THE STORY OF A BOOK FROM AUTHOR TO READER
_The Divers Problems Which Constantly Arise--Every Step of the Way
Beset with Expense, So That the Publisher Is Amazed When He Finds a
Surplus--Why Books of Large Sale Are Hard to Get--The Publisher as
Anxious as the Public to Print Better Books._
The wonder is (and in my mind it grows every year) how the publishers
of books make enough money to keep their shops going. When I look at my
own ledgers (ledger, by the way, is become a mere literary word, for we
now all keep accounts on cards and not in books)--whenever I look at my
own cards and see a profit, I am astonished as much as I am gratified.
Every other publisher in America, if he have a normal and simple mind
such as fits the calling, has the same emotion. Let me say, lest I
appear “simple” in another sense, that our cards have, miraculously
enough, generally shown very satisfactory profits, but the astonishment
never becomes less.
See what a long series of processes, or adventures, if you will, a book
must go through between the writer and the reader; every step costs
money; and the utmost possible profit is small. Suppose it be a novel.
“Book” means “novel” these days in “literary” circles and journals.
Heaven bless our shallow gabble called “reviews.” A novel comes to
the publisher in fairly good English. The English doubtless is the
author’s, but the punctuation and capitals are the “typewriter-lady’s”
own. It must be read by one person; and, if that person’s report have
a ray of hope, it must be read by another; perhaps by a third. These
“readers” cost money--alas! too little money. They are generally
literary persons who have failed, and there is something pathetic about
their occupation. Then, after two or three readers have reported on
it, I have to read it--in our particular shop, in any shop, somebody
“higher up” must read it--especially if it come from a new writer.
Then we have to correspond with the author or have interviews with
h--er. All this takes time, and the cost of this service rolls up.
Somebody must next go over the manuscript to prepare it for the
printer--to make sure that the heroine’s name is spelt the same way all
through and so forth and so forth. With the processes of manufacture I
need not weary you. Only I must say that a bad manuscript can be put
into legible type, and that type cast into solid metal blocks ready for
the press with a rapidity and cheapness that rank among the mechanical
wonders of the world.
By this time the artist has appeared, if the novel is to be
illustrated. Book salesmen will tell you that pictures help to sell
novels, and they ought to know. But I venture to say that you haven’t
seen three new novels in ten years whose illustrations conveyed
anything but confusion to your mind. The conventional illustration of
the conventional novel marks the lowest degradation of the present-day
publisher. We confess by these things that we are without character
or conviction. But the artist has the benefit of the commercial doubt
on his side. He has also the vanity of the author. And he gets his
fee--200, 300 or 500 good dollars or more--and the publisher pays the
bill. Another artist makes a design for the cover.
Paper, printing, binding--all these are commonplaces, worthy of mention
here only because they roll up the cost. But there are other steps in
the book’s journey that the public knows less about. For instance,
as soon as the first chapter has been put into type and a cover made,
“dummies” of the book are got ready. A “dummy” of a book is a sort of
model, or sample, of it. The cover is the cover that will appear on the
finished novel; the titlepage is the novel’s titlepage; and the first
chapter is as it will be when the book is published. But the rest is
blank paper. This “dummy” shows the physical size and appearance of the
book.
The travelling salesmen take these dummies and begin their work. They
go to all the jobbers and book dealers, explaining to them the charming
qualities of this newly discovered novelist, and taking orders for the
books. By the time they come home and their advance orders are added
up, the book is ready to go to press; and the publisher knows what his
“first sale” will be. Meantime (not to lose the thread of my story)
all this travelling and soliciting of orders have cost a good deal of
money. The public has not yet seen a copy of the book nor even so much
as heard of it nor of the “talented young author.”
But now the machinery for publicity is put in action. Sly little
literary notes about the book and the author begin to appear in the
newspapers. These, too, have come from the publisher. From whom
else, pray, could they come? But they mean that the publisher has to
maintain a literary bureau. The man who writes these news notes and the
advertisements of the book and other things about it is a man of skill,
if he do his work well; and he, too, costs the publisher a good salary.
When he begins to put forth advertising--how much shall he spend on
this new novel by an unknown writer? How much shall you risk at Monte
Carlo? Your upright man will risk nothing at Monte Carlo. I have
sometimes thought that your upright publisher, if there be one, would
risk nothing in advertising a new book by an unknown writer, until the
book began itself to show some vitality in the market.
But--to go back--as soon as the book is ready, review copies, of
course, are sent to the newspapers and the literary journals (to appear
a little later in the second-hand book-shops for sale at reduced
prices.) All this activity requires clerks, typewriters, bookkeepers,
postage-money--a large office, in fact. There are many posters,
circulars--there is as much machinery required to sell a book as to
sell a piano or an automobile.
From the starting-point, where the book was an ill-written manuscript,
to the delivery of it to the bookseller, the publisher has less than 50
cents a copy to pay for this whole journey and to save something for
profit if he can. Therefore I say that publishers who do succeed are
among the most astute managers of industry.
Lest I seem to “boast rather than to confess,” I come back to the
starting-point, which was this--that the publishers’ calling is not a
very profitable one; not a profitable one at all except in fair weather
and with a good skipper.
The truth is, publishing is too important a profession and our
publishing houses are too important as institutions to be at the mercy
of present conditions. The making of schoolbooks and the vending of
standard old books in sets, which are useful vocations, but are not
publishing proper, are now done best by firms and companies that
do nothing else. Hence publishing proper--the bringing out of new
books--must find a safer basis than the present conventional profit. It
will find this safer basis in two ways.
The first and obvious way is to secure books that have an enormous
popularity. This is the effort of nearly all the publishing houses
to-day. If a novel reach an edition of 100,000 copies, there is a good
profit in it as matters now stand. And a novel, or other book, that
will be bought by 100,000 persons ought not to be sold for more than
such books now fetch. But there are not enough such books to go around;
and the least worthy publishing house is as likely to secure them as
the most worthy. A permanent institution, therefore, cannot be built on
these or on the hope of them. They are the accidents of the calling.
The other way to maintain a worthy publishing institution is to publish
worthy books, to manufacture them well, to do every piece of work that
is done on them or that is done for them in the most conscientious
way--to keep bookmaking as a fine art, to keep bookselling a dignified
profession, to keep the selection of books to publish on the high
level of scholarly judgment. This done, a publisher may set his prices
higher--must set his prices higher, for he does a higher and more
costly service to society. Excellent and worthy of all praise as is
some of the publishing work of this sort that is now done, a beginning
has hardly yet been made. There is a demand, or a dormant demand can
be awakened, for books that have merit (I mean new books as well as
old) of better manufacture than we now often see. They must be sold for
higher prices, of course.
This is the same as to say that just as a three-dollar shoe is made
for most feet that tread this weary continent, but a five-dollar shoe
is made for an increasing number of feet that prefer ease to economy,
so we are becoming rich enough and wise enough to pay two dollars, or
three dollars, or five dollars for a good new book that shall have
large and beautiful type, good paper, good margins, good binding--shall
be a work of art in its manufacture as well as in the quality of its
contents. The public gets its good books too cheap; and the reason is
plain.
It was only the other day that the publishers discovered the
possibility of securing book after book that would run into large
editions. A novel-reading democracy--a public-school democracy--is a
new thing. It is an impressive thing. It made new and big markets, and
we all rushed after it. Cheapness and great editions became the rage.
Writers wrote for the million; publishers published for the million.
Cheap books became the fashion. All very well--this widespread effort,
this universal reading. But it has not radically changed human nature
nor even the permanent foundations of the profession of publishing. We
shall come back to higher and better work--some of us will, at least.
Bring the subject home to yourself. What do you want for your book
money? Not the latest “big seller.” You may buy that to entertain you
on a railway journey. But if you bring it home at all, you send it
away at Christmas to some country library. What you want in your own
library for your book-money are good books, made at least as well as
the furniture in the room; and you want the new books of permanent
value. You are sometimes disgusted when you look over the publishers’
catalogues to find so few books of this kind.
Your publishers, too, are becoming weary of having such catalogues;
and as soon as we rediscover the old truth that there is a permanent
demand for just the kind of books that you want, we shall turn to a
more generous encouragement of them. Men who might do better work will
then cease trying to write “best sellers.” But you must pay the price.
Since you have become accustomed to buy new books at $1.50 a volume,
you are somewhat reluctant to pay $2 or $4 for a new book. You must
break yourself of that habit. In a word, you must become at least as
generous to your publisher as you are to your shoemaker; and then the
change will take place.
By a similar course of reasoning (and it is sound) you may discover
that you are yourself to blame for what our writers write and our
publishers publish--in a measure at least; and, whenever you want
better books, better books will be ready for you. For the publisher
and even the author are but human after all; and in the mood that has
possessed us all for a decade or two--since presses and paper became
so cheap--we have perhaps worshipped mere numbers. I have published
some books only because thousands and thousands of persons would read
them. You have read them simply because thousands of other people were
reading them and for no better reason. Perhaps our sins have not been
heinous. But, if you are so stubbornly virtuous as to cry shame at me,
I promise you this: I will reform on the day that you yourself reform;
but you must first signify repentance. For you--the public--are after
all our masters.