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once at the service of literature, are now withdrawn from it.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