[_10 Mar. '10_]
Authentic documents are always precious to the student, and here is one
which strikes me as precious beyond the ordinary. It is a letter received
from a well-known publisher by a correspondent of mine who is a
journalist:
"I am awfully sorry that we cannot take your novel, which is immensely
clever, and which interested my partner more than anything he has read in
a good while. He agrees with me, however, that it has not got the
qualities that make for a sale, and you know that this is the great
desideratum with the publisher. Now don't get peevish, and send us nothing
else. I know you have a lot of talent, and your difficulty is in applying
this talent to really practical problems rather than to the more
attractive products of the imagination. Get down to facts, my son, and
study your market. Find out what the people like to read and then write a
story along those lines. This will bring you success, for you have a
talent for success. Above all things, don't follow the lead of our
headstrong friend who insists upon doing exactly what you have done in
this novel, namely, neglecting the practical market and working out the
fanciful dictates of imagination. Remember that novel-writing is as much
of a business as making calico. If you write the novels that people want,
you are going to sell them in bales. When you have made your name and your
market, _then_ you can afford to let your imagination run riot, and _then_
people will look at you admiringly, and say, 'I don't understand this
genius at all, but isn't he great?' Do you see the point? You must do this
AFTER you have won your market, not before, and you can only win your
market in the first place by writing what folks want to buy.--Sincerely
yours--"
* * * * *
The writer is American. But the attitude of the average pushing English
publisher could not have been more accurately expressed than in this
letter sent by one New Yorker to another. The only thing that puzzles me
is why the man originally chose books instead of calico. He would have
sold more bales and made more money in calico. He would have understood
calico better. In my opinion many publishers would have understood calico
better than books. There are two things which a publisher ought to know
about novel-producers--things which do not, curiously enough, apply to
calico-producers, and which few publishers have ever grasped. I have known
publishers go into the bankruptcy court and come out again safely and yet
never grasp the significance of those two things. The first is that it is
intensely stupid to ask a novelist to study the market with a view to
obtaining large circulations. If he does not write to please himself--if
his own taste does not naturally coincide with the taste of the
million--he will never reach the million by taking thought. The Hall
Caines, the Miss Corellis, and the Mrs. Humphry Wards are born, not made.
It may seem odd, even to a publisher, that they write as they do write--by
sheer glad instinct. But it is so. The second thing is that when a
novelist has made "his name and his market" by doing one kind of thing he
can't successfully go off at a tangent and do another kind of thing. To
make the largest possible amount of money out of an artist the only way is
to leave him alone. When will publishers grasp this? To make the largest
possible amount of money out of an imitative hack, the only way is to
leave him alone. When will publishers grasp that an imitative hack knows
by the grace of God forty times more about the public taste than a
publisher knows?