PLAIN WORDS TO AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS
_It Pays the Author to Be Honest and Frank with His Publisher,
Who Is, After All, His Best Friend--Some Recent Instances of a
Discouraging Sort--The Need of Greater Dignity and Statesmanship
Among Publishers--The Obligation of Ministering to the Higher
Impulses of the People._
I am flattered by hearing that a prominent publishing house wishes to
print these rambling “confessions” in a pamphlet, to send to persons
who write books; “for,” says this house, “they tell some plain facts
that authors ought to know.” I hope so; and, for my part, I am not
averse to publishers knowing them either. For instance, the wretched
smallness of one sinner among the publishers came to light to-day.
Here is the unpleasant story:
A year and a half ago I published the first novel by a young author.
He is a promising writer and his story was a good one. We sold it in
fairly satisfactory numbers. We advertised it, “exploited” it--did the
best we could. We invited the author to come and see us. We took him
into our confidence. We have regarded him as our partner, so far as his
book is concerned. We have had a continuous correspondence. We have
exchanged visits a time or two. He paid me the compliment to ask my
advice about his next story. We have become good friends, you see; and
we are as helpful to each other as we know how to be. Now his second
novel is finished. In a letter that came from him to-day he informed me
that another publishing house (I have a great mind to write the name
of it here) has made him a very handsome offer of serial publication,
provided, of course, that they may also publish the book!
Now, if the young author wishes to go browsing in these new pastures,
I have no power or wish to prevent him. I cannot serve him--or do
not care to serve him--if he is unwilling that I should. But I was
nevertheless very grateful when he wrote, “Of course, I prefer you. I
hope you have never thought me unloyal.”
If publishing his first book had been a mere job done under contract,
a commercial job and nothing more--that would have been one thing. But
that’s not publishing. What I did was to give the man the unstinted
service of our house, as publishers, as advisers, as friends. We
print and advertise and sell his books--yes, to the very best of our
ability. But we do more. We try to make friends for his book and for
him throughout the reading world. We all take a personal interest in
him and in his future. We invest our money, our good will, our work,
our experience, our advice, our enthusiasm in him and in his future.
This service (except the investment of money) is not a matter of
contract. It is a personal, friendly service. If the service had not
been successful, he would have had a perfect right to come and say
that he feared that we did not serve him well and to go away from us.
That would have been frank and honorable. Even, since we did succeed
and have become friends, he could still go to another publisher. Yet,
I maintain, if he had, he would have shown himself a man of blunt
appreciation and dull honor. And the publisher who tried to win him
away did a trick unworthy of the profession.
This is my last story about a publisher; and the moral is plain, alike
to publisher and to author.
And now I will tell my last story about an author, the moral of which
also is plain:
There is an author for whom we have published two books, and they have
been uncommonly successful. A little while ago he finished his third
book. He wrote that many publishers had solicited it, that he had had
several handsome offers, that he needed a large sum of money. Would we
make a big advance payment? He disliked to mention the subject, but
business was business after all. Now I had been at that man’s service
for several years. Day and night, he had sought my advice.
Well, we were cajoled into making a big advance payment--about half
as big as he first asked for; and the contract was signed. Two days
later, I met another publisher under conditions which invited free and
friendly talk; and I told him this story. The publisher smiled and
declared that that author had approached him and asked how much he
would give for this very book!
Men and brethren, we live in a commercial age. I suspect that, if
we knew history well enough, we should discover that all ages have
been commercial, and that all our predecessors had experiences like
these. For ungrateful men have written books for many a century, I
have no doubt; and we know that Barabbas was a publisher. But let us
lift an honorable calling to an honorable level. Hence these frank
“confessions.” And, if any publisher wishes to reprint them to send
to authors, or any author to send to publishers, they both have my
permission. For dignity and honor thrive best in an atmosphere of
perfect frankness.
Thinking over the behavior of authors and publishers to one another, I
am obliged to confess that, while the peanut methods that I have just
described are not common enough to cause us to despair, the truth is
that the whole business is yet somewhat unworthily conducted. I mean
that it is conducted on too low a plane. For what is it that we are
engaged in?
The writers of good books are among the greatest benefactors of
society; and the publishers of good books, if publishing be worthily
regarded and properly done, is a necessary and complimentary service.
The publisher is the partner, the helper of the author and his high
servant or minister to the people. It is work worthy of large men and
of high-minded men. Honest men we are--those of us who conduct the
publishing houses that are in good repute. But I sometimes think that
we miss being large men; for we do not do our business in (shall I
say?) a statesmanlike way. We imitate the manners of tradesmen. We
speak in the vocabulary of tradesmen. We are too likely to look at
small projects as important--to pay our heed to the mere tricks of our
trade--and to treat large enterprises, if we have them, as if they were
but a part of the routine. A good book is a Big Thing, a thing to be
thankful to heaven for. It is a great day for any of us when we can put
our imprint on it. Here is a chance for reverence, for something like
consecration. And the man or the woman who can write a good book is a
form of capital infinitely more attractive than a large bank account
or a great publishing “plant.” Yet, if we regard an author simply as
“capital,” we are not worthy to serve him. The relation leads naturally
to a friendly and helpful attitude. We know something about books,
about the book-market, about the public, that no author is likely to
know. With this knowledge we can serve those that write. And with our
knowledge of the author and of his work, we can serve the public. It is
our habit to keep our accounts with authors accurately, to pay them
promptly, to receive them courteously when they call, to answer their
letters politely and sometimes to bore them with formal dinners at our
clubs, before they sail for Europe. But how many of us really know
the intellectual life of any author whose books we print and supply a
stimulus to his best plans?
And the authors? How little they know about us or about publishing!
They seem to select publishers by whims and not often by knowledge. I
know a writer of good books who is at this moment seeking his third
publisher. One of the others failed. The other displeased him. And now
he is thinking of giving his next book to a third publisher who also
will fail within five years, or I am no prophet. Yet I am hindered by
courtesy from telling him so. Why the man has not by this time found
a personality among the publishers who has a soundly constructed
business and at the same time a helpful intellectual appreciation of
his work, I cannot understand. He, too, is looking at a great matter in
a small way.
Therefore I am led to write down these rules for an author to follow
when he looks for a publisher:
Find out whether the publishing house that you have in mind be
financially sound. The commercial agencies will tell you, or will tell
any commercial friend who may make inquiry for you. And find out who
the real owners of the house are.
Then find out who conducts it. If it is conducted by a lot of hired
“literary” men, avoid it. They are, most of them, men who have failed
at authorship; they “read” and “advise” for salaries; and most of them
know nothing about the houses that they serve. They are not principals,
but (as Henry George once called them) “literary operatives.” I mean to
say nothing harsh about a well-meaning, hard-working class of men. But
if you have a good book, you wish to find not a “literary operative,”
but a real publisher.
Having found a real publisher, you will expect him to read your book
himself. I am assuming that you have an important book. When he has
read it, he will talk to you about it frankly. When I say frankly, I
mean frankly. If he is himself a real man and knows men and books, he
will not retail hack literary phrases to you. He will talk good English
and good sense straight out of his intelligence to your intelligence,
with no nonsense such as reviewers write in the “literary” magazines.
He will become your intellectual friend.
Having found such a man, give him your book and leave him to work out
the details of publishing. He will be proud to serve you. You will
discover as your acquaintance ripens, that he has your whole career as
a writer in his mind and plans. He will shape his whole publishing
activities to your development and to the development of other writers
like you.
Then--if you are capable of writing great books--you will discover
that you have set only natural forces at work for your growth and for
your publisher’s growth; and the little artificial tricks of the trade
whereby a flashy story has a “run”--into swift oblivion--will pass from
your mind and from his. You will both be doing your best work.
After all, the authors of any generation generally have the publishers
that they deserve to have; and this axiom is reversible. For my part,
while I am as glad as Podunk, Exploitem & Company to have novels
that will sell 100,000 copies, provided they give clean and decent
amusement, I take no permanent interest in anything that comes this
month and goes the next; nor does any serious man. My wish and aim
is to become a helpful partner of some of the men and women of my
generation who can, by their writings, lay the great democracy that we
all serve under obligations to them for a new impulse. By serving them,
I, too, serve my country and my time. And, when I say that this is my
aim and wish, I could say with equal truth that it is the aim and wish
of every other real publisher. But, as every good physician constantly
wonders at the ignorance and credulity of otherwise sensible men who
seek quacks, so I wonder at the simplicity of many respectable writers
of books in seeking publishers. Of downright quacks in the publishing
world, there are not many. But there are incompetents a-plenty and a
fair share of adventurers.
We shall both--authors and publishers--get the proper cue if we regard
the swarming, eager democracy all about us as a mass of constantly
rising men and women, ambitious to grow, with the same higher impulses
that we feel in our best moods; and if we interpret our duty as the
high privilege of ministering to these higher impulses and not to their
lower senses, without commercialism on one side and without academicism
on the other, men among men, worthy among the worthy, we may make our
calling under such a conception a calling that leads.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not
changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
Redundant chapter titles were removed by Transcriber.
End of Project Gutenberg's A Publisher's Confession, by Walter Hines Page