[_20 June '08_]
A bad publishing season is now drawing to a close, and in the air are
rumours of a crisis. Of course the fault is the author's. It goes without
saying that the fault is the author's. In the first place, he will insist
on producing mediocre novels. (For naturally the author is a novelist;
only novelists count when crises loom. Algernon Charles Swinburne, Edward
Carpenter, Robert Bridges, Lord Morley--these types have no relation to
crises.) It appears that the publishers have been losing money over the
six-shilling novel, and that they are not going to stand the loss any
longer. It is stated that never in history were novels so atrociously
mediocre as they are to-day. And in the second place, the author will
insist on employing an Unspeakable Rascal entitled a literary agent, and
the poor innocent lamb of a publisher is fleeced to the naked skin by this
scoundrel every time the two meet. Already I have heard that one
publisher, hitherto accustomed to the services of twenty gardeners at his
country house, has been obliged to reduce the horticultural staff to
eighteen.
Such is the publishers' explanation of the crisis. I shall keep my own
explanation till the crisis is a little more advanced and ready to burst.
In the meantime I should like to ask: How _do_ people manage to range over
the whole period of the novel's history and definitely decide that novels
were never so bad as they are now? I am personally inclined to think that
at no time has the average novel been so good as it is to-day. (This view,
by the way, is borne out by publishers' own advertisements, which abound
in the word "masterpiece" quoted from infallible critics of great
masterpieces!) Let any man who disagrees with me dare go to Mudie's and
get out a few forgotten novels of thirty years ago and try to read them!
Also, I am prepared to offer £50 for the name and address of a literary
agent who is capable of getting the better of a publisher. I am widely
acquainted with publishers and literary agents, and though I have often
met publishers who have got the better of literary agents, I have never
met a literary agent who has come out on top of a publisher. Such a
literary agent is badly wanted. I have been looking for him for years. I
know a number of authors who would join me in enriching that literary
agent. The publishers are always talking about him. I seldom go into a
publisher's office but that literary agent has just left (gorged with
illicit gold). It irritates me that I cannot run across him. If I were a
publisher, he would have been in prison ere now. Briefly, the manner in
which certain prominent publishers, even clever ones, talk about literary
agents is silly.
* * * * *
Still, I am ready to believe that publishers have lost money over the
six-shilling novel. I am acquainted with the details of several instances
of such loss. And in every case the loss has been the result of gambling
on the part of the publisher. I do not hesitate to say that the terms
offered in late years by some publishers to some popular favourites have
been grotesquely inflated. Publishers compete among themselves, and then,
when the moment comes for paying the gambler's penalty, they complain of
having been swindled. Note that the losses of publishers are nearly always
on the works of the idols of the crowd. They want the idol's name as an
ornament to their lists, and they commit indiscretions in order to get it.
Fantastic terms are never offered to the solid, regular, industrious,
medium novelist. And it is a surety that fantastic terms are never
offered to the beginner. Ask, and learn.
* * * * *
But though I admit that money has been lost, I do not think the losses
have been heavy. After all, no idolized author and no diabolic agent can
force a publisher to pay more than he really wants to pay. And no diabolic
agent, having once bitten a publisher, can persuade that publisher to hold
out his generous hand to be bitten again. These are truisms. Lastly, I am
quite sure that, out of books, a great deal more money has been made by
publishers than by authors, and that this will always be so. The
threatened crisis in publishing has nothing to do with the prices paid to
authors, which on the whole are now fairly just (very different from what
they were twenty years ago, when authors had to accept whatever was
condescendingly offered to them). And if a crisis does come, the people to
suffer will happily be those who can best afford to suffer.