CHAPTER XPLAIN 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.
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 publisherscame 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.â€
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 inhis 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 storyabout 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 askedhow 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 todespair, 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 payour 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 businessand 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 awell-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 mindand 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 “runâ€â€”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 tobecome 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 thesame 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.