American publishing houses. With their very large lists of new books
they contrive to avoid, as much as possible, fixed publication dates.
While their rivals are pinning themselves fast six months ahead, these
publishers are moving largely but conditionally six and nine months
ahead, and less largely but with swift certainty three months, two
months, even one month from the passing moment. And they are absolutely
right and profit by their rightness. For this reason: Everything that
is printed has in it an element of that timeliness, that ephemerality
if you like but also that widening ripple of human interest which is
the unique essence of what we call “news.” This quality is present, in
a perceptible amount, even in the most serious sort of printed matter.
Let us take, as an example, Darwin’s _Origin of Species_. Oh! exclaims
the reader, there surely is a book with no ephemerality about it! No?
But there was an immense quantity of just that in its publication.
It came at the right hour. Fifty years earlier it would have gone
unnoticed. To-day it is transcended by a body of biological knowledge
that Darwin knew not.
Fifty years, one way or the other, would have made a vast difference in
the reception, the import, the influence of even so epochal a book as
_The Origin of Species_. Now a little reflection will show that, in the
case of lesser books, the matter of time is far more sharply important.
Darwin’s book was so massive that ten or twenty years either way might
not have mattered. But in such a case as John Spargo’s _Bolshevism_ a
few months may matter. In the case of _Mr. Britling_ the month as well
as the year mattered vitally. Time is everything, in the fate of many
a book, even as in the fate of a magazine article, a poem, an essay, a
short story. Arthur Guy Empey was on the very hour with _Over the Top_;
but the appearance of his _Tales from a Dugout_ a few days after the
signing of the armistice on November 11, 1918, was one of the minor
tragedies of the war.
Therefore the publisher who can, as nearly as human and mechanical
conditions permit, preserve flexibility in his publishing plans, has
a very great advantage over inelastic competitors. That iron-clad
arrangements at half year ahead can be avoided the methods of two of
the most important American houses demonstrate. Either can get out a
book on a month’s notice. More than once in a season this spells the
difference between a sale of 5,000 and one of 15,000 copies--that is,
between not much more than “breaking even” and making a handsome profit.
8
Every book that is published requires advertising though perhaps
no two books call for advertising in just the same way. One of
the best American publishing houses figures certain sums for
advertising--whatever form it may take--in its costs of manufacture
and then the individual volumes have to take each their chances of
getting, each, its proper share of the money. Other houses have similar
unsatisfactory devices for providing an advertising fund. The result is
too often not unlike the revolving fund with which American railways
were furnished by Congress--it revolved so fast that there wasn’t
enough to go round long.
A very big publishing house does differently. To the cost of
manufacture of each book is added a specific, flat and appropriate sum
of money to advertise that particular book. The price of the book is
fixed accordingly. When the book is published there is a definite sum
ready to advertise it. No book goes unadvertised. If the book “catches
on” there is no trouble, naturally, about more advertising money; if
it does not sell the advertising of it stops when the money set aside
has been exhausted and the publishers take their loss with a clear
conscience; they have done their duty by the book. It may be added that
this policy has always paid. Combined with other distinctive methods it
has put the house which adopted it in the front rank.
9
Whether to publish a small, carefully selected list of books in a
season or a large and comprehensive list is not wholly decided by the
capital at the publisher’s command. Despite the doubling of all costs
of book manufacture, publishing is not yet an enterprise which requires
a great amount of capital, as compared with other industries of
corresponding volume. The older a publishing house the more likely it
is to restrict its list of new books. It has more to lose and less to
gain by taking a great number of risks in new publications. At the same
time it is subjected to severe competition because the capital required
to become a book publisher is not large. Hence much caution, too much,
no doubt, in many cases and every season. Still, promising manuscripts
are lamentably few. “Look at the stuff that gets published,” is the
classic demonstration of the case.
The older the house, the stronger its already accumulated list, the
more conservative, naturally, it becomes, the less inclined to play
with loaded dice in the shape of manuscripts. Yet a policy of extreme
caution and conservatism is more dangerous and deadly than a dash of
the gambler’s makeup. Two poor seasons together are noticed by the
trade; four poor seasons together may put a house badly behind. A
season with ten books only, all good, all selling moderately well,
is perhaps more meritorious and more valuable in the long run than
a season with thirty books, nearly all poor except for one or two
sensational successes. But the fellow who brings out the thirty books
and has one or two decided best sellers is the fellow who will make
large profits, attract attention and acquire prestige. It is far
better to try everything you can that seems to have “a chance” than to
miss something awfully good. And, provided you drop the bad potatoes
quickly, it will pay you better in the end.
There _must_ be a big success somewhere on your list. A row of
respectable and undistinguished books is the most serious of defeats.
10
Suppose you were a book publisher and had put out a novel or two by
Author A. with excellent results on the profit side of the ledger.
Author A. is plainly a valuable property, like a copper mine in war
time. A.’s third manuscript comes along in due time. It is entirely
different from the first two so-successful novels; it is pretty certain
to disappoint A.’s “audience.” You canvass the subject with A., who
can’t “see” your arguments and suggestions. It comes to this: Either
you publish the third novel or you lose A. Which, darling reader, would
you, if you were the publisher, do? Would you choose the lady and _The
Tiger_?
You are neatly started as a book publisher. You can’t get advance sales
for your productions (to borrow a term from the theatre). You go to
Memphis and Syracuse and interview booksellers. They say to you: “For
heaven’s sake, get authors whose names mean something! Why should we
stock fiction by Horatius Hotaling when we can dispose of 125 copies of
E. Phillips Oppenheim’s latest in ten days from publication?” Returning
thoughtfully to New York, you happen to meet a Celebrated Author.
Toward the close of luncheon at the Brevoort he offers to let you have
a book of short stories. One of them (it will be the title-story, of
course) was published in the _Saturday Evening Post_, bringing to Mr.
Lorimer, the editor, 2,500 letters and 117 telegrams of evenly divided
praise and condemnation. Short stories are a stiff proposition; but the
Celebrated Author has a name that will insure a certain advance sale
and a fame that will insure reviewers’ attention. For you to become his
publisher will be as prestigious as it is adventitious.
From ethical and other motives, you seek out the C. A.’s present
publisher--old, well-established house--and inquire if Octavo &
Duodecimo will have any objection to your publishing the C. A.’s book
of tales. Mr. Octavo replies in friendly accents:
“Not a bit! Not a bit! Go to it! However, we’ve lent ... (the C. A.)
$2,500 at one time or another in advance moneys on a projected novel.
Travel as far as you like with him, but remember that he can’t give you
a novel until he has given us one or has repaid that $2,500.”
What to do? ’Tis indeed a pretty problem. If you pay Octavo & Duodecimo
$2,500 you can have the C. A.’s next novel--worth several times as much
as any book of tales, at the least. On the other hand, there is no
certainty that the C. A. will deliver you the manuscript of a novel. He
has been going to deliver it to Octavo & Duodecimo for three years. And
you can’t afford to tie up $2,500 on the chance that he’ll do for you
what he hasn’t done for them. Because $2,500 is, to you, a lot of money.
In the particular instance where this happened (except for details, we
narrate an actual occurrence) the beginning publisher went ahead and
published the book of tales, and afterward another book of tales, and
let Octavo & Duodecimo keep their option on the C. A.’s next novel, if
he ever writes any. The probabilities are that the C. A. will write
short stories for the rest of his life rather than deliver a novel
from which he will receive not one cent until $2,500 has been deducted
from the royalties.
11
English authors are keenest on advance money. The English writer who
will undertake to do a book without some cash in hand before putting
pen to paper is a great rarity. An American publisher who wants
English manuscripts and goes to London without his checkbook won’t
get anywhere. A little real money will go far. It will be almost
unnecessary for the publisher who has it to entrain for those country
houses where English novelists drink tea and train roses. Kent,
Sussex, Norfolk, Yorkshire, Wessex, &c., will go down to London. Mr.
Britling will motor into town to talk about a contract. All the London
clubs will be named as rendezvous. Visiting cards will reach the
publisher’s hotel, signifying the advent of Mr. Percival Fotheringay
of Houndsditch, Bayswater, Wapping Old Stairs, London, B. C. Ah, yes,
Fotheringay; wonderful stories of Whitechapel and the East End, really!
Knows the people--what?
It has to be said that advances on books seem to retard their delivery.
We have in mind a famous English author (though he might as well be
American, so far as this particular point is concerned) who got an
advance of $500 (wasn’t it?) some years ago from Quarto & Folio--on a
book of essays. Quarto & Folio have carried that title in their spring
and fall catalogues of forthcoming books ever since. Spring and fall
they despair afresh. Daylight saving did nothing to help them--an hour
gained was a mere bagatelle in the cycles of time through which _Fads
and Fatalities_ keeps moving in a regular and always equidistant orbit.
If some day the League of Nations shall ordain that the calendar be set
ahead six months Quarto & Folio may get the completed manuscript of
_Fads and Fatalities_.
American authors are much less insistent on advance payments than their
cousins 3,000 miles removed. A foremost American publishing house has
two inflexible rules: No advance payments and no verdict on uncompleted
manuscripts. Inflexible--but it is to be suspected that though this
house never bends the rule there are times when it has to break it.
What won’t bend must break. There are a few authors for whom any
publisher will do anything except go to jail. Probably you would make
the same extensive efforts to retain your exclusive rights in a South
African diamond digging which had already produced a bunch of Kohinoors.
12
There is a gentleman’s agreement among publishers, arrived at some
years back, not to indulge in cutthroat competition for each other’s
authors. This ethical principle, like most ethical principles now
existing, is dictated quite as much by considerations of keeping a
whole skin as by a sense of professional honor. There are some men in
the book publishing business whose honorable standards have a respect
for the other fellow’s property first among their Fourteen Points.
There are others who are best controlled by a knowledge that to do
so-and-so would be very unhealthy for themselves.
The agreement, like most unwritten laws, is interpreted with various
shadings. Some of these are subtle and some of them are not. It is
variously applied by different men in different cases, sometimes
unquestionably and sometimes doubtfully. But in the main it is pretty
extensively and strictly upheld, in spirit as in letter.
How far it transgresses authors’ privileges or limits authors’
opportunities would be difficult to say. In the nature of the case, any
such understanding must operate to some extent to lessen the chances
of an author receiving the highest possible compensation for his work.
Whether this is offset by the favors and concessions, pecuniary and
otherwise, made to an author by a publisher to whom he adheres, can’t
be settled. The relation of author and publisher, at best, calls for,
and generally elicits, striking displays of loyalty on both sides.
Particularly among Americans, the most idealistic people on earth.
In its practical working this publishers’ understanding operates to
prevent any publisher “approaching” an author who has an accepted
publisher of his books. Unless you, as a publisher, are yourself
approached by Author B., whose several books have been brought out by
Publisher C., you are theoretically bound hand and foot. And even if
Author B. comes to you there are circumstances under which you may
well find it desirable to talk B.’s proposal over with C., hitherto
his publisher. After that talk you may wish B. were in Halifax. If
everybody told the truth matters would be greatly simplified. Or would
they?
If you hear that Author D., who writes very good sellers, is
dissatisfied with Publisher F., what is your duty in the circumstances?
Author D. may not come to you, for there are many publishers for such
as he to choose from. Shall we say it is your duty to acquaint D.,
indirectly perhaps, with the manifest advantages of bringing you his
next novel? We’ll say so.
Whatever publishers agree to, authors are free. And every publisher
knows how easy it is to lose an author. Why, they leave you like that!
(Business of snapping fingers.) And for the lightest reasons! (Register
pain or maybe mournfulness.) If D. W. Griffith wanted to make a Movie
of a Publisher Losing an Author he would find the action too swift for
the camera to record. Might as well try to film _The Birth of a Notion_.
13
One of the most fascinating mysteries about publishers, at least
to authors, is the method or methods by which they determine the
availability of manuscripts. Fine word, availability. Noncommittal and
all that. It has no taint of infallibility--which is the last attribute
a publisher makes pretensions to.
There are places where one man decides whether a manuscript will do and
there are places where it takes practically the whole clerical force
and several plebiscites to accept or reject the author’s offering.
One house which stands in the front rank in this country accepts and
rejects mainly on the verdicts of outsiders--specialists, however, in
various fields. Another foremost publishing house has a special test
for “popular” novels in manuscript. An extra ration of chewing gum is
served out to all the stenographers and they are turned loose on the
type-written pages. If they react well the firm signs a contract and
prints a first edition of from 5,000 to 25,000 copies, depending on
whether it is a first novel or not and the precise comments of the
girls at page 378.
Always the sales manager reads the manuscript, if it is at all
seriously considered. What he says has much weight. He’s the boy who
will have to sell the book to the trade and unless he can see things in
it, or can be got to, there is practically no hope despite Dr. Munyon’s
index finger.
Recently a publishing house of national reputation has done a useful
thing--we are not prepared to say it is wholly new--by establishing
a liaison officer. This person does not pass on manuscripts, unless
incidentally by way of offering his verdict to be considered with
the verdicts of other department heads. But once a manuscript has
been accepted by the house it goes straight to this man who reads it
intensively and sets down, on separate sheets, everything about it that
might be useful to (a) the advertising manager, (b) the sales manager
and his force, and (c) the editorial people handling the firm’s book
publicity effort.
14
A little knowledge of book publishing teaches immense humility. The
number of known instances in which experienced publishers have erred in
judgment is large. Authors always like to hear of these. But too much
must not be deduced from them. Every one has heard of the rejection
of Henry Sydnor Harrison’s novel _Queed_. Many have heard of the
publisher who decided not to “do” Vicente Blasco Ibañez’s _The Four
Horsemen of the Apocalypse_. There was more than one of him, by the
way, and in each case he had an exceedingly bad translation to take
or reject (we are told), the only worthy translation, apparently,
being that which was brought out with such sensational success in the
early fall of 1918. A publisher lost _Spoon River Anthology_ because
of a delay in acceptance--he wanted the opinion of a confrere not
easily reached. For every publisher’s mistake of this sort there could
probably be cited an instance of perspicacity much more striking. Such
was the acceptance of Edward Lucas White’s _El Supremo_ after many
rejections. And how about the publisher who accepted _Queed_?
15
Let us conclude these haphazard and very likely unhelpful musings on an
endless subject by telling a true story.
In the spring of 1919 one of the principal publishing houses in America
and England undertook the publication of a very unusual sort of a
novel, semi-autobiographical, a work of love and leisure by a man who
had gained distinction as an executive. It was a fine piece of work,
though strange; had a delightful reminiscential quality. The book was
made up, a first edition of moderate size printed and bound. It was
not till this had been done and the book was ready to place on sale
that the head of this publishing house had an opportunity to read it.
The Head is a veteran publisher famous for his prescience in the matter
of manuscripts and for honorable dealings.
He read the book through and was charmed by it; he looked at the book
and was unhappy. He sent for everybody who had had to do with the
making of this book. He held up his copy and fluttered pages and said,
in effect:
“This has been done all wrong. Here is a book of quite exceptional
quality. I don’t think it will sell. Only moderately, though perhaps
rather steadily for some years to come. It won’t make us money. To
speak of. But it deserves, intrinsically, better treatment. Better
binding. This is only ordinary six-months’-selling novel binding. It
deserves larger type. Type with a more beautiful face. Fewer lines to
the page. Lovelier dress from cover to cover.
“Throw away the edition that has been printed. Destroy it or something.
At least, hide it. Don’t let any of it get out. For this has been done
wrong, all wrong. Do it over.”
So they went away from his presence and did it right. It meant throwing
away about $2,000. Or was it a $2,000 investment in the good opinion of
people who buy, read and love books?
THE SECRET OF THE BEST SELLER
VII
THE SECRET OF THE BEST SELLER
By “best seller” we may mean one of several things. Dr. Emmett Holt’s
_Care and Feeding of Children_, of which the fifty-eighth edition
was printed in the spring of 1919, is one kind of best seller; Owen
Wister’s _The Virginian_ is quite another. The number of editions
of a book is a very uncertain indication of sales to a person not
familiar with book publishing. Editions may consist of as few as 500
copies or as many as 25,000 or even 50,000. The advance sale of Gene
Stratton-Porter’s _A Daughter of the Land_ was, if we recall the figure
exactly, 150,000 copies. These, therefore, were printed and distributed
by the day when the book was placed on sale, or shortly thereafter. To
call this the “first edition” would be rather meaningless.
One thousand copies of a book of poems--unless it be an anthology--is a
large edition indeed. But not for Edgar Guest, whose books sell in the
tens of thousands. The sale, within a couple of years, of 31,000 copies
of the poems of Alan Seeger was phenomenal.
The first book of essays of an American writer sold 6,000 copies within
six months of its publication. This upset most precedents of the
bookselling trade. The author’s royalties may have been $1,125. A few
hundred dollars should be added to represent money received for the
casual publication of the essays in magazines before their appearance
in the book. Of course the volume did not stop selling at the end of
six months.
Compare these figures, however, with the income of one of the most
popular American novelists. A single check for $75,000. Total payments,
over a period of fifteen years, of $750,000 to $1,000,000. Yet it is
doubtful if the books of this novelist reached more than 65 per cent.
of their possible audience.
It is a moderate estimate, in our opinion, that most books intended
for the “general reader,” whether fiction or not, do not reach more
than one-quarter of the whole body of readers each might attain. With
the proper machinery of publicity and merchandising book sales in the
United States could be quadrupled. We share this opinion with Harry
Blackman Sell of the Chicago _Daily News_ and were interested to
find it independently confirmed by James H. Collins who, writing in
the _Saturday Evening Post_ of May 3, 1919, under the heading _When
Merchandise Sells Itself_, said:
“Book publishing is one industry that suffers for lack of retail
outlets. Even the popular novel sells in numbers far below the real
buying power of this nation of readers, because perhaps 25 per cent. of
the public can examine it and buy it at the city bookstores, while it
is never seen by the rest of the public.
“For lack of quantity production based on wide retail distribution the
novel sells for a dollar and a half.
“But for a dollar you can buy a satisfactory watch.
“That is made possible by quantity production. Quantity production of
dollar watches is based on their sale in 50,000 miscellaneous shops,
through the standard stock and the teaching of modern mercantile
methods. Book publishers have made experiments with the dollar novel,
but it sold just about the same number of copies as the $1.50 novel,
because only about so many fiction buyers were reached through the
bookstores. Now the standard-stock idea is being applied to books, with
assortments of 50 or 100 proved titles carried by the druggist and
stationer.”
2
Speaking rather offhandedly, we are of opinion that not more than two
living American writers of fiction have achieved anything like a 100
per cent. sale of their books. These are Harold Bell Wright and Gene
Stratton-Porter.
I am indebted to Mr. Frank K. Reilly, president of the Reilly & Lee
Company, Chicago, selling agents for the original editions of all Mr.
Wright’s books, for the following figures:
“We began,” wrote Mr. Reilly, “with _That Printer of Udell’s_--selling,
as I remember the figures, about 20,000. Then _The Shepherd of the
Hills_--about 100,000, I think. Then the others in fast growing
quantities. For _The Winning of Barbara Worth_ we took four orders
in advance which totalled nearly 200,000 copies. On _When a Man’s a
Man_ we took the biggest single order ever placed for a novel at full
price--that is, a cloth-bound, ‘regular’ $1.35 book--250,000 copies
from the Western News Company. The advance sale of this 1916 book was
over 465,000.”
Mr. Reilly wrote at the beginning of March, 1919, from French Lick,
Indiana. At that time Mr. Wright’s publishers had in hand a novel,
_The Re-Creation of Brian Kent_, published August 21, 1919. They had
arranged for a first printing of 750,000 copies and were as certain of
selling 500,000 copies before August 1 as you are of going to sleep
some time in the next twenty-four hours. It was necessary to make
preparations for the sale of 1,000,000 copies of the new novel before
August 21, 1920.
The sale of 1,000,000 copies of _The Re-Creation of Brian Kent_
within a year of publication may be said to achieve a 100 per cent.
circulation so far as existing book merchandising facilities allow.