs. B. & H. affirmed that these books sold for $1.50 each.
A seventh says: "I did not send your letter to ----, for the reason
that she does not know as much as you do about the subject of its
inquiry. The most she could tell you would be, that now and then there
comes a bit of paper very neatly and tastefully diversified by red and
blue lines, and dreadfully complicated by sundry hieroglyphics, which
she has been told are figures, and that a check embellished with one of
the rows of figures accompanies it.... I have an impression that years
ago, when ---- was taking such sesquipedalian strides to public favor,
Mr. Brummell told me that after the number of copies sold had reached
a certain point, the author received a reduced percentage, and I think
I remember wondering by what perversion of commercial philosophy, an
article of which fifty thousand copies could be sold, was worth less,
proportionally, than one of which only five thousand could be bartered,
for of course the ratio of cost decreased with every successive
thousand manufactured."
Here, it will be perceived, is a faint glimmer of sense, which will be
completely extinguished by the next extract.
"---- said you made a mistake in thinking yourself differently used
from the rest of the writing craft, and explained that the profits of
the author did not keep up the same proportion in repeated editions,
but went to pay the increased circulation. For his part he would rather
be more poorly paid for the sake of being more widely read."
Must not that have been an explanation worth having? It is not
difficult to conjecture the source whence that form of explanation
originated, for another letter says, "Mr.---- went to see Mr. Hunt....
Mr. Hunt expressed great regret that it had all happened; said 'Rights
of Men,' had done more for your reputation than any other book; that
you made more than the publishers did, etc., and that they thought
better to have a low per cent. and large sales, than the contrary;
though I don't see what a low per cent. paid to the author has to do
with large sales, if the price of the book is kept high to purchasers."
The fact, is that as a bad woman is said to be a great deal worse than
a bad man, so a man innocent of business capacity, is far more innocent
than any woman can be. A woman may be never so silly, but there is
generally a substratum of hard sense somewhere. A man may be never so
wise, and yet completely destitute of this practical ability. It is
largely in behalf of these helpless, harmless, deluded, and betrayed
gentlemen, that I have felt called to take up arms. What sword would
not leap from its scabbard to maintain the cause of the weak and the
wronged?
But though I admit and lament that authors are unpractical and
unbusiness-like to the last degree, I must affirm that they have less
inducement to be business-like and less opportunity to be practical
than any other class of persons. Suppose a writer sets out with the
determination to be prudent and sagacious, where shall he begin? If a
farmer has a bushel of potatoes to sell, he knows, or can learn in a
moment, precisely their market value. The Early Rose has its price,
and the Jackson White has its price; there is no room for doubt, or
misgiving, or mistake. But the author has not and cannot have the least
notion of the market value of his products. He does not even know their
intrinsic value. He does not know whether he has raised an Early Rose
or a dead-and-gone Chenango. He may have spent his strength on what
is absolutely unsalable. His work is production, but for its worth he
must depend solely on the word of those who buy and sell. After a while
he does indeed arrive at something like a scale of value, but he never
reaches such a degree of certainty as to feel assured of any special
piece of work. Every one must be judged by itself. Five successful
books are no absolute guaranty that the sixth will not be worthless.
It seems to me, also, that there is no business in which so few checks
exist as in that of publishing. An author, we will say, agrees to
receive ten per cent. on the retail price of all copies of his works
that are sold, but he has literally nothing but the publisher's word by
which to know how many copies are sold. The manufacturer knows how many
he has made, but it would be offensive to ask for the manufacturer's
accounts, and moreover he would probably not render them if asked. He
would consider it as betraying the secrets of the trade, or the trust
of his employers, or otherwise impertinent and unwarranted. Of course a
false return of sales would be fraud, and somewhat complicated fraud;
but human ingenuity combined with human depravity has been known to
surmount obstacles to crime as formidable as these, and the danger of
detection is infinitessimally small. If there be any such thing in
arithmetic as the Double Rule of Three,--and I seem to have a vague
impression that there is,--it may well be brought to the solution of
the problem: if a publisher may for years safely disregard, not to say
violate, the condition of a contract which an author has before his
eyes in plain black and white, how long may another publisher safely
falsify accounts which an author never sees, and which he could not
understand if he should see? I have no doubt that in nine cases out
of ten, and perhaps also in the tenth, the returns of sales are as
accurate as the moral law. What I maintain is, that the author, be
he wise as Solomon, has no means of knowing whether they are or not,
while the manufacturer of all other goods knows precisely how much raw
material goes into the mill and how much of the manufactured article
comes out.
If the author, instead of receiving a percentage, takes half profits,
he is even more at the mercy of the publisher. In the very outset the
wildest theories prevail as to what constitute profits, and though the
author may make heroic struggles to be exhaustively mathematical, the
probabilities are that the only draught made upon his science will be
the very simple effort of dividing by two whatever sum the publisher
has chosen to figure up. The plan adopted by actors and actresses, to
take half the gross receipts, is far more simple and sensible.
It is true that an author may take advantage of competition and seek
a second market if the first prove unsatisfactory, but it is also
certain that he cannot do this to any effective extent without serious
injury to himself. All the skill, the vitality, the invention, the
thought, which he brings to the disposition of his wares is so much
taken from his producing power. He ought to be wholly free to do his
best work. He ought to be able to concentrate himself on his writing.
If he must turn aside to study the state of the market and superintend
the details of sale and circulation, that necessity will surely tell in
the deterioration of his works; and even at that cost he will not be
so good a business manager as one who is to the manner born. It is a
very pretty thing to be a poet-publisher--in the newspapers, but if the
poet's imagination happens to get loose among the publisher's facts, it
makes sad work, and it is not merry work when the publisher crops out
in the poet's verses.
What then remains? It has been proposed that authors combine and form
a publishing-house by themselves, publishing their own books and
receiving their own profits. This plan looks simple enough, but I
must confess it seems to me chimerical in the last degree. Excepting
the temptations of their trade, doubtless a hundred publishers are as
honest as a hundred authors, and surely they have a great deal more
business sagacity. But as soon as authors turn publishers they fall
into all the publisher's temptations without acquiring his business
power; so that when you have chemically combined author and publisher
you have an amalgam wholly and disastrously different from either of
the original simples, namely, a publisher minus his common sense.
No, the publisher is not an artificial member of society. Like all
other middle-men he meets a real want. He exists because in the
long run it is cheaper and better for writers to employ him than to
do his work themselves. Of course, the wiser and more righteous he
is, the better he answers the end of his creation; but with all his
imperfections on his head, he is better than nobody. A man may as well
undertake to build his house with his own hands to save himself from
the short-comings and extortions of carpenters, as to manufacture
and distribute his own books to save himself from the extortions of
publishers. We may send missionaries among them, we may gather them in
to our Sunday-schools, but we need not think to exterminate them.
Authors may form publishing houses, and those houses may be successful,
but if so it will be simply by adopting substantially the methods of
successful publishing-houses already established. It seems to me easier
and more economical to let such institutions spring from the soil,
rather than attempt to construct them out of material which has already
been organized into another form of life.
Shall we then take the publishers _cum grano salis_, and try to guard
our interests by keeping a strict look-out? We must turn publishers
ourselves to make it of any account. A detective, to be worth anything,
ought to be at least as wily as the rogue he watches, and to be so he
must give his mind to it, and if he give his mind to that, where-withal
shall he set up any other business? An author need not rush in among
publishers as Cincinnati swine are said to invade the streets with
whetted knives, crying "come and eat me"; but if he on the contrary
objects, steadfastly and stoutly, to being devoured, he does not know
where his vulnerable point is, and cannot therefore arm himself against
attack. He is not and cannot become, consistently with the proper
pursuit of his own profession, sufficiently acquainted with the details
of publishing to know whether a measure proposed by a publisher be or
be not fair. For instance, the publisher contracts to pay ten per cent.
on the retail price of a sixty-two cent book. A war comes, bringing
high prices, and the book goes up to a dollar and a quarter. The
publisher continues to pay the author ten per cent. of sixty-two cents,
making no reference to the increased price. The author presently
chances to discover it, and remonstrates. The publishers say curtly,
"You will make the price of the book so large that it will have no
sale," oblivious of the fact that it is not the author but themselves
who have raised the price of the book. He replies that the price is not
his affair; he must insist upon the contract. The publishers yield,
and the author is apparently victorious. But when a second author
brings up this case as a reason why he should receive his percentage,
the publishers reply, "True, we did continue percentage because he
insisted, but, as a warning, the book had a very poor sale." But what
effect on the sale can the author's twelve and a half, instead of six
and a half cents have if the price to the buyer is the same? Until some
better answer is given I shall believe that the sale diminishes because
the publisher chooses it; because he prefers to sacrifice a small sum
on a single volume as a warning to contumacious authors, rather than
encourage rebellion by continuing to receive profits of which he must
divert a larger share to the author. If he can, by one or two examples,
show restive writers that the question is not between six and a half
cents and twelve and a half cents on a thousand books, but between six
and a half on a thousand, and twelve and a half on a hundred, the sum
he sacrifices in showing it is not a bad investment.
Since, then, the publisher has matters within his own grasp so entirely
that what he is forced to pay with one hand he can easily pluck with
the other, I do not clearly see the advantage to be gained by insisting
on any special bargain with him. Perhaps I do not quite know what I am
talking about. I suspect, on the whole, I do not. But my remarks are
all the more valuable for that. If, after two years of clapper-clawing
among a quartette of cats, a mouse is still unskilled in feline ways,
in what state of helplessness must be those unadventurous little things
who have never left their holes?
But there are the books of the firm which the suspected publisher opens
to you with a frankness of innocence that ought to disarm and convince
the most hardened unbeliever. Any demur is met by an invitation to
come and look at "the books." The trail of the Serpent is over all the
rest of the world, but "the books" have escaped the contamination of
original sin and shine with the purity of Paradise. Burglars blow open
safes, banks and directors and cashiers and tellers come to grief, but
"the books" always tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth. Nowithstanding which I, from the beginning, instinctively gave
those "books" a wide berth. They were to me like the "magick bookes"
of Spenser's hermite. "Let none them read." That "the books" are not
always "reliable gentlemen" will have been inferred from the account
which they professed to have sent me, and which was--lost in the mail.
That "the books" are not always intelligible witnesses would appear,
could we know how many unwary persons have gone to them in pursuit of
knowledge, and found the difficulty insurmountable. "We had the books
here," said one benighted author of no mean repute, "and I examined
them, and Kate examined them, and Frank examined them, and the Major
examined them, and we could make nothing of them." That the books
have been made to do yeoman's service in this battle has already been
seen, and by various tokens it would seem that they have not yet been
dismissed the service. Only to-day a letter says, "But the account of
the sales of your book and the sums paid you for them, as I derived
them from the books of Mr. Hunt, convinced me that whatever the bargain
might be you had a better one than _I_ had. I have half profits--you
have had more."
That is what "the books" say unquestionably; but what a stiff-necked
and perverse author refuses to believe without further proof. When
a publisher shows me receipted bills for the sums he has actually
paid in manufacturing and publishing my books, and for the sums he
has received from their sale, I will--take them to an expert for
examination; but when he proposes to set me down before a mighty maze
of figures, which for aught that appears, may all have been conjured
up by his imagination, and begs me to deduce from them any conclusion
whatever, I decline with thanks. That contention I leave off before it
be meddled with. It is not necessary to be a Solomon in order to know
enough to keep away from figures which it is necessary to be a Solomon
to understand, and which when understood are much like the "litle flyes
cal'd out of deepe darknes dredd" by the hermite before referred to,
and which,--
"Fluttring about his ever-damned hedd,
Awaite whereto their service he applyes,
To aide his friendes, or fray his enemies."
There remains also to the wronged or suspicious author recourse to the
law or to the more informal arbitration, but this also is vanity. To me
a lawsuit seemed utterly intolerable, but my experience of arbitration
was so repulsive, and is so hideous in memory--and this solely from
the nature of things, since, alike from the referees and from Messrs.
Parry and Markman who, like St. Paul, were the chief speakers, on the
other side, I met only courtesy--that a lawsuit seems attractive in
comparison; but if I had instituted a lawsuit, without doubt adverse
fate hereafter would have been implored to take any shape but that! If
two parties are really bent on getting at the vital facts, presenting
absolute truth, securing exact and essential justice, nothing can be
more to the purpose apparently than a reference to disinterested,
non-professional, intelligent, and friendly persons; but two parties
honestly bent on such an object would probably have nothing to quarrel
over. Even if they have it is not certain that the informal is better
than the formal mode of settlement. If there are no facts to be hushed
up, a legal investigation will do no harm; if there are facts to be
hushed up, a legal investigation is necessary. We look at the law as at
best a clumsy roundabout way of arriving at just conclusions--a method
full of ingenious devices to entangle and confuse witnesses and make
the worse appear the better reason. We take the informal arbitration as
a short cut to the desired goal. On the whole I am inclined to think
that the law is the shortest cut in the known world. The rules which
obtain in courts of justice and which seem to the unprofessional mind
a mere medley of arbitrary vexations and restrictions, are the result
of the experience of ages, and with all their short-comings and their
long-comings do probably present the most expeditious and unerring mode
of reaching truth which human wit and wisdom have yet devised. If so we
cannot depart from them without loss. In ridding ourselves of their
clumsiness we rid ourselves also of their effectiveness. We rend away
the red tape, but the package immediately falls apart into a worthless
heap of memoranda. You avoid a lawsuit because of the publicity and
multiplicity and infelicity of lawyers, witnesses, judge, and jury. You
adopt a reference because it dispenses with all these and goes straight
at the heart of things. But you find by experience that unless your
opponent wishes it you may not get at the heart of things at all. In
a lawsuit you can enforce measures; in a reference you are dependent
upon courtesy. Your opponent presents only that which is good in his
own eyes. He produces what he chooses; he withholds what he chooses. To
be sure you do the same; but you, angel that you are, have nothing to
hide, while he, the fiend! has all manner of wiles and wickedness to
conceal. If now you were in court, politeness and impertinence would
be equally and wholly out of the question. It is the duty and delight
of lawyers to find out everything--and such is the depravity of the
legal heart, it is especially their duty and delight to ferret out what
the opposite party desires to conceal. It is not what a man wishes
and means to say, but everything which he can be made to say, that a
lawyer wants. His hand can put aside the proffered "books," and grab
the books which are withheld. He does not permit the opposite parties
to select and exclude witnesses, but goes out into the highways and
hedges and compels to come in whom he wants. The law winds a long way
round, but it sets you down as near your journey's end as the nature of
things permits. A private reference takes a short cut, but it has no
inherent power to carry you far from your starting-point. Arbitration
has the advantage in respect of privacy, and that is an advantage
not to be overestimated. Still, if there is anything to choose when
both are intolerable, it seems rather worse to speak yourself before
five men, than to have some one else to speak for you before five
hundred. It matters not how wise, how impartial, referees may be, their
jurisdiction is necessarily limited, and they cannot go beyond it to
compel, or extort, or present. They must judge on what is spontaneously
set before them. If to avoid trouble and unpleasantness be your object,
it is better to submit to everything and keep out of strife altogether.
If you set out to accomplish an end, it is better to shut eyes and ears
to disagreements, and take the road which common experience designates
as the surest and safest in the long run.
But I most heartily advise writers in general to do neither. So far
as the improvement of one's fortune goes, nothing is more futile.
One should be exact, prompt, methodical, and intelligent so far as
possible. He will thus exert a salutary influence over his publisher,
and will be far more likely to receive his dues than if he believes
"in uninquiring trust" and lives wholly by faith. But it is better for
his purse to take what a publisher chooses to give than to make an ado
about it afterwards. Even if successful in regard to the particular
sum he claims, it is at a cost of time and trouble altogether
disproportionate to it. He plays an unequal game at best, because the
publisher's business goes on serenely, during all the difficulty,
while the author's must be at a stand-still. The very instrument that
he uses in defending his works is the instrument which he ought to
be using in producing them. Even as a pecuniary transaction it is
far more profitable to sow seed for future harvests than to spend
strength in trying to secure the gleanings of last year's growths. The
money proceeds of the insurrection, whose history has been given in
these pages, was twelve hundred and fifty dollars. The whole amount
claimed to make up ten per cent. was about three thousand dollars, and
considering that my whole plan of proceedings was demolished in the
beginning, and that the case had to present itself, as one may say,
smothered in a mass of irrelevant details, and deprived of much that
was to the purpose, I reckoned myself extremely well off. But even
had the whole sum been awarded, it would have been no very munificent
compensation for eighteen months of literary labor, apart from the
fact that the labor was of a kind for which no money could compensate.
In its baldest shape, the results of a year and a half of work were
twelve hundred and fifty dollars, or little more than one third of what
was claimed on previous work. I think myself therefore justified in
asserting that though quarreling with your publishers may be very good
as a crusade, it is a very poor way of getting a living.
Let me here correct an impression that seems to prevail somewhat
extensively as to the rewards of literary life. It certainly has its
rewards, and of the most delightful kind. What joys it may bring in
the higher walks I do not know, but even on the lower levels, I should
like to live forever--a thousand years to begin with, at any rate. I
could speak as enthusiastically as a certain popular writer, "once
more famous than now," "Of all the blessings which my books have
brought me,--blessings of inward wealth that cannot be so much as
named,--blessings so rich, so divine, that I sometimes think nothing
ever was so beautiful as to have written a book."
But so far as literature pays cash down it is not to be compared
to--shoemaking, for instance. The daily papers have been circulating
a paragraph to the effect that a recent popular book had gone to a
second edition and that its author had already received from it twelve
thousand dollars. I am not prepared to deny the statement; but I know
an author of nine books, not it is to be hoped on the same footing of
intrinsic merit, but books which have travelled up to nine, ten, and
fourteen editions, whose author never has received and never expects to
receive twelve thousand dollars on the whole lot.
Let nothing in this remark be construed into anything like complaint.
On the contrary, authors ought to be grateful to their publishers for
allowing them so large a gratuity. As Mr. Parry remarked concerning
the appropriation of an edition of fifteen hundred books to the use
of the firm, they might have taken more if they had chosen. And when
we reflect that not only do they bestow upon us these large sums of
money, but, as sundry extracts in other parts of this volume show, they
first manufacture for us the fame which brings the money, we are, in
the language of the hymn, lost in wonder, love, and praise. It must be
heart-rending to fashion your graven image and then have that image
turn upon you and demand a share of the profits!
Unhappily a dense ignorance upon this subject broods over the
community, and there should be added to our literature an