THE PUBLISHER THE PUBLISHER BY Robert Sterling Yard BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY (arbe RibECjSttic prcfjS Cambritige COPYRIGHT, I9I3, BY ROBERT STERLING Y'ARD ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published September iqij TO MY WIFE WHOSE DEVOTION HAS BEEN MY INSPIRATION, WHOSE FAITH HAS BEEN MY FORTRESS OF DEFENSE 268683 CONTENTS I. "The Worst Business in the World" i II. What makes a Book Sell • • • 37 III. A Dollar Down and a Dollar a Minute 87 IV. Publisher, Author, and the Devil 139 THE WORST BUSINESS IN THE WORLD" THE PUBLISHER "THE WORST BUSINESS IN THE WORLD" A BRILLIANT young reader who had "picked" a dozen successes in half as many seasons, including a couple of " best sellers," had determined to start in busi- ness for himself and was seeking capital. After many months he interested a couple of rich men. " But is it a good business ? " they asked. "Good? I should say so!" replied the enthusiastic youngster. " It is the most fascinating thing in the wide world. Its associations are nothing short of noble, and its problems call for the best that the shrewdest and most cultivated man has in him. The man who deals in fabrics THE PUBLISHER or foodstuffs works all day, so that he may live evenings and holida3-s; but the publisher lives — really lives — in the highest sense of the word, in his work day by day. Why — " "But," interrupted his capitalists, "that's your part of it, and we don't wonder that you love the business; but where do we come in? What chance have we to earn twenty per cent on our investment? for we must have a bait as good as that to tempt us to undertake the risks of starting a brand-new enter- prise." "Well," said the young publisher, "I can satisfy you there. Mr. Smith takes eighty-five thousand a year out of his business in dividends, besides his salary, which must be handsome. Mr. Jones has built up in ten years a business of a mil- lion and a half a 3'ear. Mr. Robinson does a business of four millions a year. Mr. Jackson has built up a business of four hundred thousand in a quarter of a cen- 4 THE WORST BUSIN'ESS tury which is said to net a hundred thou- sand a year. I don't know any publisher of any account at all who is n't prosper- ous — except a couple of very conspicu- ous houses which came to grief by bad management in their second generations; but they were very prosperous under their founders and doubtless will be again, with their fine lists. Why don't you ask the publishers themselves?" The capitalists did so. " General book-publishing ? " asked Mr. Smith. "Financially speaking, it's the poorest business in the world." " Well," said Mr. Jones reflectively, " if you 've got hold of a genius, go ahead. Every publishing business needs a genius. But why don't you try mining stocks?" " Get big bulk and you '11 make money," said Mr. Robinson, " provided you don't lose your boots trying to get your bulk. Pare expenses to the half-cent and never pay a twelve-hundred-dollar salary if you can hire for a thousand. Be your own 5 THE PUBLISHER axeman, so you '11 be sure. Otherwise there 's nothing in books." " Trade books alone ? " asked Mr. Jack- son. " It 's the worst business in the world. I hope you 've got hogsheads of money. Better go into textbooks. Fiction, did you say? Yes, there's money made in novels, they tell me. So there is in cop- per. I 've heard of fortunes made in copper. But then, I 'm no speculator. If I were I think I 'd prefer copper." Yet these men were all successful. However, let us consider them indi- vidually. Mr. Smith is a distinguished general publisher, but he also owns a highly profitable magazine, a highly profitable schoolbook business, a highly profitable subscription business, a retail business, a rare-book business, and several other minor businesses in books built up around his central publishing business and sup- porting it like chapels around the cathe- dral choir, each dovetailed into each other 6 THE WORST BUSINESS and into the central core, making a busi- ness edifice beautiful in proportions and a fortress for strength. And Mr. Jones's general publishing business is supported by three handsomely profitable magazines, besides a score of minor undertakings which make, all to- gether, for huge, aggressive power. Be- sides which, Mr. Jones is himself his own business genius — a great merchant who would have wrung wealth and power out of any business he had chanced into. And Mr. Robinson inherited a great business, founded in simpler days upon a great English publishing house, and to-day consisting of a union of general publishing with importing and textbook publishing on a large scale — the whole driven forward by a will of steel on a scale of expense so low as to be the won- der even of the publishing world. And Mr. Jackson's is not a general pub- lishing business at all, though most folks think it is, but a highly specialized and 7 THE PUBLISHER developed business in higher textbooks, assisting and assisted by a general pub- lishing department which, thus assisted, is profitable because of its quality and be- cause of the careful skill with which it is handled. The point becomes as clear as sunshine. The "worst business in the world" becomes one of the best in the world when it is propped up on every side by specialized departments sucking in profit from outlying markets ; or when it is com- bined with periodical publication, each department materially assisting the other. It is naturally the hub of an}- publishing combination in which it appears; and, the nearer perfect the surrounding wheel, the greater the possible speed. There are general publishing houses, however, which stand successfully all by themselves. This means bulk business, and bulk business means one of two things — either many years of patient and discriminating list-building, with ample 8 THE WORST BUSINESS capital to build with; or the same result accomplished more quickly by the acqui- sition of the lists of other houses which, for some reason or other — generally lack of profits — elect to drop out of activity. Houghton Mifflin Company is the best American example of the house which has acquired great bulk through slow building. Its list goes back to the begin- ning of New England literature and its catalogue to-day contains the lifework of the most celebrated of the earlier Ameri- can writers. This magnificent list, the ac- cumulation of generations, alone would support a great house to-day without the flourishing educational and subscription departments which have been added in recent years. Another Boston house, Little, Brown & Company, is as good an example as any of the other manner of bulk-getting. Starting with an old and excellent busi- ness in lawbooks, the house never at- tained real success in general publishing 9 THE PUBLISHER until it acquired the fine list which it be- came possible to purchase when Roberts Brothers, of Boston, decided that there was not enough money in publishing to tempt them to go any further. With this valuable addition, the house has ever since built aggressively and profitably. , Speaking generally, it may be said to require about one hundred and fifty thou- sand dollars gross receipts yearly to sup- port the simplest general publishing busi- ness, unaided by special departments in other publishing fields; at two hundred thousand dollars there will be profit, and at four hundred thousand prosperity. „ These figures — even the minimum — are not so easy to get, however. The new publisher finds he must sell a great many books to aggregate even a hundred and fifty thousand dollars; and, unless a goodly proportion of the income repre- sents " list" — that is, formerl}' published books which have already paid back their cost of publication and now are selling lO THE WORST BUSINESS well on a basis of real profit — he can't expect to break even. One of the most distinguished publish- ers in America maintained for years that he did not want "best sellers." "They are too expensive," he said. "I can't afford them." When I seriously challenged him one day to prove his assertion, he said : — "It is easily proved. Here — let us make some figures. Let us assume a novel of four hundred pages, illustrated with draw- ings by one of the high-priced illustrators. Let us assume that it eventually sells one hundred thousand copies and that our first edition was ten thousand. It will figure up something like this: — Five original drawings, at $150 . . . $ 750 Composition and plates, at $1 a page . . 400 Cover dies 25 Paper for 10,000 copies 500 Printing text and illustrations .... 300 Binding 10,000, at 1 1 cents iioo Total $3075 Or thirty and three quarter cents a book. II THE PUBLISHER " Succeeding printings will cost, at the same rate, — less, of course, the first costs, drawings, plates and dies, — nineteen cents a book; or an average of twenty and one tenth cents a book for the total sale. The showing then will be: — Cost of manufacture $0,201 Author's royalty, at 20 per cent of price, $1.50 30 Cost of doing business, 28 per cent of income 224 Special advertising campaign 05 $0^75 Deducted from average price received . .So Leaves average net profit on each book . $0,025 "If the 'best seller' scores a hundred thousand in the course of its run — say, two 3'ears — the total net profit will be twenty-five hundred dollars. I 'm quite aware that most persons believe that the publisher gets many times that profit out of it; but these are the facts. To get the author's returns, of course, you have only to multiply the total sale by the royalty. 12 THE WORST BUSINESS In the above instance it would be thirty thousand dollars." *' So you see there 's no profit in it for us — and what 's the use ? Besides yield- ing no profit, it actually hogs the whole attention of the house to the exclusion of the other and reall}' important books — the books that, bulked together, really make profit, and the books that carry the dignity and the prestige and the power and the influence of the house. It eclipses them all. Salesmen strive to land quanti- ties of the best seller because it is a showy business and everybody 's talking about it. Every one in the house runs about re- porting the last sale of twenty-five hun- dred copies just in by wire. The adver- tising man puts the wretched thing at the top of every ad, and grows scornful of the lesser sellers that constitute our real power. What do they care that the big sale brings no profit .f* The cornet screams and the crowd chuck up their hats! The lust of record-making has the whole es- 13 THE PUBLISHER tablishment by the throat; we have ceased to be a serious business house in our wild rush for the top of the 'best sellers ' list in the Saturday papers. No more for me." Now it cannot be denied that there was a great deal of solid sense in this point of view, especially at the time it was uttered, some ten years or more ago, just before the collapse of the "craz}' period," when publishers of all degrees were spending their profits in rash advertising under the temporary delusion that " books are like everything else; advertise enough and they '11 sell any amount." In those days, too, royalties leaped tb dangerous levels. " Large sales, small profits," became the cry. But, with the collapse of the theory that advertising could be made to sell anything, twenty per cent once more looked very large to publishers. To-day it is again the maxi- mum royalty under which publishers can do business at all, and therefore to be considered only after goodly thousands THE WORST BUSINESS have been marketed at fifteen per cent to give the publisher a chance to turn around with his advertising. Beginners' novels should always start at ten per cent or less. Since then conditions have been much bettered, as we shall see; but even be- fore the betterment the publisher quoted greatly modified his point of view. He found that, even without profit, a large seller is a mighty good thing to possess. In the first place, it is the best possible " trade leader." The salesman who has a heavy selling novel on his list is eagerly greeted in every bookshop and finds it much easier to sell down his whole list than if he had no big specialty to make him welcome. I have heard salesmen value this as high as twenty per cent, meaning that the big seller at the top would tend to increase the sales of the rest of the list by that large proportion. The constant re- ordering of the big seller by mail and ex- press by every bookshop, big and little, 15 THE PUBLISHER in the countr}^ keeps the house that pub- lishes it and that house's whole list con- stantly and profitably before the attention of the trade. In the second place, it is the best kind of an " author getter." There is at least one author on your list who is receiving handsome royalties and who consequently is sounding your praises wisely and con- tinuously. Authors of novels besiege the offices of the publishers of a "best seller" under the impression that he possesses some occult power to make novels sell ; at worst, they see his advertising and speak of him admiringly as " a heavy advertiser,*" which is a profitable reputation to possess. Successful authors of all kinds of books are the easier of approach. I have said that profit conditions are better now than ten years ago; but some of the conditions are worse. Paper, print- ing, and binding all cost more now than then. On the other hand, competition in advertising has ceased, publishers having i6 THE WORST BUSINESS learned by costly experience that there is nothing in it to gain and all to lose, and that the old publishing fact that each book has its own natural limit of sale, beyond which it can be advanced by advertising only at a loss, is as much a fact about fic- tion as about any other kind of book. Book-advertising, at its height ten years ago, has rapidly lessened, until now it probably represents as nearly actual value as will ever be realized. The advance of several years ago in the prices of fiction does not help the pub- lisher. That is the bookseller's profit, though it was the publisher who brought it to pass. Perhaps you did not know there had been an advance in the price of novels! Perhaps 3'ou became so used to ad- vances in the prices of everything that you never even noticed that your novels had gone up twenty-five per cent! No one can blame you, of course; for naturally you would have been more 17 THE PUBLISHER likely to notice it if the price had n't gone up! Anyway, it used to be that publishers published the standard novel at a dollar and a half and booksellers sold it at a dol- lar and eight cents. Now publishers pub- lish it at a dollar and thirty-five cents net and booksellers maintain that price; but there is no perceptible increase in the price the bookseller pays the publisher for it. It happened this way: Booksellers were not making enough out of fiction to make it worth their while to feature it, particu- larly as certain cut-rate department stores often sold novels at an actual cash loss for the sake of the advertisement, hoping to draw customers for other departments. The publishers saw the natural retail out- lets for their books threatened with actual obliteration by this destructive competi- tion, and some years ago they com- bined to maintain prices for one year after publication, refusing to sell to those who i8 THE WORST BUSINESS would not agree to do so. The cut-rate department stores shouted "Trust," and a five years' war began, which ended in the defeat of the publishers in the courts, but the sound establishment in practice of the business principle of price mainte- nance. The combination, of course, went permanently out of existence; but the re- tail trade, including the vast majority of the largest and soundest department stores in the country, no longer troubles itself about those cut-rate shops. They may cut all they please and charge their losses to advertising; but they no longer affect the main current of the country's book business. There still remained, however, too little profit in novels to tempt the bookseller to do more than keep a few on his coun- ter. Something had to be done to spur him to real effort. "More profit!" he cried. " Put fiction on the net basis, as other books." And so it came about. 19 THE PUBLISHER However, there was no combination of publishers now; nor could there be. The experiment must be made by individuals; and by and by one big house tried a book or two at a dollar and thirty-five cents net, that word "net" meaning that the published price was to be maintained for a year. It "went" all right. There was no complaint from the public and no dropping off in sales. Other publishers tried the experiment, and it was found that some of the higher-priced novels outsold with ease the old-priced novels lying alongside them on the same counter. Purchasers seemed to buy what they wanted, irrespective of price. Would it retard a big seller ? That finally became the question. Houghton Mifflin Company, one of the boldest experimenters in the new system, ventured a big historical novel at a dol- lar and forty cents net. Some publishers thought they were taking great chances. The public did not think so, however. 20 THE WORST BUSINESS The novel bounded into first place from the start. It scored its first hundred thou- sand on its first wind. The "net novel" was established. The price of fiction was definitely and permanently raised. With- in two years every publisher swung into line and almost every novel is now put out at the net price. Though the bookseller gets practically all the increase from this advance in price, there is a slight saving to the publisher in royalty, which makes an appreciable difference to him. Nor does the author lose anything in the end, because fiction has become really profitable to the book- seller, at last — it really wasn't before — and he actually sells a great many more copies than he used to under the old system. Another new source of profit is the business in cheap editions that has grown up within the last dozen years. There are houses whose whole business is to get a secondary sale of novels, and a fifty-cent 21 THE PUBLISHER retail price, which have made real suc- cesses at the higher price. The publisher of the successful novel, two years after it first appears on the market, makes his deal with the cheap- edition man, loaning him the plates for a royalty of ten cents for each book printed from them. Of this, five cents goes to the author in lieu of royalty. The cheap- edition man prints in large editions, using the cheapest possible paper and a greatly cheapened binding. Editions of twenty- five thousand cost him, say, fifteen cents a book to manufacture, or, including his ten cents to the publisher, twenty-five' cents a book. He sells chiefly to depart- ment stores at thirty-five cents, making a profit of ten cents for himself. The de- partment store sells to the public at forty- five or fifty cents. Regular bookshops often handle these books in large num- bers also, and it frequently happens that you can buy at the same counter two dif- ferent editions of the same famous old 22 THE WORST BUSINESS novel — both well printed from the same plates — one for fifty cents and the other for a dollar eight. Curiously, the advent of the cheap edi- tion two or more years after original publi- cation does not very greatly affect the con- tinued sale of the original higher-priced edition. They sell together for years. To-day, therefore, the publisher's final figures for a "best seller" of one hundred thousand initial circulation would look something like this: — Cost of manufacture $0,221 Royalty, at 20 per cent .270 Cost of doing business, 28 per cent of in- come ,224 Deduct from average price received .Soo Leaves average net profit on each book $0,085 Net profit on 100,000 sold $8,500 Cheap edition, 50,000 copies at 5 cents a book, less 28 per cent for cost of doing business 1,800 Total net profit $10,300 23 THE PUBLISHER Which is a good deal better than in the middle of the "crazy period" when, from their advertising, the public had a right to think that publishers were making real fortunes. It is interesting, by the way, to compare the publisher's earnings with those of the author, which, in this instance, including the return from the cheap edition, would be twent3^-nine thousand five hundred dollars. This is gross, of course; but, as- suming that it took a year for the author to write the novel and that his living ex- penses for the period were five thousand dollars, you have as his net profit twenty-' four thousand five hundred dollars. Not bad, is it? For your modern novelist, be it noted right here, — I meanyour successful novel- ist, — is really a magnate compared with his publisher. One popular novelist re- ceives twenty thousand dollars from a magazine for the serial rights of a new novel, and his book publisher afterward THE WORST BUSINESS sells something between one and two hun- dred thousand copies at full price and full royalty, and possibly a hundred thousand of the cheap edition at five cents royalty. You can calculate for 3'ourself what one novel — say, every other year — probably brings him. As for the myriad novelists of lesser degree — but all that is quite "another story." You will also note, of course, that I have made in the above table no allow- ance for special advertising, the "Cost of doing business " item being now supposed to cover a normal and sufficient advertise- ment of the book. As a matter of fact, some publishers still cannot wholly re- sist the undue "lure of the ad," and run their costs higher than the ideal percent- age I have used in the illustration. To offset this, the manufacturing item can be considerably reduced by leaving out illustrations and cheapening paper and binding. _ "What a stunning business ! " exclaims 25 THE PUBLISHER a young man, looking over my shoulder at this point. "I 'd no idea publishing was so profitable! Haifa dozen novels is all you need, is n't it?" Half a dozen best sellers — yes; but a sale of five thousand is a successful sale, as novels go, while one of ten thousand is an excellent success. The vast majority of novels, however, which enter the market heavily freighted with authors' and publishers' hopes, are fortunate if they sell two or three thou- sand each and return their cash invest- ment without interest. Several years ago I counted nineteen new novels on the spring list of a conspicuous publisher and at Christmas learned that only one of them had sold out its first slender edition. Think of the capital tied up in that losing bunch! That is the other side of this fiction business. Those houses that make a success of fiction do so after long study and the most careful development of their oppor- 26 THE WORST BUSINESS tunities. The Century Company's amaz- ingly popular dollar series, beginning with " Mrs. Wiggs " and running down through " The Lady of the Decoration," " Uncle William," and others to " Molly Make-Believe," is the result of the most careful and thoughtful study of the first chance success. And publishers gener- ally, by patient selection and develop- ment, gather together in the years small groups of highly popular novelists, round whose books they group the lesser sellers and the great mob of new writers they hope — quite as ardently as the writers themselves — will develop some day from experiments, more or less costly, into money-makers — and, mayhap, some of them good sellers. And this is the fiction business — ab- sorbingly interesting, exciting enough, very highly speculative and, at its best and as a whole, not very profitable. In view of which, those "Book Trust" advertisements of the cut-price depart- 27 THE PUBLISHER ment stores, attacking publishers as *' Fiction Barons," are funny, are n't they? Where, then, you ask, is the money in publishing? Since those glittering best sellers that fill the public eye and furnish the public tongue with book patter are not the publishers' great prizes, what, in the name of Midas, are? The so-called " list" books, however, are the heavy infantry, the heavy artillery — the main body of the publishing army. Here is headquarters. Here is where and how the publisher lives. Though some novels and occasional gift books pass into the backlog class by reason of staying qualities not possessed by the class in general, the vast majority are books of se- rious purpose — biography, history, phi- losoph3% nature, literature, sport, educa- tion — the whole realm of human thought. Books of this kind are highly prized for several reasons. First, you can de- pend upon their profitable sale, even though it is scattered over ten or twenty 28 THE WORST BUSINESS years. Second, there being less risk than with fiction, you are not obliged to give the bookseller unnatural discounts. Third, there being little chance of a rapid sale, you do not have other publishers compet- ing with you in royalties. " Royalties ex- ceeding ten per cent are immoral," Henry Holt is reported to have said. Fourth, experience having shown that in some in- explicable way every book will in time reach its normal audience, there is no need of advertising campaigns. A few an- nouncements in certain magazines and newspapers sought for the purpose by people who purchase and read books habitually and who can be trusted to spread their fame among their own kind and near-kind, together with a little judi- cious circularizing over selected lists, are all that is necessary or safe. Advertising pressure will bring the same results quicker, of course, but usually at the ex- pense of profits. Fifth, the price need not be held down to an obligatory standard, 29 THE PUBLISHER as in fiction. The publisher must sell his six-hundred-page novel at the same price as he sells his three-hundred-and-fifty- page novel, and illustrations are added at his own cost; but the price of the seri- ous book is regulated by its cost, so that a fair margin of profit may always be assured. A four - to - five - hundred - octavo - page book by Sir Oliver Lodge, for instance, bulked by fairly heavy paper, will score its natural sale of three or four thousand copies at two dollars and fifty cents net, with a gross profit over manufacture and royalty of, more or less, a dollar a book; while a novel of the same length will run a hundred pages more, will cost more for binding, will be illustrated, will pay a larger trade discount, will cost more to advertise, and will carry a retail price of only one dollar and thirty-five cents. The one is sure; the other a speculation. The mystery remains a mystery of sorts even after it is elucidated, for the pub- 30 THE WORST BUSINESS Ushers' prizes are books you have scarcely or never heard of. They include, for ex- ample, that book on shade trees which your next-door neighbor bought and no one else in your whole aquaintance, though you knew twenty who bought the same publisher's best-selling novel ; and the book on the philosophy of religion to which your minister referred in last Sun- day's sermon — a book fourteen years old at that; and the little book on right thinking that you remember seeing several years ago on Mrs. Jones's table; and the Betty and Katharine books — a whole series — which your little daughter wanted for her birthday; and the book on winter life in India, the review of which interested you several years ago and which you always meant to buy; and the biography of an American woman educator that your friend across the street was enthusiastic over — hundreds, yes, thousands, of books on every subject on earth apparently, and scarcely a score of whose titles you ever 31 THE PUBLISHER heard. Novels? Yes, a few; but, apart from obvious "classics," most of them do not seem especially prominent. This is very puzzling, of course, and the explanation brings us to the very heart of the whole matter. Commercially speaking, books are roughly divided into two classes — quick turnovers and back- log books. The first class are gift books, specialties of all sorts and most novels. They are the light horse of this pub- lishing army — the skirmishers, the flank- turners, the supply-getters. They are put out to sell fast and are usually practically forgotten after their first or second season* Many a year's gross sales are comfortably filled out by some chance hit or two in fiction. Many a slow holiday season is saved by the popularity of some gift book that has been stuck into the list to cover just such a contingency. Sometimes there is no profit in the season's quick sellers, but at least they have turned over a good deal of money, 3^ THE WORST BUSINESS taken care of a good share of the costs of the business and kept the whole line in lively action. The profits of the successes have repaid the losses of the numerous failures and something more. Some years several hit it off together and the profit swells pleasantly. So it is on his list that the publisher de- pends, as the general on his main army; but he may not neglect with impunity his quick turnovers any more than the gen- eral may neglect his own light-moving flanks. In the one case as in the other such neglect means ruin. Pressing the suggestive figure a step further, how about the general — how about the man who plays this intricate and diflScult game against bigger odds and amid more pitfalls than men in any other business probably within general recognition ? Well, if your publisher is the real thing — if he is born to it — he has the time of his life. His business is a business of 33 THE PUBLISHER littles — one little on top of another little — day by day, season by season, year by year; abusiness of infinite detail, continual disappointment, a good deal of personal sacrifice, patient waiting and slow, slow growth. As I say, if he is the real thing of a publisher he loves it; every failure even has its keen interest, its extenuating pleasure. He loves the business for its own sake; and it is to him, with all its vexations and annoyances and disappoint- ments, to a large extent its own reward. "Then," you say, "it really is the * worst business in the world,' is n't it?" Ah! but it isn't — to him. To him it is the only business in the world that is worth while. Better "do" in this than get rich in another. This, then, is your real publisher, your born publisher; and no other should enter the business, for no other, once he tinds it out, will stay in it — or, staying, will succeed. It will take you only two or three 34 THE WORST BUSINESS minutes to name over all the general publishers in America. It might take you only two or three seconds to name the publisher who got rich out of general book-publishing alone; but it may take you two or three years — or forever — to discover him. For, as the countryman ex- claimed on seeing his first giraffe, "Thar ain't no sech critter !'* II WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL II WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL " Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Blank & Company can sell more copies of a book than any other house in America." The publisher did not dispute this, though he did not believe it. In the first place, in spite of her great faith in the sell- ing ability of this other house, he had se- cured on other grounds this celebrated lady's next book, with the prospect of more to follow, and he did not have to argue; in the second place, decent pub- lishers do not compete by running down each other's abilities. "There's not so much in this selling business as you think," he said diplomat- ically as he patted affectionately the signed contract between them on the table. " You do not do justice to your own vogue." 39 THE PUBLISHER This was a red-letter day. While they were still talking, another, a recent ce- lebrity, called him on the telephone and asked for an appointment. When they met, the author said: — " Yes, I 'm leaving Dash & Company. Of course they have done very well with my novel, but I am satisfied that they should have done better. I want to come over to you." " Why do you think they should have done better?" asked the publisher. "I thought your last sold finely for a second novel. We have all been congratulating Dash. It is generally thought among pub,- lishers that he handled your book well." " I don't see how you can say that when he did n't advertise more," said the au- thor; "I simply pleaded with the man, but it was no use. The newspapers were full of book advertising, but mighty little of my book. I am sure that, if he had adver- tised properly, he could have put it to a hundred thousand. Now you really adver- 40 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL tise. I see your big black-faced three col- umn announcements everywhere. So I'm leaving him and coming to you. In spite of common belief to the contrary, an au- thor can also be a man of business, and I 'm a man of business." The publisher shrugged his shoulders as he instructed his secretary about the terms of the contract. His duty was fully done. He had sufficiently defended Dash & Company and his defense had not driven the novelist back to their office. His conscience was clear. It only re- mained to accept what the gods gave him. It was with a cheerful smile that he blotted the author's signature. Yet this publisher was far from being a larger advertiser than Dash & Com- pany; in fact he was a smaller one. But he was a shrewder man. He used few of the magazines and obscurer advertising mediums so effective for solid books, in which Dash's advertisements appeared the year around; and he did not believe 41 THE PUBLISHER in circularizing. He depended largely upon his books to " sell themselves." But he perceived that several thousand dol- lars a year cunningly displayed in certain newspapers would create a public impres- sion of his advertising prowess that would be invaluable in reputation, even if not in direct sales. Year after year his reputation grew. But he never told his advertising appro- priation. It would not be believed. The result more than justified the expense. Novelists flocked to him. His name was waved like a club by scores of dissatis- fied authors over the heads of their own publishers. And he kept his novelists, too, — at least as well as most other publishers. He had his share of "best sellers," and, as some of the best-selling of his best sellers were among those he advertised least, he became, year by year, more and more justiticd in his policy. He was a canny man and a good publisher. 42 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL He made money even in the worst of years. But often it worked too well. The novel that did n't sell, that would n't sell, came along in its turn, and the author who had sought the house for its adver- tising came down hard upon the pub- lisher who had accepted him knowing the reason for his coming. " It 's up to you," the author would say grimly. "No," the publisher would reply, "it's up to the book." "But you said — " " I said nothing," the publisher would interrupt; "it was you that said it. No amount of advertising will sell a book that is n't what the public wants just at that moment — " " But it is because Dash & Company talked that way that I left them and came to you." "All publishers talk that way about books that will not sell. They talk that 43 THE PUBLISHER way because their experience with books that will not sell is identical and leads inevitably to the same conclusion." And so on. But every author must learn the truth, as publishers learn it, namely, by bitter experience. Not the least of every pub- lisher's burdens is the disappointment of his authors over the inevitability of the law of supply and demand. It is a les- son which he himself learned early in his business life, and has learned over again every day since. With him, there- fore, the failure of any book to sell is no surprise, almost no disappointment^ The proportion of unprofitable and small and moderate sellers to larger sellers is so great in the season by season prac- tice of the years that the advent of a "real winner" is generally a delightful surprise. The stud}' of failures and successes with the purpose of deducing the laws under- lying the sales problem is the publisher's 44 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL everlasting occupation. This is a problem that never has been solved. It never will be solved. It cannot be solved. It is a problem that changes like the April sky. Conditions are never the same. The taste of the buying public changes, and there are a thousand publics. When your au- thor says (as every author says at least once), "My book is twice as good as Jones's, but his sold and mine did n't; he must have a better publisher," he as- sumes one public. He also assumes that Jones's publisher had something to do with the book selling well. In the lat- ter assumption there is at least a small percentage of fact. Authors who accept sales as publishers accept them, namely, as so many phe- nomena naturally resultant from a com- plicated, incalculable, and always differ- ent combination of humanand commercial causes, and make such study as is pos- sible of the elements with the purpose of producing, so far as possible, the same or 45 THE PUBLISHER more fortunate combinations with suc- ceeding books, are usually the authors who succeed eventually in making book- writing a profitable business. But it may be said in passing that the authors who do this, who are capable of doing it, are rarce aves compared with the other kind. That combination of imagination, insight, originality, power of expression, combativeness, vanity, and thin skin which is commonly miscalled the "artistic temperament," usually re- fuses to stand for more than one or two failures. It then heaps the blame on the shoulders of the nearest publisher, and dabbles with some " easier " art. But at that there are a plenty left of the true temperament to bend the enlightened eye, the chastened mind, and the hand ren- dered skillful with effort more laboriously, more painstakingly, to the arduous ad- vancement of true art. Meantime the publisher continues per- plexedly to scratch his head alike over 46 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL the inexplicable failure and the surpris- ing success, questions his salesmen about the latest freaks and usages and tenden- cies of the country's markets, consults with booksellers whose judgment he trusts, glances over the newest book- covers and the last eccentric advertise- ments, and reads in the elevated on the way home the novel from another shop which he heard that morning was in its fourth printing. His is the perpetual job of keeping up to date on the market for everything sold between covers. And I can assure you it is a man's job. These are days when every business process is submitted to the merciless probe of the analyst. There is no excuse for any man any longer. The Psychology of Salesmanship, like the Psychology of Everything Else, is obtainable at a dollar net under half a dozen titles, and Adver- tising claims to have become Mathemat- ical Science. The modern university professor has made it all so simple that, 47 THE PUBLISHER of course, all men in the next generation will be rich and successful. The publisher,however, has his troubles notwithstanding. Unfortunately books re- fuse to come under the given rules. A book seldom sells well after the first season, and its first costs tend to kill its first year's profits; consequently it sets at naught about every one of the rules both for selling and advertising. The psychol- ogist of sales who attempts to " modern- ize" the publisher is as tiresome and futile as is the advertising " expert " who calls the publisher "conservative" and "old-fashioned" because he refuses to» believe that a newspaper or a string of newspapers of vast circulation at a dollar or more an agate line won't produce the same sales with a psychological novel as with Cream of Sesame or Bleachem's Pills — that is, "if you will only take big enough copy." Far from being "conservative'' and "old-fashioned," however, every pub- ' 48 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL lisher wishes so heartily that what the psychologists and experts say were true about easy sales that already he has dis- regarded the experience of many gener- ations of publishers and sown his own wild oats — with the customary result. Yes, and too often he continues to ex- periment, in the vain hope that times or human nature may have changed. Yet, though he cannot, without disas- ter, do the "stunts " of men of some other trades, there are still many things he may do to sell his books, to fit his authors to their market, and to surround and satu- rate his business with the atmosphere of success. Difficult though his business is, it may be conducted soundly and bril- liantly. The problem of selling involves importantly every department and every function of a successful house. It does not lie in manuscript selection, nor in salesmanship, nor in advertising, but it lies in all of these things and more. Though it is an axiom that few books 49 THE PUBLISHER are bought because of their imprint, nevertheless a house's sales involve mys- teriously but importantly the very tissue and repute of the house. It is not for nothing that good will figures so exten- sively in the valuations of publishing businesses. It has many times more re- ality in publishing than in most other businesses. Next to its list, this mysteri- ous quality is by far the publisher's most precious possession. What, then, is it that makes a book sell.'' Oh, so many things that I don't know where to begin nor how to make them plain. A publisher whose exploits iji the difficult art of combining selling and literary qualities are altogether notable, replied: — "That question is a tough one. My own growing belief is that the answer should be the publisher's Will and the success vibrations that he emanates, ex- tending from his travelers and advertising men to the trade and the public. Woe 50 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL betide the publisher, however, who tries too often to give success vibrations for books that have n't quite the 'potency of life' in them; and, as our friend Henry James says, 'There you are.'" This is a statement as shrewd as it is breezy. It contains, in fact, all the Law and the Prophets. It is not, however, the recipe for success in publishing only; it applies with approximate force to all businesses dependent upon an appeal to the public taste. It is also, for instance, most of the story of producing plays and selling calico. Tli% human aspects and conditions are at least the same. The difference from oBejr businesses lies chiefly in the more complicated problem involved in publishing, the more delicate determinations of what the public wants and what it does not want, the more diffi- cult medium for influencing large bodies of possible purchasers and the compara- tive smallness of the possible market, with its consequently greater proportional SI THE PUBLISHER penalty for not guessing right. The ma- rine engine and the chronometer are both describable in the language and accord- ino^ to the laws of mechanics, althouo^h it does not follow that a good machine- builder would make even a mediocre watch-builder. It is the universality of our publisher's phrase, at the same time allowing for these differences, that makes it so happy. As is most other human mechanism, business and otherwise, therefore, it is the Will at the top, to adopt the term, though another would serve as well, that is the principal element in the publisher's suc- cess in selling books. How he perceives so often just the things that his public wants and how he conveys his "success vibrations" to salesmen and public are problems of personality and genius. The shopkeeper who becomes the "merchant prince" of his city, the manufacturer who puts his soap in ever}' twentieth kitchen in the land, the hotel-keeper who wins for 52 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL his house the ribbon of fashionable pres- tige, all possess this divine Will. There's not nearly so much luck in the world as is generally believed. Men usually get what is coming to them. Most "bad luck" results from the Right Man blundering into the Wrong Shop. The Right Man in the Right Shop makes his own luck. ■ A publisher seldom stops to figure out the reasons for his success anymore than the average successful man in any other business. He is lucky. Or he's "got things running." Any phrase will do if called upon for an explanation. The fact is that he lives and works in such sym- pathy with his tools and his market; that he identifies himself so completely with his work; that, day by day, season by season, year by year, he so radiates the spirit of the institution he is upbuilding; that presently he, or the business (for the two things merge into one in the years), acquires a power and a personality of as- tonishing magnitude and, within its lines 53 THE PUBLISHER of influence, quite irresistible. His clerk and his stenographer feel this mysterious spirit in the very air. His advertising man becomes saturated with- it, and trans- lates it into palpitating appeal. His sales- man absorbs it, and exudes it to the in- crease of his sales and the making of his own reputation. This is the spirit that wins battles. In business it is called by many names. It is what is generall}- meant when a staff is said to have esprit de corps. Our publisher's "success waves" express the idea as well as any. This common but mysterious personal quality I regard the greatest element in selling books. Once a novel sold close to the half-mil- lion mark, which was, from every point of view, quite an ordinary production. It had no literary or narrative or senti- mental distinction whatever. It contained no element of novelty, either in the stor}' itself or in its characterization. It was a fairly well-written, interesting novel, 54 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL but little else. It had no advantage over fifty or more other novels, just as interest- ing or more so, published the same sea- son, which did not sell more than ten to twenty thousand each — except that the author's former novels, all equally without unusual distinction, also had large sales. The doctors have sat on this case, and various have been the explanations. Ad- vertising cranks grew red in the face proclaiming it the triumph of clever ad- vertising, for the book had been very thoroughl}^ and skillfully exploited. Anti- advertising orators struggled fearfully to discover some occult popular quality in the book itself which could explain the sale in spite of the advertising. Still others proclaimed it largely a triumph of sales- manship. The fact is that all three were partially right. The greatest of all causes, however, the cause of causes, lies somewhere in the personality of the publisher. The sales tri- umph of this author was a triumph of faith 55 THE PUBLISHER — his publisher's faith. In the trade this publisher was admiringl}' called " the crazy man" — because he was so "crazy" about his author. It was his only author. He believed him to be — really, honestly believed him to be — in many respects the greatest living novelist. He devoted himself to making his author's workknown and read as no other living novelist's work was known and read. He could talk of nothing else than his author. Doubt- less he dreamed and thought of little else. His intense conviction got somehow into his advertising and made the reader be- lieve even against his will. His fervof passed to his salesmen and they talked as men inspired. The " big trade," which he sold in person, were willingly carried along by his enthusiasm and determina- tion, for they saw in these qualities the promise of success; therefore, they helped him along by good orders and personal work. Of course he was also a sound busi- ness man, though his enthusiasm was 56 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL responsible for the great daring of his start. This is the whole story of this novel's and this author's great sales. It is an ex- traordinary story — to be hitched up with success. But most of all it is an extraor- dinary example of this wonderful per- sonal quality in leadership that is as much an element in successful selling as it is in successful war and politics. So much for this particular case, which, however valuable as an example of a great principle, is in other respects altogether exceptionable. For it is evident that every author cannot have his individual pub- lisher, and that very few authors have the universalit}^ to justify and to make profit- able such distinguished devotion. In the nature of things there must be few pub- lishers and many authors. In the nature of things a publisher cannot be as "crazy" about each of five hundred authors as he can about one — especially if a big seller. And yet again I make my point right 57 THE PUBLISHER here, for our publisher, if his books are going to reach their highest possibiHty of sales, must be, in the same best sense as the publisher of the one author referred to, " crazy " enough to inspire ever}' one who intimately or remotely has to do with his books with the impulsive belief that these books possess qualities of genius or of excellence or even merely of potential popularity that set them in a class quite apart and altogether superior to the com- mon run. When this is accomplished (and it is accomplished less by doing any given thing than by being " crazy "), you have the back of your sales problem broken; the rest is painstaking and watch- fulness and common cleverness and grub- bing labor. Also our ideal publisher really is as crazy over every author and every book on his list as he is over his best seller, but in degree in proportion to the possi- bilities of each. He does not demand that a study of the Aztec Criminal Code shall 58 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL sell as many copies as the last detective story, but he does demand that each shall do the absolutely best there is in it to do. It is often harder to make a volume of verse payback its manufacturing and pub- licity costs than to run a popular geog- raphy into five figures. But it must be done. Publishers are often accused of being fussers. Why should they not be fussers? Think of how many individual books they have to fuss about! This most important though inconspicu- ous personal element is what distinguishes Real Advertising from Brute Publicity. In common speech there is no such distinc- tion as this; both are called Advertising. But the majority of publishers and many thousands of habitual book purchasers will instantly appreciate the difference. We are in the heyday of advertising, but book advertising has degenerated. While the general advertising pages of many magazines are more interesting, even more profitable to read, than their text, 59 THE PUBLISHER while brains and skill of the very highest order have pushed the processes of com- mon trade into the penumbra of Art, there is a greater proportion of Brute Publicity in the book advertising of to-day than there was a decade ago when trade adver- tising was, as compared with the clever, the altogether admirable, product of to- day, still in its infanc}'. Any open-minded observer will bear me out in this, strange though it may seem to those who did not closely or critically observe the book ad- vertising of the earlier period. Publishers seem to be abandoning the very qualities of distinction, in the da3's when trade ad- vertising has acquired distinction, that they were called old-fashioned for insist- ing upon in the days when most other advertising was raw. Of course, I am speaking of general conditions; there are exceptions. The reason for this decline in quality is historical. There was a time when pub- lishers realized that they were living in 60 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL' an age that had passed. This was say a dozen or fifteen years ago. Advertising had been discovered, but publishers were still "announcing" — which means that they mentioned new books once or twice upon publication in several bookish peri- odicals and then left them to be found, through the years, by their prospective purchasers. But advertising was making fortunes overnight in other businesses and pres- ently one or two publishers experimented with popular novels. The results were electrical, and in short order all were at it. The immediate result was an increase in business almost unbelievable. Then came the Great Plunge. For four or five years publishers competed like rival showmen. Newspapers and magazines opened book departments. Book supplements, book lists, book periodicals of several kinds were born almost overnight. There was a wild scramble for the new El Dorado on the part of "mediums" that had never 6i THE PUBLISHER carried book advertising before. Solici- tors stood in line at publishers' doors demanding copy. This picturesque period was coincident with a forward movement of magnitude in American publishing which this is not the place to describe. The business as- sumed far greater bulk, new proportions, new importance. The wonderful maga- zine business of to-day was then shaping and looming. History was making. It was natural that, tossed in the rapids of these larger movements, book advertis- ing should be overdone. In the scramble to overlook no corner in the newly discov^ ered market (for the Greater Public had been unbottled, and, like the Genii in the Arabian Nights, seemed to till the sky), publishers far over-spent propriety. Then came retrenchment, slight at first, till the limits of Opportunit}' better defined them- selves, then greater and still greater, as, with clearer vision, came the apprecia- tion of how greatly book advertising had 62 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL overspread the boundaries of profit. And we are still retrenching, though it seems likely that the reaction is nearly done and that we shall soon again react, but now toward a condition of health}' enter- prise. With all of which, being natural and human, I have no quarrel. But this I do decry, that, retrenching when all other forms of advertising were bounding forward, reversing, in its little eddy, the great rush of the main current, book advertising has tended to lose the fineness of its spirit. It ran down at the heel, like a man out of work; became shapeless, like a woman past her pride. Nobody has seemed to care. In many publishing houses to-day the advertising is the secondary duty of its writer, or is made up by a stenographer after perfunc- tory instructions from the publisher. There are not many who seem still to employ first-rate minds to maintain the standards set up in the days when the in- tentness of the house was concentrated ^3 THE PUBLISHER upon the daily or weekly appeal to the public that buys. And this is so, I am convinced, because of a reason that is hu- man and natural, but nevertheless to be deprecated, namel}', because it has be- come a sort of habit in publishing houses to look upon advertising slightingly, as a necessary evil, simply because it is no longer regarded as importantly as it was in the boom days. This decline in quality is especially pitiful, as I have intimated, because it oc- curs in a period of remarkable achieve- ment in other advertising fields, and there must soon come our reaction to sanity. Again the publisher must carefully, pains- takingly, fashion each advertisement to catch the interest and arouse the desire of the particular audience at which it is aimed. I do not contend that he must ad- vertise more freely. That is quite another story. But he must put all the more spirit and consideration into the shaping and aiming of his advertising projectiles be- 64 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL cause they are fewer than they used to be. This Is reason and business, but not hu- man nature. Of course it is hard to con- centrate first-rate brain quality on any department of effort that does not happen to be "on the boom " at the moment. Your really big publisher, then, must be big enough to see this and " crazy " enough to inspire the best brain he has in his es- tablishment with an advertising enthusi- asm that, in boom times, needs no special inspiring cause. Otherwise, he must write his own advertising. When the pendulum again swings back, no doubt all publish- ers will again endow their advertising writing with the care and brilliancy which only a few have maintained through this period of necessary retrenchment. As for the amount of advertising any house should do, that is a purely relative question. In general, no one will criticize an advertising expenditure of ten per cent of gross Income from trade sales — but of course this must be understood to 65 THE PUBLISHER coverall publicity costs, not merely maga- zine and newspaper advertising bills. Let us admit, in the start, that a large part of all advertising expenditures is wasted, that " results " can almost never be "traced," that it is largely "shooting in the dark." All the more reason, there- fore, that your publisher should entrust this all-important work to the best judg- ment he can afford to employ. Not a so-called advertisings" expert." The con- ditions of successful book advertising are highly specialized, and it is a publisher who studies advertising, not an advertis- ing expert who studies publishing, that the conditions demand. And the best- trained publisher who can be hired for the job will save or make his consider^ able salary times over every year. I have said that the conditions of book advertising are highl}- specialized. A vol- ume might explain. Sufficient here to say that one principal fundamental difference is that the publisher has as many busi- 66 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL nesses to advertise as he has books. On the other hand, a glove-maker, let us say, may have as many styles as a publisher has books, but, in an advertising sense, as in every other sense, he has, unlike the publisher, only the one business. For example, Mrs. Ess is impressed by the advertising of the Coronation Glove and asks for it at the department store where she deals. " I liked what you said about Style 23," she says. The sales- woman shows her several styles, out of which, at length, she chooses one. It is not Style 23, but it is, you observe, the Coronation Glove she has asked for and purchased. Then she goes to the book counter. " Have you got ^Adventures in a Ha- rem?'" she asks. "I saw the advertise- ment and liked what they said about it." "H-m," says the saleswoman, "I don't know the title. Must be a brand-new book." "Yes," says Mrs. Ess, "it said ^Pub- 67 THE PUBLISHER lished this day/ at the top of the adver- tisement." "I suppose we just have it in," says the saleswoman. "It will be — oh, who is the publisher?" "The publisher?" asks Mrs. Ess. " What do you mean ? I thought you 'd have the book. You have everything as soon as it is out. Do you mean the printer? Why, I don't know. How could I know?" "No, the publisher," says the sales- woman, running over the list of books not yet on the counters. "You know: the firm that published it. Their name must have been on the advertisement." "Oh, yes," says Mrs. Ess, "there was a name, I think, but the title is 'Adven- tures in a Harem.' The author's name was — let me see — I think it was Green — somebody Green." "Here it is," says the saleswoman, "up this very minute." Mrs. Ess carefully examines the cover 68 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL of the book. "I don't care much for that," she says; "I don't like the girl's face. She looks silly. I hate silly hero- ines." Then she glances at one or two of the illustrations and runs carelessly through the leaves. " It is awfully short," she says. " If a story is good, I like it long. If it is n't good, I don't want it at all. Is there any- thing else here I haven't read.? What would you recommend?" ■ The saleswoman painstakingly de- scribes four or five recent novels, but Mrs. Ess does not fancy them on exam- ination, and she finally picks out one that mysteriously appeals to her mood. Its publisher? I don't know, and neither did she. You see, the advertising results are radicall}' different. The glove-maker has made a customer for his brand, irrespec- tive of any particular style, a customer who will probably come again and again 69 THE PUBLISHER until some new advertisement catches her fancy. But the publisher has accom- plished little. He has not sold the lady a book. He has not even impressed his name upon the memory of a possible future purchaser. He has persuaded her to pick up that particular book from the thousands offered and give it a few mo- ments' examination. And that is all. Even if she had purchased the book, she might not have liked it, and if she had not, she would have industriously informed her friends that it was poor or silly and ad- vised them not to get it. If she had liked it, she would lend her copy to several of her friends. But, on returning to the shop for other books, neither she nor her friends would ask to see Dash & Com- pany's new novels. She would ask again for a title, or, having none in mind, would look over the counter for something that " looked interesting." The book advertiser's problem, there- fore, is one requiring a quality of care and 70 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL judgment not demanded of the glove ad- vertiser, for, if he has fifty books on his list, he has fifty special problems to the glove-man's one. And as one injudicious plunge may practically ruin the profits of any of these books for a season or two, his responsibility is times greater than that of the other, whose problem is chiefly to cover, as cheaply and effectively as pos- sible, all parts of the country inhabited by women who can afford to buy his gloves; and, so long as there continues a satisfac- tory relation of profit to expenditure, he need not worry a great deal about occa- sionally making errors in placing his ad- vertisements. To the publisher general results are only one of the many important consider- ations. And these other considerations continually react and tend to complicate the general problem. For instance, in ad- dition to the books that follow a normal sale and may be advertised out of the abundance of experience are those which 71 THE PUBLISHER present speculative opportunities, books that may bound into larger or handsome sales under judicious advertising — and each of these is a different kind of prob- lem. And then there are the books that may be profitably over-advertised for other reasons than sales, for the purpose, for instance, of satisfying and retaining a valuable author, or with the object of in- fluencing other authors. No, your book-advertising artist must not only be the Verestchagin of gloves and soap, capable of gaud}' frescoes meas- urable by the square 3'ard, but he must also be the Meissonnier of the micro- scopic stroke and the six-inch master- piece. People will tell you that the book-pub- lishing business is on the decline, but you must not believe them. It is not. Fewer new titles may be published this year than last year or the year before, but what of that? It probably indicates a sound reaction from the great title-over- 72 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL production of recent years. But even so, this year's grand totals will show the cus- tomary healthy increase both in number of volumes sold and in gross business. An- other group of casual observers will reach the same conclusion because of the steady decline in book advertising; but we have already noted the reason for that decline. I have read articles by these surface ob- servers which they would not have writ- ten had they taken the trouble to look up statistics. No, book publishing is not declining, but it is, like most other busi- nesses, changing. The cheap novel is revolutionizing fic- tion publication in so far as it is taking care of a good deal of the vast yearly in- crease in the sale of novels. Most readers do not require the new novels, but de- mand the good novels; and, for the most part, it is the good novels that survive original publication and pass into the larger and often the longer life of the re- print. 73 THE PUBLISHER On the other hand, there are al\va3's those whose rapid reading keeps them abreast of publication and there are al- ways very many who demand the latest thing. These purchasers are numerous enough to provide a ready and profitable market for original publications. But the great growth in the enormous army of fiction purchasers will be found more and more among patrons of the cheaper re- prints, and, as these require no advertis- ing, having made their fame in their more expensive original forms, there results no increase in advertising corresponding to the increase in business. In fact the tendr ency is the other way, and this is due in part to the fact that publishers nowadays, counting upon the certain profits of the cheaper edition to come, feel less need for forcing the original sale. But, when the advertising reaction comes, there will be no return to the bulk of former years, or to anything even ap- proaching it. The principal reason for this, 74 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL of course, Is that publishers have mean- time rediscovered their market, sounded it, bounded it, charted it, determined it as definitely as any market can be deter- mined in these daj'S of shifting conditions. The book advertising of the future will not be experimental, as in the past, ex- cept, of course, in the case of occasional novels whose chances of big circulation tempt to speculation. The spirit of the new book advertising will rather be sci- entific, and, with higher brain power and more careful attention than is generally used at present, will aim for more defi- nite results than ever before. With re- sults, advertising will naturally increase in quantity; but not again will publishers with charted memories run upon the shoals of squandered profits. No other business, probably, must steer its adver- tising course through a channel so shifty and so shallow. It is also safe predicting that the tend- ency of recent years toward restricting ad- 75 THE PUBLISHER vertising to a few mediums will remain the policy of the future. To-day, as yes- terday, as always, the student and the habitual reader remain the publisher's great dependence. These persons consti- tute an ever-increasing buying public. Just as the Sunday newspaper readers of the last decade are the magazine readers of this, so are magazine readers of to-day continually becoming book readers. The process is one of natural evolution. Those persons are short-sighted who see the de- cay of serious reading in the enormous patronage of magazines. The magazines are the intermediate course, insuring the' book market of the future. This substantial book public does not need to be sought by the advertiser. It is itself the eager seeker for the new and the worthwhile between book covers. And it will naturally seek its information where information can be found most easil}' and cheaply, namely, in the advertising pages of those periodicals habitually used by the 76 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL largest number of publishers. There are not many of these periodicals, and it is obvious that the publisher who seeks this useful public need go little further with his advertising. There remains for him, therefore, principally the problem of qual- ity and individuality in the preparation of his copy and display. As for the greater buying public, the casual book-buyers and occasional pur- chasers of novels, these, experience has shown, can be advertised for profitably only at great risk. Except just before Christmas they are purchasers of practi- call}^ nothing but novels, and every novel by another than a well-known and popu- lar novelist becomes a selling problem presenting odds heavily against the ad- vertiser. It was this problem of reaching the occasional novel-reader that precipi- tated the great experiment I have referred to when " David Harum " and a few other larger sellers that followed showed this new field of enterprise to be of such enor- 77 THE PUBLISHER mous size that it challenged the spirit of even the most conservative. But the years of expansion and contraction that have fol- lowed have proved that, with only a few exceptions, the fitful fancy of these occa- sional novel-buyers can be concentrated upon an}' given title only at an advertis- ing expense that destroys profit. More- over, in the years, and in obedience to nat- ural law, a hundred titles have crowded into the place of every one that then claimed popularity, and this still further complicates the problem. All attempts to chart this shifting un- known sea have failed. Some have tried to play the game after a " system," as the gambler attempts to reduce the chances of faro or roulette. One house deliberately settled down to solve this one problem, and for some years published only a given number of novels a season, each novel chosen specially for the purpose of catch- ing this greater public. Each novel was started off with a thousand dollars' worth 7S WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL of advertising and received additional ap- propriations of a size exactl}^ proportional to the amount of returns. Automatically, so to speak, one novel would swell in sales and advertising, while another, un- der the same formula, would dwindle and disappear. This seemed to work all right for several boom seasons, but unfortu- nately trade conditions would persist in changing. This would be shown b}^ dis- turbances in the returns, and our pioneers would experiment with a new formula, which, in turn, would develop its periods of prosperity and decline. Then to see, every now and then, some comparatively unadvertised novel from another house rush into an astonishing success could not fail to be upsetting to our pioneers, who were never sure that some of their own successes, which had cost ten or twenty thousand dollars to advertise, would not have sold equally well at per- haps fifteen hundred each. Nor has newspaper reviewing the ira- 79 THE PUBLISHER portance as an element in book sales that once was supposed. A careful study dur- ing some years of the relations of sales to the number and the quality of the "re- views " fails to discover any dependable ratio. No doubt the notices of a limited number of journals which a limited num- ber of book-lovers habitually consult for book information prove efTective as a sell- ing agency. But results can be traced no further. Books are written to-day about sales- manship, but the subject is not one of critical importance to the publisher of fic- tion and general literature. I do not mean> to say that good salesmen are not impor- tant to publishers, but that publishing does not call for special qualities in mere trade selling as it calls for special quali- ties in advertising. The same qualities are demanded of book salesmen as of sales- men in other businesses which offer goods to retail shops. There is not, however, in books, the same opportunity for sell- 80 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL ing " stunts " as in most other commodi- ties carried over the country. In the first place, and principally, the field of sale is much smaller. A town with twenty shops carrying dry goods will have only one or at most two shops carrying books. A book salesman is expected not only to "know his trade " intimately, but to know the whole book trade of the country. Book- selling often becomes a matter of barter between intimate personal friends who call each other by their first names and make golf dates a season ahead. There is, of course, no denying the great advantage to the publisher of the best of salesmanship in his force, but it seems to me that, other things equal, the salesman who will be of most use to him in the long run is not the man who will load up his customer with the biggest given sale so much as he who will prove the most transparent medium for the pas- sage of the publisher's own enthusiasm and personality and genius into the con- 8i THE PUBLISHER sciousness and sympathies of his retail customer. As to such selling devices as picture covers, illustrations, and decorations gen- erally, they are part of the campaign to catch that casual public of which we have spoken. Many publishers who will not take the long chances of advertising for Mrs. Ess's patronage, will design a cover to catch her wandering fancy at the book counter or load down their volume with frightfully expensive colored illustrations. The argument in favor of this is that, if 3'our book does not " catch on," you are in for only the original cover and picture costs which, heavy though they may be, will be only a fraction of any half-decent advertising campaign. The weakness of it is that, if your book does sell, you are saddled with colored illustrations to the bitter end, whereas you might stop your advertising when the run is really on and take real profits for say a hundred thou- sand copies. 82 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL The pressure on the publisher from his salesmen and, through them, from the trade, is always strongly for bright- colored covers and illustrations, and the fair success of many novels is attributed to the external beauty which attracted Mrs. Ess and her friends at the book counter. At the same time an infinitely larger number of novels equipped with outward beauty or gaudiness have failed utterly; and perhaps most of the conspic- uous successes of each year have appeared between plain covers and without illus- trations. It is anybody's race. You may pick your own horse ! So finally we come down to the Book itself! Ah! Now we have torn aside the cur- tain and entered the sanctuary. We are not the first by any means. Here is one celebrated publisher, at least, who has dwelt comfortably and happily and most profitably here for these many 3'ears, scorning the jibes of those who rushed 83 THE PUBLISHER after the noisy advertising parade some years ago and who have since been dropping back, one by one, all looking just a little foolish, possibly, as they peered in at him through the lifted flap. Yes, this is the answer to our conun- drum if that answer is to be expressed in one word. It is the Book Itself that Sells Itself— because it is the book that a thousand or ten thousand or a hundred thousand buyers want to buy at the time it is published. No publisher can sell a book that does not come under this defini- tion any more than a glove-maker can sell a glove, no matter how handsome, that is not cut in the style fashionable at the moment. Man}- different gloves cut on the fashionable lines will sell side by side in competition, for tastes in frills dif- fer. But no gloves modeled upon old- fashioned lines will sell now, no matter how they sold in the past, and your novel- ist who produces to-day an imitation of 84 WHAT MAKES A BOOK SELL some novel famous several years back (and most novels amount to that) must not blame his publisher if it does not sell. Of course our glove simile will not carry long, for, after all, we are deal- ing with art when we deal with fiction, no matter how crude its expression and how commercial its object. Most novels, of course, are frankly commercial in ob- ject on the part of both writer and pub- lisher. But occasionally a publisher is fortunate enough to produce a novel which is also literature — and the excep- tion smashes our generalizations. Such novels are destined to success, greater or less according to their natural publics, entirely without reference to the handling of their publishers. Now I do not say that they would be unaffected by such handling, for clever publishing may bring fame and sales to a Real Novel whole seasons, or even years, before it could have won them for itself. But my point is that, if it be really a Real Novel, 8s THE PUBLISHER eventually it will win them anyway, even in spite of bad publishing, for that is the way of a book. We all know of instances (they occur nearly ever}^ season) of Real Novels themselves setting the pace and keeping their publishers puffing and per- spiring to stay even in the tail of the pro- cession. In closing, let us sum it up, as the par- son does at the end of his discourse. The principal element in the sale of a book is The Book Itself. A long way after comes the second element, the spirit and enthusiasm and genius of the publisher as expressed through ever}' wheel of his complicated human machine. Still a longer way after comes the third element, scientific though not necessarily volumi- nous advertising. And then come the rest. Ill A DOLLAR DOWN AND A DOLLAR A MINUTE Ill A DOLLAR DOWN AND A DOLLAR A MINUTE A FRIEND of mine got home in Septem- ber from a summer abroad and stopped a couple of days at the Waldorf. At ten o'clock the next morning, while awaiting a business appointment made overnight by telephone, a card was brought him which bore an unfamiliar name. A dap- per young man of assured and not un- pleasing address followed hard upon it. "I want to close up with you," said this young man, "thf" matter of that set of Creation's Greatest Orators which you discussed with Mr. Darrow in Denver last May. It was just before you went abroad. You expressed admiration for the work — as well you might, being some spellbinder yourself (oh, I read THE PUBLISHER the newspapers; I know all about you), but you did not sign the contract then. Hurry to get away or something. I have a contract here — for the half-morocco edition. You just put your name there. No — that next line. Oh, it's all right. Not the most expensive, but really the most sensible working edition for a busy man like you. I understand, sir, — of course you don't want any foolish frills. You 're no art collector. You want stand- ards. Seven a volume — just a modest price for a really line work finely bound. Good library edition, that 's all. "Eh? Only twenty volumes. Covers all the classics, you know, and right down to living times in America. Yes, the great Englishmen, too, — Pitt and all those, you know. Sure thing. Those impassioned Frenchmen, too, — eh — eh — well, you know their names better than I do. You're an orator yourself, eh? Ha! Ha! Why should n't you know them? Of course. "No, no, I don't want any mone3\ Just 90 A DOLLAR DOWN your signature, that 's all I want. That 's good enough for me. Good enough for anybody in these United States, I 'm think- ing. No, that line there. This is the inked pen. Right there — "Thanks! Mr. Darrow will have them waiting for you on your library table when you get home. All right. Awfully glad to have met you. Just keep my card. You might want a Shakespeare or a Scott sometime as you rush through — or maybe the Philosophies of All Times. Fine set, that. Good-day!" My friend told me that he really didn't know how it happened till it happened. He had been much attracted by the books the spring before, but had decided that it was one of the things he could very com- fortably do without, after all. Though a public speaker of local note and some- thing of a student, he probably would not reall}^ read the books when he got them. He thought of the numerous purchases he had denied himself abroad, for it had 91 THE PUBLISHER been an expensive year. How had this thing happened, an3-way? He gave a short laugh, then he started suddenly after the clever salesman. Down Peacock Alley he dashed, nearly upsetting a large and indignant Indianapolis blonde, swung around a corner, short-cut a luncheon- room, and caught his man at the side entrance. "Eh? Oh, it's you," laughed the sales- man. "What's the matter? Do 3'ou — do you want the Philosophies? Fine set, fine set, I tell you; only nine a volume. I have here a — " "No, no," said my friend firmly; "not another book; I just want to know some- thing." "Why, certainly, sir. Anything at all. What can I do for you?" "You can tell me this. I got in rather late yesterday. I came a steamer ahead of my schedule. I had never stopped at the Waldorf before and did not register till nine o'clock last night. I have never A DOLLAR DOWN discussed these books except with a man in Denver whose name even I did not know. Now How? What? Why? How did you know? How did you recognize me? I'm curious. Tell me." "Oh, it's all in the course of business," said the salesman, lovingly stroking his signed order. "Your name, with a lot of other passengers' names, comes off the steamer by newspaper wireless a couple of days or so ago. Naturally the New York correspondents of the Denver papers pass your name on home. Naturally one of Darrow's clerks reads it in the home papers and reports it instanter to Darrow. Now, I look after Darrow's New York business, so he naturally shoots on the facts to me in a night-letter. I look up hotel arrivals after breakfast, spot your name, hike up here over my early cigar, and naturally get your sig. That's all. Have a drink ? Well, it is a little early, that 's a fact. Good-morning." This lifts the curtain upon only one 93 THE PUBLISHER kind of subscription book business. There are so many kinds that I'm not even going to catalogue them. Some of them are new, and they are all, even the most ancient, highly modernized. There is no- thing more modern, in all its moods and tenses, than the subscription book busi- ness. Yet after all it is essentially the same old business. In every mood and tense the root form sticks out big for all observers. If I could only say that P. T. Barnum invented the subscription book business it would enormously simplif}' this getting at the essence of a compli- cated subject. But he did n't. It began many generations before Barnum. Its origin lies back in the morning mists of publishing. Some day patient investiga- tion will discover the man who invented selling books by personal solicitation and devised the books to entangle his fellow-townsman together with the pat- ter to do it with; and it's tomes to tracts his name was Barnum. It must have 94 A DOLLAR DOWN been down that ancestral line that we got P. T. The old, old-fashioned kind of sub- scription book business still flourishes here and there in the far country — the kind you knew when you were on the farm, the kind your grandfather told you about, the kind Eugene Field wrote his wonderful story about. The other day I ran across a printed paper entitled In- structions for Agents, issued by a big firm still doing this old-fashioned sort of thing — one of those, you know, which adver- tise that you can make from twenty to eighty dollars a week if you '11 only send in your name. The instructions were for neophytes and the detail was terrifying. There were instructions for approaching the house, for the conversation at the door, for entering the house, for every possible exigency in the house, and for getting out of the house gracefully and in good order. Would-be salesmen were especially 95 THE PUBLISHER impressed with the necessity of finding out facts in advance about the people to be called upon. "Inquiries should be make delicately from house to house," and facts thus acquired should be con- firmed before using. "Never ask, 'Is Mrs. Blank in?'" says Rule 6. "Take it for granted that she is in and that she will see you. Simply state, * Please tell Mrs. Blank that Mr. Dash wishes to see her.' Invariably give your name instantly and do not wait to be asked for it by the servant. This is very im- portant." " After having addressed the servant,"" says Rule 8, " slip into the house. Don't show undue haste or force 3^our way in, nor stand like a piece of wood, waiting to be asked to enter, or as if you expected to be left standing outside. Walk delib- erately into the house as any gentleman would who had been in the habit of paying visits. Some canvassers act very foolishly in this respect and are very awkward." 96 A DOLLAR DOWN "Once inside," says Rule lo, "you must not stand in the hall like a block- head; neither dare you open the parlor door yourself and walk in. But hang up your hat on the hatrack immediately^you enter, and the servant will alwa3^s take the hint, and ask you to take a seat in the parlor. She will treat you exactly as she finds you expect to be treated." And so on. The learner is instructed to begin safely on the weather, but not to linger too long in generalities, rather to get down to business by a conversational path carefully chosen according to the disposition of the hostess; and, once be- gun, carefully to avoid direct issues, which may result in premature refusals, but swiftly and skillfully to steer around rocks until attention and interest are fairly won for the book offered. Then strike quickly and surely and hold tight. It is true that, in these piping times, when the farmer runs his car and his daughters are up on the best sellers; 97 THE PUBLISHER when Ibsen is discussed at the crossroads; when one woman's magazine alone, with- out counting a dozen of large circula- tion and a score of others, sells nearly two million copies a month in a land of only thirty million women, including for- eigners, Negroes, and illiterates; when a school expansion of unbelievable rapid- ity drags far behind the demand; when boiler-plate frontier newspapers carry weekly book departments — in these amazing days the familiar crudities of the old subscription business are to be wit- nessed only in the back waters of the swift current of universal cultivation. But other times, other fashions, and — to refer to Barnum again — "the people" of all times, even the most intelligent, apparentl}', " love to be fooled." To-day has its corresponding subscription meth- ods. We are all familiar with the " secret " histories of courts, the advertising of which suggests to the naughty mind all kinds of mysterious things which it actu- 98 A DOLLAR DOWN ally does n't promise and which, of course, the sober, substantial books, when they arrive, are found not to contain. But peo- ple ought not to have naughty minds. And we know well the wonderful offers of solid sets which, " because of recent consolidations of large interests, we have been able to acquire at a mere fraction of their cost, and will sell, beginning at nine o'clock to-morrow morning, at prices which undoubtedly will never be offered again " — for the same cheap sort till at least the next week after. But while it has brought forth these and many other new style subscription eccentricities, this splendid age has also, and naturally, developed several sub- scription forms which rank high in pub- lishing and business estimation. It is the easiest thing in the world to belittle these, or even overlook them altogether, for, naturally, it is the sham and the fake in every business that attracts the public at- tention; but, amusing and fantastic as 99 THE PUBLISHER many of these forms are, it would be as unfair to allow them to color your con- ception of the subscription book business as a whole as it would be to pronounce the entire clothing business, for example, a sham because of the picturesque antics of the pullers-in of Baxter Street. To these forms must be given the full- est consideration, for they constitute the subscription book business of to-day. The greatest discovery of the last two decades is the fact that the public is hon- est. Considering that our jury system, based upon the discovery that the public is unbribable, is centuries old, it seenls strange that knowledge of the public's honesty is so recent. I suggest the fact for the consideration of the philosophers. I would like to hear their reasoning. Upon that discovery is based the mod- ernized subscription book business. In the old days the agent would leave you a vol- ume at a time and collect the money for each delivery. To-day the agent collects loo A DOLLAR DOWN an original payment often as low as a dol- lar and delivers the entire set of books at once, the publisher depending upon the customer to pay the balance direct to him in weekly or monthly installments. The modern discovery is that the cus- tomer pays it. Of course there are indi- viduals who don't — some who cannot when the time comes, and now and then, very rarely, some who won't. But the proportion of these is found in practice to be so small that the losses are less by far than were the combined losses and ex- penses of collections through agents by the old system. There results a staplerand in every way a simpler basis of business. Nowadays your publisher, dealing direct with his public, allows for a small, calcu- lable, and dependable percentage of loss. The confidence and variety of to-day's business are two natural resultants. An- other is to-day's enormous distribution of good literature in cheap form at a much lower margin of profit, a fact of incalcu- THE PUBLISHER lable importance in casting up the ultimate causes of America's amazing average of cultivation. One of these several newer subscrip- tion forms, one dealing mostl}' with mod- ern copyrighted sets, deserves for several reasons first consideration. Because it is especially sound and reasonable in its business foundation, because it is just and honorable to scrupulousness in its meth- ods; because it deals in high-grade books, honestly priced and made to stand many years of reasonable service — in a word, because it corresponds in ideals with the highest type of trade publishing, from which it differs chiefly in the method of reaching the consumer, it must be con- sidered the ranking subscription business of the day. Let us grant it is the off- spring of an ancient and not too scrupu- lous parentage, if 3^ou will; let us grant that some of its brothers and its sisters and its cousins and its aunts are to-da}' not its social equals; let us grant that in I02 A DOLLAR DOWN bulk it is, in the bosom of its family, as a single sheep in the flock; it is, neverthe- less, what general publishers of ideals mean when they speak of the subscrip- tion book business. And yet, in justice, we must not give the present generation all the credit for this splendid business form. Far back through past generations are seen its fore- runners, showing unmistakably that, per- haps even from the beginning, down the genealogical line runs a strain of fine dealing side by side with that fantastic Barnumesque strain which is responsible for so much that is eccentric and even farcical, that is smart at times to the brink of trickery, in that part of the business of the present, as well as of the past, which has naturally most attracted the public gaze. To show this, it is needless, in this paper, to go back of the recollections of many now living. Still it was a good many years ago that Scribners sold Stan- ley's " In Darkest Africa " by subscrip- 103 THE PUBLISHER tion in strict accord with the highest ideals of publishing. Later on, Blaine's " Twenty Years in Congress " and Grant's " Mem- oirs" stand out among the fine successes of the most honorable of subscription methods. And these titles, too, will serve us an- other purpose — that of illustrating that principle of subscription selling that dif- ferentiates it from other book-selling methods and affords a firm foundation for a highly organized, highly individualized business. It is well known that all of the books I have mentioned were extremely successful. " In Darkest Africa " mad6 its author independent for life. "Twenty Years in Congress " added nobly to the resources of the Blaine famil}^ Grant's "Memoirs" yielded what, in those days, was called a fortune. Yet I am very certain that none of them would have been more than long-lived and profitable sellers under any other S3's- tem of sale. 104 A DOLLAR DOWN The fact involved is human negli- gence. Few of us, even in the most tri- fling affairs, will step outside the set paths of our lives without compulsion. You know, yourself, you never would have bought that umbrella, even under your wife's constant remindings, unless com- pelled by a midday shower. And you know also — everybody knows — that bossism in this land could be crushed out at one overwhelming blow if the men who are opposed to boss rule would take the trouble to walk round the corner and reg- ister, or, having registered, to walk round the corner and vote. A study of the fig- ures of any ordinary election in the last half-decade will prove that. Now this could all be cured and the political front of the nation changed in a day if a system of calling at the voter's residence for his vote, instead of requiring him to call at the polling-booth to present his vote, should be adopted. I think every observ- ing citizen will agree with me in that. 105 THE PUBLISHER I suggested it once to a " spoils " leader, whom I knew well at the time, and he shivered. Then he grinned and said, "My boy, thank God it's impossible." But, though impossible in politics, it is precisely what the subscription book pub- lisher puts into profitable practice. He knows that of say twenty people who are probable purchasers of a given work, only one will take the trouble to go to the bookstore and buy; but half a dozen, say, will buy if the bookstore comes to them. There is only required, then, a practicable plan under which it will be profitable to send the bookstore on a house-to-house tour. That, in a word, is the subscription book business. The financial plan is simple. There is only one price, the retail price, from which no discounts are made. The pub- lisher divides his receipts among these items: — 1 06 A DOLLAR DOWN Manufacturing 20 per cent Selling commission . . . . 25 ^ Author's royalty 10 Cost of doing business, includ- ing depreciation, collections, and losses 30 Profit 15 100 Of course there are variations from this. Sometimes, especially with large press runs, the manufacturing cost is lower, and, with everything else constant, the profit is better. Sometimes the author has to have a little more royalty, and sometimes depreciations, collections, and losses add several points to the " Cost of doing business." The average, however, at least for such houses as Scribners, Harpers, Houghton Mifflin Company, Putnam, Little, Brown & Company, and a few others, stays close to the figures quoted. As in every other business, of course, a certain bulk is necessary to realize this condition. Many book sets require several 107 THE PUBLISHER years of activity to offset the heavy orig- inal investment and get on their financial legs, so to speak; and during this period the average of business is kept up by sets formerly published — the backlog, as publishers sometimes call it. Many am- bitious book agents, who lose their all or their friends' all in some independent publishing ventures of their own, fail because they overlook this great fact of bulk. A well-established, well-bulked subscription business of the first class of quality is, under wise management, one of the safest and most satisfactory, though not one of the most profitable, businesses in existence. But, like every other fine, sound business, it becomes fine and sound only by growing. It is no mushroom. Many who are knowing in subscription books of other kinds will question the item of 25 per cent commission to agents; they will quote commissions of 40 per cent or more. But not in this class of business. As we shall see presently, a 108 A DOLLAR DOWN biggdr commission to general agents goes only with cheaper production and higher prices. This ideal trade, which unites the best possible quality of material with prices low enough to represent value, cannot afford the luxury of general agents. But how, you with the old-fashioned general-agent idea in your head may ask, how does this new-fangled subscription publisher reach his market, covering, as it does, the whole United States? So great a territory cannot adequately be reached from one centre. This brings us to quite a new person- age in subscription book-selling; one who lived a generation ago only in isolated, distinguished examples,but without whom many thousand of regular and consider- able book-buyers of to-day would not be book-buyers at all. Let me present to you the new-style book agent! I note your surprise. 109 THE PUBLISHER No, he Is not uncouth, nor ill-mannered, nor over-talkative, nor insolent; nor does he back you into a corner and force you to buy a book you don't want as the only means short of calling the police (which is alwa3'S unpleasant) for getting him out of your house. On the contrary, he is a courteous, well-groomed, energetic busi- ness man who has a large and growing list of regular customers and has n't time to fool with anybody not ready to do business with reasonable dispatch. He is quick-spoken, a happy talker, expert in books and literature, and well informed on general topics. He specializes, usually, in the publications of one or possibly two subscription publishers whose kind of books fit his particular trade, but he is ready to supply his customers with every- thing they may want from any publishing house in creation. He is, in short, the traveling bookstore. He is a modern institution growing out of an extremely modern need. His custom- no A DOLLAR DOWN ers are chiefly men too Immersed in busi- ness, and women too occupied in family or social or charitable or club affairs, to take the time necessary for finding the books which are nevertheless necessary to them. Their book agent studies them and their needs and is able to get at once to the point with them. Each subscription set as it comes out he mentally apportions to Mr. Ex or Mrs. Zee, according to their known tastes, and he does not waste their time nor his when they meet. He is also up on current books, and is able to inform his customer of many bookish things of which the customer has heard something and wants to know more. Whether the meeting is of his seeking or his custom- er's, he rarely, if he is skillful, leaves the office or the house without a sale, and sometimes he carries with him a bunch of miscellaneous commissions besides. As I have said, this most useful book agent, this — mirabile dictu — welcome book agent, is the product of a need. Ill THE PUBLISHER This need is in turn the product of a com- plex and wealthy age. And, in turn, the phenomenal growth of our complexity and wealth is bearing a steadily increasing harvest for the fast-growing ranks of the agents. A really good agent, by the wa}', can make four or five thousand dollars a year. The majority, probably, net from two to four thousand, and here and there an exceptional man nears six. Few women are successful in this field, so far, probably for the reason that success de- pends upon creating a reputation as an expert, which women, though they may be experts, still find it difficult to do. These agents are found, of course, mostly in the centres of wealth. New York has many of them, but not many more than Chicago. To-day they are found in every city of the first or second, and sometimes even of the third magni- tude. From these centres they extend their operations throughout the suburbs and to neighboring towns. Some have de- 112 A DOLLAR DOWN veloped business in far separated centres, and spend much of their time on trains. Others favor all country routes. Many do a good deal of business by mail, only visiting their distantly separated custom- ers once or twice a year to keep in touch. Thus, in one way or another, the coun- try is pretty well taken care of by the in- dependent book merchants, and it remains with the publisher to establish and main- tain relations, not with the public but with the book agents. This he does by con- stant correspondence. It is also to the interest of every book agent who deals with a good class of personal customers to keep in good standing with the pub- lishers who issue their kind of high stand- ard sets. Eventually, by a process of natural selection, each agent settles down chiefly to one publisher — at least to the extent of being known as a Scribner man or a Houghton-Mifflin man, and so on; but there is no contract or binding relation 113 THE PUBLISHER either wa}^ The publisher assumes little risk dealing in this way through long- tried agents. And he is under no neces- sity to advertise — though he often does advertise with the hope of provoking the customers of other publishers' agents to ask to see his sets. Sales are made from sample copy or dummy, and the pur- chaser's standing, if credit is required, is looked up through the usual commercial agencies before any considerable risk is assumed. Yes, it is a safe and comfort- able business. And then there is the occasional lim- ited edition. This often helps out well. On getting out a new set to be sold at two dollars a volume, for instance, the pub- lisher sometimes will first print from the same plates a special edition of a hundred and fifty or two hundred sets on fine, hand-made paper, and have each volume specially bound and a little more freel}' illustrated. Perhaps he will insert in the first volume an introduction by some 114 A DOLLAR DOWN celebrity, or get the author to give up a few days to writing his autograph in all the volumes. This edition, which really will cost less than a dollar more a volume than the regular subscription edition, he will sell for five or six or seven dollars to a discriminating body of collectors, and will make enough, perhaps, to pay for the plates of the whole edition. This can only be done occasionally with some set that offers real value from a collector's point of view. But it is often enough pos- sible to be helpful in the year's business. But this pretty business in copyrighted sets is as an apple in its barrel to the great bulk of what many call the "regular" subscription businesses, the adjective in this case indicating merely size. The "main stream" of the business would be more nearly descriptive. Of this "regu- lar" kind, the vast business in which the late Peter Fenelon Collier amassed his large fortune years before he developed "Collier's Weekly" into a book-order 115 THE PUBLISHER magazine is probably the best example. Mr. Collier built up a selling machine of wonderful size and complexity. He di- vided the United States into departments under able salaried heads and subdivided these again under commission agents till there was no village where Collier's sets were not offered. He published sets of all standard authors which no longer re- quired royalty payments, and so effective was his machine that it was said that edi- tions of a hundred thousand sets were not uncommon on his presses. But, of course, under the old condi- tions, operating through general agents, whether commissioned or salaried, and with all the expensive machinery of a great, continent-wide business mechan- ism, lower costs and higher prices must be the rule. And yet, at that, with the help of long press runs, no royalties and the saving of the printer's profit, good, serviceable library sets can be marketed at fair subscription prices. ii6 A DOLLAR DOWN There are hundreds of businesses of this kind in the countr}' now, and many of them are highly prosperous. There has developed, out of the vast size of the coun- try, a system of interchanging selling fa- cilities among houses far separated which has proved exceedingly effective. It is known as the general agency system, and does away with the need of each house covering the same territory with its own expensive business machinery. For instance, Smith & Company in New York have invested a good deal of money in their profusely illustrated twelve-vol- ume set of " The Men Who Made Amer- ica." Already they have worked up in the years a highly effective selling machine covering the rich and extensive territory tributary to New York. But to sell enough of this set to make it worth the while re- quires, in the face of to-day's keen com- petition, a field of operation as big as America. So they arrange with Jones & Company, of Chicago, who have devel- 117 THE PUBLISHER oped an equally effective selling machine in their own territory, with Robinson & Company, of Louisville, who also have their local selling machine, and with many others until they have covered the countr}', that these firms shall handle "The Men Who Made America" for them, each in his own territory. To these other concerns which, for sell- ing purposes, are called general agents they give a commission of forty per cent, or even sometimes more; for the general agents, of course, must find a profit left for themselves after paying their own house-to-house agents the usual selling commission of twenty-five per cent. But Jones & Company and Robinson & Company and many of the others are also publishers, and they in turn employ Smith & Company as general agents for selling sets of their own publishing in New York territory. There are very many of these busi- nesses, which, for all their working to- ii8 A DOLLAR DOWN gether, are nevertheless keenly competi- tive, and this competition, added to the swift growth of public discrimination, has served to clarify and very considerably purify a vast business which, in earlier years, sadly needed the process that the late decade and a half has applied. In this connection, one publisher of long ex- perience said to me the other day: — " The whole fact of the matter is that, up to ten years ago, they 'd buy anything. I 'm not exaggerating — anything at all. It was too easy. But now, if you want to make money, you 've got to give bigger value than anybody else and at skin-tight prices at that. Yes, sir, it 's getting to be a harder game every year. At the same time the market is getting bigger." This class of business necessarily con- stitutes the bulk of the so-called subscrip- tion book trade. There are hosts of these publishers, big and little. Some of them are in the business for many years, others enter spectacularly, overrun themselves 119 THE PUBLISHER in a few ill-advised seasons, and disap- pear. It is an easy business to get into, for you can hire plates if you want to, at no great cost. Many printers own plates of the standard sets, having either taken them over from some meteoric publisher who left them in their hands when his light went out, or having made them for themselves in slack times. There really is no business easier to get into — which is one reason why so many rush into it and drop out again. In short, it is the same old story. There is a sound, profitable business in subscription publishing, as in trade publishing, for publishers, but no^ for amateurs, bunglers, experimenters, and speculators. The same is true of every other busi- ness, from restauranting to bond-selling. The "regular" subscription publish- er's financial problem is easily calculated from the preceding table of the copyright publisher's scheme. Look back at that and remember that, on account of deal- A DOLLAR DOWN ing with general agents, he must increase the commission item to forty or fifty per cent. Against this, he saves ten per cent royalty by selling non-copyrighted sets only. The rest he must save out of man- ufacturing cost, which is easier than it seems because his sales are much larger and his press runs bigger. Besides, he raises the retail price. He has to. Out of this multiplicity of publishing come these wonderfully advertised sales in the department stores from time to time, as well as the cut-rate bookstores that sprout on all corners like mushrooms, and as quickly pass away. The time was that subscription book publishers were few enough to enable them to " keep some kind of tabs" on the general situation from stocks to market. What each one was doing was known, in a general way, to the others, and there came to be some- thing like concerted action. It was recog- nized that it was advisable to keep sub- scription books out of the trade market 121 THE PUBLISHER for two reasons, first, to keep alive the public notion of a sort of exclusiveness, and, second, to maintain unbroken the rate of prices established in the years for this kind of book. These efforts were, for years, highly successful. Amateurs and speculators were few in number, and their small stocks, when they failed, were absorbed too quickly to be a menace. Occasionally large failures upset the equanimity of the trade, but this is a big country and the danger soon passed. It was the panic that finally upset cal- culations and produced a new, or rather a changed, order. In the money tight- ness, business practically stopped for many months. But the publishers were heavil}' stocked. Concerted efforts were made to keep the surface unbroken, but it could n't be done. One after another many publishers, pushed for cash, had to let some or all of their stock go to the de- partment stores to bring what it would. A DOLLAR DOWN And here came the surprise. In this new market subscription sets found an excellent welcome at prices only a frac- tion of their former prices — but showing a profit nevertheless. And, though the department store public absorbed vast quantities of the stuff and cried for more, the regular subscription public, just as soon as business resumed, bought freely again at the same old subscription prices. This is certainly a queer, impulsive, unthinking public. Yes, I 'm suspecting Barnum was right, after all. Behold the era of bankrupt publishers^ sales long after the panic and its miser- able after-throes are over and forgot. Oh! but you say, I 've seen these sales every year now for many years. That is quite true. There are always subscription failures, and the stocks are alwa3's com- ing on the market — but never before was anything like this. And it is to be hoped that nothing like it will ever be again! It is all — that is, this multiplicity of it 123 THE PUBLISHER these last several years — the miserable re- sult of one now celebrated speculation and its spectacular collapse. The speculator had no very large capital, but he had some. He also had a colossal faith in the abilit}' of the public to absorb cheap books. So he ordered in profusion sets of nearly ever3'thing he could find plates of, and he made new plates of a lot more. He placed these books on commission in department stores the countr}- over at attractive prices. Then he awaited results. His mistake was that he overlooked the subscription basic principle — he asked his customers to go to the store instead of sending the store to them. The results were good, all right, but they were noth- ing to our speculator's expectations — - and his business calculations were based on his expectations. A myriad of printers and binders had to be paid and, compared with their aggregate demands, the tirst season's return, plus his capital, was noth- ing. The only possible result followed, 124 A DOLLAR DOWN and followed quickly. Ever since these printers and binders have been trying to get their losses back on that stock. They have used the department stores to sell it. The advertising has been of depart- ment store construction. Remember that, when 3'ou are counting up the subscrip- tion man's sins. At least he has n't that on his conscience. At the end of each season the still un- sold books are carefully packed away, and, a few months or a year later, sud- denly reappear as the result of an alleged new "publisher's failure." Thus has this one publisher who failed been made to fail a thousand times in half as many American towns! And the end is not yet! Meantime it may pay you to look over some of these " bankrupt publishers " sets. If you want " standards," there they are and to spare. The scholarly and literary values are there, for they are in the text. The bindings are nearly always irre- 125 THE PUBLISHER proachably plain with printed labels. It all comes finall}' to a question of taste. If you are not particular about clear paper and good printing and neat margins, it is your grand chance — for the prices are highly attractive. Another and important form of sub- scription book-selling, this also highly modernized, is differentiated by its title of mail-order book-selling. Instead of sending an agent to get the order, the publisher sends a circular. He has to make an enormously greater number of calls, and of course he fails enormously oftener to get the order. But when he gets it he has no agent's commission to pay. It is a precarious business, and profitable under skillful management. The problem is to write the circular or the ad- vertisement in such a way as to induce the reader to act on the impulse — and this requires great experience and skill. Once the reader lays the circular aside without actually writing his acceptance, 126 A DOLLAR DOWN no matter how strong his intention to do so later, the chances are many to one that he will never send it. And it does n't pay again to circularize the same list for de- linquents. It is a matter of shooting to kill with the first barrel. The mail-order publisher has to pass through three doors to success. The first is his circular; it must be exactl}' right or it will not sell the best book in the world even below cost. There are very few men in the country who can write these circu- lars uniformly with success. The second door is the list. This must be made up of the kind of people who buy books, or it is useless. A good list of large size is a priceless possession. There are lists which can be sold over and over and over again indefinitely for certain kinds of books. INIagazine sub- scription lists are apt to make good book lists, but sometimes they fail utterly. Publishers guard their lists zealously. The}^ continually correct them and add 127 THE PUBLISHER to them. The class of books they ven- ture is usually largely influenced by the nature of their available lists. The third door is the test. This is made by sending out one thousand cir- culars to persons chosen at random from a certain list. The publisher then sits down and waits. Experience has shown him that the number of orders he re- ceives from that first thousand he will average from all other thousands in the same list. It is this invariable average that makes the mail-order book business a de- pendable business. If he has a large mar- gin of gross profit, he can go ahead on returns of two per cent — or twenty sales out of his thousand circulars. He does n't often get much higher returns than this, especially of late years. This mail-order book business is one of the most highl}- specialized of businesses, and there are not man}' who continue to succeed for a long period of 3'ears. There is one New York house, however, which 128 A DOLLAR DOWN is reputed to have made extremely hand- some profits for many years, running its magazines always in the interests of the book business, the purpose being con- tinually to augment its already large sub- scription lists with the kind of persons liable to become regular book-customers later on. "Well, I figure this way," said a mail- order man when I asked him his business basis. " Say the set is that Smith, there, that I offer for $15. Well, out of each hundred orders, say I cancel ten on in- vestigating their financial standing, and seven send the set back when they see it — for nowadays, you know, we have to sell on approval. That will leave 83 sets, bringing in $1245. Now let us deduct the ^ Cost of doing business,' which amounts to twent}' per cent. This includes collec- tion and losses. This leaves us $996. You can count on a dollar a set for de- livery, and that out brings us down to — let me see — $913. Now that set cost us 129 THE PUBLISHER $4.75 to manufacture and $3.50 to sell — > that is, to circularize. Subtract this and there remains a profit of $237.25. That is n't so bad as some businesses you know, is it?" A slight variation from this substitutes magazine advertising for circularizing. Sometimes both are done with the same set. A very conspicuous recent instance of the advertised set is the eleventh edi- tion of the Encyclopcedia Britannica^ which was presented to the American public wholly by advertising, the first appropriation for which was $300,000. The ninth edition of the same work, pub- lished some years ago, affords the finest possible comparison of trade and sub- scription sellingfor certain kinds of books. It was started in England b}' trade meth- ods only, and in due time reached a sale of ten thousand sets. A firm of American subscription men then went to London and secured the right to sell it in Amer- ica. They organized a machine covering 130 A DOLLAR DOWN the country and in a very short time sold one hundred and fifty thousand sets in America alone. Later on the English publishers adopted the American sub- scription method in Great Britain and immediately sold many times their orig- inal British sale. Of all subscription book methods, how- ever, the most intensely modern, and the most surprising in its results, is the won- derful distribution of books of sound worth at practically cost price which is inciden- tal to the subscription schemes of cer- tain magazines. A conservative estimate places the number of volumes so distrib- uted, practically without profit to the publisher, at six or seven million a year. Not that these magazines are doing this great educational work in any spirit of benevolence. Not a bit of it. None of their editors, publishers, and owners that I know are in the least inspired (I hope they will forgive me) by any nobler mo- tive than circulation for their magazines, 131 THE PUBLISHER circulation meaning to them merely more advertising at better prices. But the lack of altruism in these gentlemen (whose business affairs do not in the least con- cern 3-ou and me except in their relations to book distribution) does not vitiate the civilizing fact that their desire for circu- lation is the cause of the distribution of millions of good books each year, princi- pally through the country districts and always to people of small or moderate income, at prices which no business agency requiring a cash profit could af- ford, and which no benevolent agency could raise the means for; and that this great and growing distribution in compe- tition with the cheap book business of all sorts throughout the country maintains a firm depressing finger upon prices — all of which, b}^ the wa}', is greatly more to the advantage of the public than of the publishers. For the sake of clearness we must note, in connection with this magazine book 133 A DOLLAR DOWN distribution, a confusion of terms, for the word "subscription" in this instance re- fers to the magazine's subscription, though the books involved are, loosely speaking, subscription books from the other point of view also. Originally, subscription books were those so expensive to pro- duce that enough subscribers to cover the cost had to be secured before the ven- ture was undertaken. Many books are published that way still — chiefly books of scientific or artistic value, for the pro- duction of which public-spirited men and women combine their subscriptions. The University Press publications of various lands are largely of this semi-benevolent kind. But to-day the term "subscription book " is badly overworked. At least four different kinds of book specialists, each widely differentiated from the others, claim it as their own and think the other fellows are n't talking English. Let us leave their contentions to the specialists, while we consider the magazine man's ^33 THE PUBLISHER problem when he dabbles in the book business. Of course he has a business scheme to work to. Every business man, even a modern magazine man, must have that. In this case the scheme shows a profit on paper as large as the actual profits of many businesses — only in this case the profit usually exists only on paper. The scheme as it averages (on paper) divides the re- ceipts this way: — Manufacturing cost (magazines and books) 25 per cent Commissions to agents, losses and collections 50 » Administration — branch office, sal- aries, etc 15 Profit 10 100 A book or a set of books and a year's subscription to one or more magazines constitute the offer. The retail price of each is stated fairly, and the price asked is something between that and the actual manufacturing cost. 134 A DOLLAR DOWN An honest try is made for that ten per cent profit and it is sometimes success- ful. But, as the real object is circulation rather than profit, the profit often passes entirely in over-zealous efforts at in- creased distribution. Sometimes these extra efforts entail losses. On the whole, the publisher is well satisfied to come out even on his book business at the end of the year. He has increased his average circulation a little, added a little to his gross advertising, and carried off successfully an announce- ment of a slight raise of rate for next year. It has been a good year, and he neither thinks nor cares about the two or three hundred thousand volumes that have passed through his hands into per- manent homes. If he does pause to regret the large amount of time and labor ex- pended on that big, complicated book- distributing machinery which contributes no cash profit into his treasury, it is to dismiss it with a shrug. He has to work 135 THE PUBLISHER harder than some other magazine pub- lishers, that's all. But so long as there 's success, what's the use of regretting? But our magazine man sells his sub- scription combinations in other ways than through his big, highly organized agency department. He sells direct to the public from his own home office by circularizing. His problem, we will say, is as fol- lows: — Fireside Review, i year . . . Jones Monthly, i year . . . Smith's History of the Nations. Totals for the combination $7.50 $3-io His offer is $4.25 for the combination. This, his elaborate circular points out, is a clean saving of $3.25, and a handsome bargain. And it is true. The book alone, wliich is a sound one, in fact one of the standard histories, would cost, equally well bound, 136 Cost Price delivered $3.00 $1.50 1.50 % 3.00 A DOLLAR DOWN more than half that total combination price at the cheapest bookstore, and the magazines are two of the best in the market. ' You have noticed that the publisher has a gross profit of $1.15. But that won't last. It is the selling and distribu- tion that cost the money in this huge country. So he prepares his circulars, makes his test, addresses his lists, and enters the mail-order scramble. Of course his overhead has been taken care of in the given cost of his combination. The balance must cover losses and collec- tions and circularizing. Can he do it ? To his present live subscribers, yes. Sold to them, he could do it for two thirds, and reserve a safe profit of ten per cent But this is not his object. New sub- scribers is what he wants and the only thing he wants. So he extends his opera- tions into new and experimental lists and 137 THE PUBLISHER pays the price of his enterprise in loss of profits. There finally comes a time with the best of ventures when he can go no further without actual loss, and right there he stops. He has gathered a dozen thousand new subscribers with this offer and he is quite satisfied. The additional fact that he has also placed a fine educa- tional work into twelve thousand homes at practically cost does n't appeal to him further than to cause him to note the rapidly growing demand for books of substantial worth and educational value, and to make additional efforts to secure that kind for the next try. Nor does he overlook that gratifying advertising that has also come his way in connection with the sale. His combi- nation has not only got him twelve thou- sand new subscribers; it has also paid for the printing and distribution of six hun- dred thousand circulars advertising the name, fame, and contents of his much- loved magazines. IV PUBLISHER, AUTHOR, AND THE DEVIL IV PUBLISHER, AUTHOR, AND THE DEVIL "George, what does this woman want?" asked the publisher, querulously, looking at a card which the office boy handed him. "She's got some poems, sir," said George, "and she says you're to publish 'em, sir." "George," said the publisher wrath- fully, "how often have I told you that I never see people with poems or short stories ? All these people and all the first- novel people go to Mr. Brown. I 'm sure I've told you that twenty times. Take this card to him at once — and do try to remember." George, probably from habit, his home being across the river in New Jersey, 141 THE PUBLISHER scratched his left ankle with the toe of his right shoe. He also fingered the edge of the publisher's desk and squirmed — but he did not take the card. " Well," said the publisher sharply, " don't 3-ou understand ? I said you should take this card — " "But she said — " began George. " I don't care what she said," snapped the publisher. " It 's what I say." " But there 's somethin' written on the back of it," George managed to gasp. The publisher turned the card over, read it and sighed. " Hang the Reverend Abinadab Brown and his talented parishioner! " he mut- tered. "Well, George " — resignedly — " bring her in." For twenty minutes the publisher lis- tened with a hypocritical smile to the rhapsodies of the Reverend Abinadab Brown's latest literary discovery, but the limit arrived when the lady exclaimed, clasping her hands: — 142 PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR "Why, I could talk to you for hours about my poems — you're so sympa- thetic!" The publisher's smile suddenly turned grim; but the poet, lost in contemplation of inner visions, did not perceive the change. " It is time, I think, that I did a little talking," he said. "I must not mislead you with my — er — sympathy; but the fact is that poetry — even the very best — does not sell in this degenerate age." "So I've heard," she said; "but, of course, it is because this hard, money- loving age does not produce poems that really penetrate to the human heart — the kind, I mean, that rises above mere ages, that chords with the universal hu- man. Such poetry always will sell. Now mine, for example — " " Forgive me if I seem brusque," inter- rupted the publisher, just in time, "but even yours won't sell." ^_" How caa you know that," she asked 143 THE PUBLISHER sharply, " when you have not read even one of them? " " I know it because I know the market," said the publisher. " We have not for some years made anything that, in any tan- gible sense, could be called money out of any volume of poetry; and more than ninety per cent of those published have failed to return even the cash cost of pro- duction. Other publishers have the same experience. Publishing is a business and cannot afTord the luxury of even the best poetry. So I 'm afraid I shall have to re- turn you your manuscript unread or keep it for a reading only with the understand- ing that its chance of acceptance amounts to nearly nothing." "But," exclaimed the poet with some asperity, " poetry is published neverthe- less. Hundreds of new volumes appear in the shops every year. How do you square that undeniable fact with the very strange statements you have just made? If publishers lose money on more than 144 PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR ninety volumes of poetry out of every hundred why do they go on publishing them? Tell me that. Are publishers such fools?" " I did not say the publishers lost the money," was the reply; "but it is lost just the same." "Who loses it?" This explosively. "Once in a while the publisher," was the reply; "but usually the poet." "The poet! How so?" " Simply because the poet pays the costs of publication whenthe publisher declines to. It may be a sad comment on our times, or it may not, according to the way you look at it; but the fact remains that peo- ple do not buy poetry in this generation. You must not blame publishers for refus- ing the loss; and the poets, rather than lose all opportunity for self-expression, often — and properly — themselves as- sume the expense and the customary losses." The poet's face ran the gamut of ex- M5 THE PUBLISHER pression during this statement, finally coming to rest in indignant resignation. "Well, I knew this was a degenerate age," she snapped, " but I did not know that it absolutely lacked all the finer feel- ings." "It does n't," said the publisher. " On the contrary, it — " "But it must," she persisted, "since it is an age without poetry." " But it is n't," said the publisher. " It is a sturdy, masculine, powerful age — an age of the loftiest as well as the in- tensest and hugest of achievements. Onjj', just as the architect and the miniature painter both express art loftily but in dif- ferent mediums, so this age works in a different medium than the ages whith have expressed themselves in verbal po- etry. The poetry of to-day is expressed, for one example, in machinery. Our mod- ern epics are written in record-breaking propeller-strokes across three thousand miles of ocean. Our modern l3Tics are 146 PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR written in the clouds. The Wright broth- ers would have been poets of exquisite fancy and rare quality a century ago." The poet sniffed. " I don't believe it," she said ; " but it 's a pretty idea. The ' Atlantic ' will take a poem on that if you don't mind my using the idea." " You 're quite welcome to it," said the publisher. " I think I might get twenty-five dol- lars out of the ' Atlantic ' for that," she said meditatively. Then, sharply: "How much will it cost me to publish my own poems?" "You may pay almost any price," said the publisher. " It depends on the house you go to and the style of publication. In our own case, we simply reverse ordinary methods. Commonly the pub- lisher pays costs, assumes risks, and takes profits, paying the author a percentage or royalty; but by this method the author pays composition, paper, printing and 147 THE PUBLISHER binding bills, a fee of several hundred dollars for our trouble and the use of our name, and a commission on sales amount- ing to our cost of doing business. The fee, you see, insures us a profit whether the book succeeds or not — and it almost certainly will not. You will then own the plates and stock yourself, and get what- ever receipts there may be from sales, less our selling commission. You prob- ably won't clear, but you may in a few years. Some do. "But we don't care much about this kind of business, as too many plugs — excuse the vernacular; the word merely means books that don't sell — hurt us with the trade. So your poems must have other reasons for acceptance — some ex- ceptionally lofty quality, perhaps. If we don't take your book, however, you '11 have no difficulty in getting it published. If you fail with one of the regular pub- lishers there are concerns that make a business of this sort of publishing; but 148 PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR naturally they charge you much higher prices, since with them it is a principal source of income." ; This applies, of course, only to poets now writing, the "classics" — Whittier, Bryant and the rest — being constant and profitable sellers; but, of course, there are exceptions. The books of Bliss Car- man, James Whitcomb Riley, Cale Young Rice, the late William Vaughn Moody, Henr}' van Dyke, Josephine Preston Pea- body Marks, and many others, make some mone}' for their publishers, though not many make enough to be really worth while, considered merely as so many commercial units. Their list value, how- ever, looms large. They contribute bal- ance, proportion, quality, tone. They make for literary repute and attract the attention of serious workers in many literary fields. From several points of view, publishers find poetry highly de- sirable. Even with their advantages many publishers of standing rarely publish po- 149 THE PUBLISHER etry on an}- basis except the regular. This eliminates from their lists practically all volumes of poems except those that ap- pear to have a good selling chance. On the other hand, there are several minor concerns that make a business of publish- ing books at the author's expense, — often at the author's very heavy expense, — and these are patronized by many poets who are unsuccessful in placing their books with publishing houses of importance. Let us peer again, however, into the publisher's sanctum. He is now talking with a young man whose first novel he has just accepted, but only after much debate. The 3'oung author's eyes are shin- ing with happiness. " But I must warn you," said the pub- lisher smilingl}^, " not to expect too much. I know this is a happy moment with you and I would n't be a wet blanket for the world ; but I want your happiness to be founded on reality and not on hearsay, hope, or fancy. And so I must not delay 150 PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR to tell you that the sale of your book probably will not be enough to pay you for your time and trouble. You must not care for that, however. You must con- sider this your introduction to the public and consider yourself very lucky to get the introduction with the first novel you write. Your real work is all before you. This novel may sell well — it may even sell big; but the great chances are that it will not sell more than a couple of thou- sand, and perhaps not that. Now two thousand copies at ten per cent royalty amounts to only two hundred dollars — and it may not be that much. You must remember, however, that your publish- ers will get practically nothing out of it at those sales — and may even lose a little; so we shall be partners in dis- tress." "But why?" asked the young author anxiously. "Why so little? I thought publishers would not accept any novel that did not look like ten or fifteen thou- 151 THE PUBLISHER sand anyway. Two thousand ! Why, that 's ridiculous! " "It is just as I feared," said the pub- lisher. "You have the popular idea of book sales. My dear sir, no one can pos- sibly guess in advance — even approxi- mately — what the sale of any novel by an unknown author will be — the pub- lisher least of all, I think sometimes. Of course we hope it will be a good success, but we have no expectations; and I want you to banish expectations also. It 's safer. You should be satisfied with a couple-of- thousand circulation, because the large majority of first novels do not sell more than that. Then, if your novel happens to sell better than that, or to sell really well, you will be agreeably surprised." " Then some first novels really do sell well?" " Certainly," said the publisher. "Every year there are one or two or three that sell exceedingly well and more than that number that sell profitably. That is why 152 PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR publishers go on gambling in new novel- ists — hoping always to hit one of those destined to success and make a connec- tion which shall be profitable for many years to come. Florence Barclay's * The Rosary ' was a first novel. The publish- ers had no idea of their good fortune when they put it out without any special acclaim. That was in October, I think. It did n't attract attention by its sales till after Christmas; but then it began to sell so rapidly it was hard to keep it in stock. It did its hundred thousand in a year and is probabty three times that by this time." The young author's eyes glistened. " How much does Mrs. Barclay get out of it?" "Well, I don't know," said the pub- lisher; "but I suppose she got ten per cent at the start, being a first novel; and very likely fifteen per cent after the first ten thousand. Then, when the book be- gan to sell really big, she probably de- manded a rise to twenty per cent. Her 153 THE PUBLISHER publishers probably resisted this for a while, but, fearing to lose her succeeding books, yielded — say, from the fiftieth thousand. Now — supposing it really hap- pened this way and that the book really has, as they say, sold two hundred and fifty thousand at full price and fifty thou- sand cheap edition — let us see what she has made." The publisher figured a few minutes and announced: — " Sixty-six thousand dollars to date, with probabl}^ at least half as much more scattered through the years to come — to say nothing of an assured handsome sale of her second novel, whether it be good or bad, and a reputation with trade and public that should make it possible for her, with industr}^ and good judgment, to earn a very pretty income for a number of years. Besides this, you know, she has her great success in Great Britain and the Colonies. ^ " Hers, of course, is the great exception. 154 PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR Not every year, by any means, brings a success so great as Mrs. Barclay's, but every year has its group of fine successes, though individually smaller in bulk. Jef- frey Farnol with ' The Broad Highway,' Vaughan Kester with 'The Prodigal Judge,' and Henry Sydnor Harrison with 'Queed,' are three out of several who, during this year, established sound repu- tations with first novels. They are the glittering exceptions, however, and it would be unreasonable for 3'ou to expect to do the same — though, of course, you may. 'Mrs. Wiggs' was a first novel. So were many great successes. "But the greater number of novelists by many times begin sound careers by first books of sound workmanship and no success, followed by a succession of others of sound workmanship and slowly increasing success; until at last, by proc- ess of growth, each reaches the degree of popularity which his work calls for. It is rarely that a novelist comes into his 155 THE PUBLISHER own short of six or eight years. Some- times, as in the case of Octave Thanet, it is man}' years before a fine commercial success crowns an industrious and noble career; but your success is certain in the end if you pursue your career as a busi- ness as well as an art — that is, if you diligently set 370urself to discover what you can do best, and then do this best the best 3'ou can, but always with a shrewd eye to popularity with your own public. Be yourself always, but always in a businesslike way. Art for art's sake is an excellent motto for a great genius, a great protagonist or a dilettante with an income; but art for business' sake ac- complishes the progress of the world." " You mean I should write blood-and- thunder because it sells?" asked the young author sarcastically. "You know I don't mean that," said the publisher. "You know I mean ex- actly the reverse. Moreover, blood-and- thunder does not alwa3's sell. Good 156 PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR character novels, on the whole, are much better risks. Above all things, be your- self; but see that you are up to snufF first. That 's all. Whatever you can do — whatever it is that the combination of point of view, observation, reason, inven- tion, characterization and dramatic ex- pression which is in you can accomplish, that is what you must do; and, whether you like it or not, you must accept the degree of popularity it commands. Henry James must be content with his two or three or four thousand sale a novel, just as Winston Churchill is happily content with his two or three or four hundred thou- sand; and each is highly successful, be- cause he follows his own diligently and relentlessly and with a shrewd eye to the getting of all that 's coming to him. " Henry James' attempt to write ' The Crossing' would be as ludicrously dis- astrous as Churchill's try at * The Sa- cred Fount.' " "I suppose," put in the young author, 157 THE PUBLISHER " you don't want to make me an advance against my royalties? I 'm right at the bottom of m}' — " " Frankly, I don't/' said the publisher hastily. " We are sure of the quality of your novel, but we don't know in the least how it will sell and we are taking enough risk in giving it its chance. We are the losers if it fails, you know — not you. Oh, who is this? Why, it's — it's — Won't you excuse me now? Here 's an important call." , And the young author passed, in the doorway, a fiction celebrity of first re- pute — one of those whose names are fa- miliar among the "six best sellers "; and, looking back, he saw the publisher smil- ingly extending both his hands to the newcomer. Stopping to question the manuscript clerk, the young author heard through the presently reopened door the cordial words: — "And the advance? I think you said twenty-five hundred down and live thou- 158 PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR sand on publication. That 's just as you like, of course. Boy, here — take this memorandum to Miss Jones and have her draw up a contract immediately. And — hold on! — tell the cashier to draw a check at once to Mr. Aitch's order for twenty-five hundred dollars." More than any other business man, the successful book publisher must be many-sided. Publishers are said to be cranks, and I honestly believe the best of them — as well as the most of them — are. Like everything else, it all lies in the definition. To the " plain business man," as your single-eyed, one-lobed profit-seeker — no matter what his station or calling or success may be — is fond of calling himself, every man of compli- cated nature is impossible to understand. The one eye can see and the one lobe comprehend only their predestined ob- ject; and crank is a convenient term for the great unknown beyond. Your plain business man, were he in book publish- 159 THE PUBLISHER ing, would find it simple enough, the only question being the amount of profit for each venture. Your plain business man, how- ever, would never be in publishing, or — in it by mistake — would get quickly out, for the plain business reason that almost any other business could be made to pay so much better with so much less effort. The publisher, on the other hand, sees many questions besides profit — ques- tions of art, of literature, of reputation, of personality, of list dignity, of house influ- ence, for example; and his decisions are often slowl}^ reached — which your plain business man finds unreasonable — and when reached are often utterly beside the premises as your plain business man con- ceives the premises. Hence he is "queer" or "not wholly normal" — in short, a crank. And if he grows impatient with misunderstanding he also becomes "diffi- cult," and even at times " impossible." You sometimes hear celebrated publish- ers thus described. 1 60 PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR The publisher is not only a crank — he is also a shrewd, keen-witted, far- sighted, many-sided business man; he is an enthusiastic cultivator of literature for its own sake; he is an ardent encourager and helper of artistic effort for the sake of the man that he is; he is at times a preacher, at times a self-sacrificing teacher, and many times — at heart always, perhaps — a gay gambler, keenly enjoying the winning and accepting outrageous for- tune with a grin. If the burden of odds is against him, and the margin of possi- ble gain one that a plain business man would dismiss as ridiculous, what 's the difference? To him the game alone is worth a gross of candles. Nor is this all the publisher's reward. He not only loves the game — he loves the very tools of the game. He loves books, not alone for their content but just as tangible actualities. Every detail of the book delights him. The beautiful type page, the well-proportioned margins, i6i THE PUBLISHER the clear printing, the neat, precise bind- ing, like tasteful and stylish clothes — yes, the very smell of the fresh page and the feel of the new, well-balanced volume in the hand are a pleasure to him. He has hovered over the details of manufac- ture, fussed about the margins, pondered over the balance of the title page; and now, with the first thousand just from the binder piling up on the platform, he feels boyishly gleeful. He strokes the smooth cover, admires the fitness of the form to the contents, and then opens the volume anxiously, for maybe his eye will fall at once on that error which, no matter whit the labor, what the care, some one gen- erally discovers — when it is too late. Yes, he loves books for themselves. He surrounds himself with them in his ofhce, in his den at home — even in his dressing room. He loves to wander into the stockr room to see them stowed in bins and boxes on every side, each reposing in its neat paper wrap. His greatest temptation 162 PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR is to take on the beautiful possibility which he knows from the start won't pay; and he continues to dally with it because he joys in the thought of the exquisite, if extrav- agant, book it would make. Even the dis- appointment and exasperation over the failure to sell of some book of much prom- ise is tempered somewhat by his satis- faction in having planned and brought into being so beautiful, so fit, so noble a volume. " If I were a rich man," he whis- pers to himself, " it would almost have been worth the loss just to have done it." He is not rich and he cannot afford to have those four figures on the wrong side of the account; but — well, it's all in a publisher's life. One of the greatest of his sources of happiness, one of the largest items on the profit side of his book of life, is the posi- tion his business gives him in reference to literature, art and learning, the affairs of the hustling, palpitating world, the core of life; and, in the same breath, the asso- 163 THE PUBLISHER ciations he makes with the men and women who, in innumerable and widely diverse fields of endeavor, are doing this world's living. I used to think, during the most of my eleven 3'ears of daily and weekly journalism, that the newspaper afforded the finest facilities — the best reserved seat, so to speak — possible for viewing the game of life. But I have long been convinced of my mistake in supposing journalism the best seat for the viewing of this great spectacle. It is an excep- tional seat, an extremely close seat, afford- ing extraordinarily clear vision, so close that the hand may often be extended to rend the draperies of the passing actors for revelations still more intimate; but it is also a side seat and the angle is often deceptive. Often, indeed, the spectacle is badly distorted. It is at life's best that life usually is most truly seen, and jour- nalism usually views life at its worst. The reporter and the policeman enter the house together. Mishap, contention, mis- 164 PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR fortune, failure, disaster, death — these are more often the laboratories in which the journalist studies life. The subject is usually seen under stress of emotion, often convulsed by emotion. Life is studied under ridicule, in stren- uous conflict, in disorder, in woe. The point of view has its advantages, uncov- ering unsuspected depths and convolu- tions of motive and character; but, on the whole, it is not the simple, straightfor- ward normal life of work and order and happiness that the publisher sees from his vantage-point in the very middle of the stage itself — life busy with its art, its science, its literature, its accomplish- ment of every sort; life sweating over deeds doing and singing over deeds done. Life working is to life stopped in its work as thousands to one; and, to round out his conception of its fullness, the publisher has much less to infer than the journalist. The publisher, then, is, in the midst of work, a worker. He is in the midst of 165 THE PUBLISHER life — a part of it. So, I grant you, is the journalist — and yet differently. The pub- lisher puts his shoulder to the wheel and sweats with the rest. He helps; and, be- cause his province is helpfulness, he is — again unlike the journalist — always wel- come. In the studio of the artist, the workroom of the novelist, the laboratory of the psychologist, the study of the his- torian or publicist, he is a gladly greeted visitor. The returned explorer intrusts him with his discoveries; the statesman lays bare his plans. Everywhere men and women who are making life usher him into the inner chambers and lift the jeal-s ous coverings for his sympathetic critic cism. He is, indeed, in the midst of life in its realest and most wholesome aspects — a helpful agency behind a thousand impulses making for the world's good. The rich companionships, the rich friend- ships, growing out of such a life are in themselves wealth. Nor must we overlook the occasional 1 66 PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR valued chance to recognize genius in crude beginnings and to foster in their infancies careers which may wax great with the decades and make good return of profit and satisfaction. The profits of three or four such relationships spread over the years sometimes amount to a business of themselves; while the pub- lisher's knowledge that he first foretold, perhaps, this triumph of genius and was the encourager and director of its early flights is a satisfaction without compare. Then there is the building of his list — a life-work. The skillful proportioning of the many parts which join in the mak- ing of a library of publications which shall be, as a whole, coherent, sound, self-expressive and profitable, is a work of real creation. Art, biography, history, fiction, sociology, religion, philosophy, science — all the departments of human thought and accomplishment are open to him, and most of the world's workers are at his call. It is for him to choose the 167 THE PUBLISHER design and material of his structure. Its building, brick upon brick, each care- fully squared and set with almost painful precision in its place, is a labor of life. No hustling "modern" methods will do here if the structure is to be beautiful and useful. The bull in the china shop is not more ruthless than your so-called "live business man" at work at a publishing business, though he is often successful with commercial publishing. For related reasons, the architect-builder is usually a single personality. Book publishing is es- sentially a one-man business, though the wise publisher surrounds himself with strong, sympathetic advisers. Publishing by committee is apt to be as ineffectual as collaboration in art. Plowever book publishing ma}^ differ from the purely commercial business, whatever departure it may make toward the professional or the artistic as distinct from the commercial spirit, the financial motive is not only aKva3-s present but is 1 68 PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR even knitted into its very fabric. And the financial problem requires, in my belief, a higher skill in this than in al- most any other business : in the first place, publishing presents, from the very com- plexity of its nature, an immensely more complex and difficult problem than to calculate a profit in coal, dress goods or securities; in the second place, the temp- tation to indulge in the artistic, the beau- tiful, the highly literary, the worth-while book in any of a hundred fields, that is not also a profitable book, is constant and insistent. The publisher finds himself most of the time under conditions which tempt him to forget that he is also a merchant; which tempt him to overestimate the ac- tual market for the really fine work of literature. He must be everlastingly on his guard; and, when he deliberately en- ters such a book upon his list because it should be published in the interest of his list's dignity or the cause of progress, he THE PUBLISHER must offset the commercial error either by inducing the author to stand or to share the risk, or by entering on his list a counterbalancing commercial venture. It is a delicate undertaking, particularly in the early years of a publishing house, while the backlog is still small. Later on, with a superb list of surviving sellers behind him, the publisher's margin of safety is much greater; but by that time, it must be seen, with larger ventures throughout, big and complex undertak- ings on every hand and a record of growth behind constituting a relentless compari- son for present and future growth, the problem remains essentially the same — only on a larger scale. Constant vigilance, therefore, is the price of success — and constant personal vigilance. Publishing cannot be deputed. "The trouble with this business," said a celebrated publisher, " is that you 're always between the devil and the deep sea. There 's harbor nowhere." 170 PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR "Explain yourself," I cried. "Who is the devil and who the deep sea? " " The public and the author, of course," he replied. "Ah!" said I; "but where does the literary agent come in?" " You 're right," he returned with a grin. " I '11 have to revise my simile and add a third monster, for the literary agent is surely the devil." Thus will it be seen that Grub Street to-day is more fraught with uncertainty than the famous Grub Street of story; for the literary agent, at least in the modern sense, is a brand-new product. He is a British invention, finding his excuse and greatest opportunity in the adjustment of relations between authors and publishers seas apart, but carrying his intervention whenever possible — and commonly in England — into the relations of inhabitants even of the same city. He is a necessity or he would not — I had almost said thrive; but he does not really 171 THE PUBLISHER do that. He is often a beneficence to pub- lisher as well as author. It is only when slack business or excessive zeal drives him into forcing royalties or luring au- thors from their natural publishers in order to win a commission by placing them with others that he becomes the devil. His lot is most unhappy, for whatever he does gets him into trouble; and the better he does it the greater the trouble. Depending equally upon author and pub- lisher for his livelihood, he is always at odds with one of them. In order to se- cure clients, he must promise bigger advances and better royalties, which in- vites the publishers' substantial wrath; but if he does n't succeed in securing them he is soundly rated by the author. The fact is that the entire trade book field is so concentrated that the middle- man cannot operate except in a noon of publicity, in which every representation or misrepresentation is visible to all 172 PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR concerned or unconcerned. It follows that his course from study to office and from office to study may be traced by a wake of frothy profanity. He earns his money! There was a time when, through a nat- ural development, the market for fiction suddenly expanded in a fashion to make publishers and book-sellers almost lose their heads; in fact, some of them did, and lost a lot of dollars in the process. We all remember the days of the first sensa- tional circulations and the tidal wave of book advertising and excitement that fol- lowed it — when even sporting papers sprouted review departments and new- book supplements were born once a week. It was then the literary agent entered the book field in a real sense. Previously he had sold stories and poems to maga- zines and Sunday newspapers on com- mission; now he peddled novels among publishers and moved into a better flat. 173 THE PUBLISHER Publishers were eager for novels then. For several years they plunged. British authors heard of it and deluged America with rejected manuscripts, and dry goods clerks sat up nights on the chance of writing another "David Harum." It was then the literary agent learned how to set publishers bidding royalties and ad- vances against one another for supposed best sellers. A few years later, however, when this great new public had learned its own taste and when trade and authors had adjusted themselves to the new condi- tions, the literary agent found life again strenuous. Caution reigned once more in the sanctum and new novelists ceased to command advances. Business must be done, however, or there would be no commissions; so he learned the trick of detaching the successful author from one house to attach him to another. The literar}' agent does not thrive in America upon commissions from Ameri- 174 PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR can authors. The American author is more of a business man than his English cousin and much prefers to manage his own publishing arrangements. Nor is he so changeable. As a rule he makes a part- ner of his publisher and works amicably with him year after year for their com- mon good. The English author, how- ever, is apt to be suspicious of those hus- tling Americans so many miles away and often lends a ready ear to suggestions that Blank & Company are not paying all they might be made to pay, and that some other house might come down with a better advance. And often they do. Until recent years England created a much larger propor- tion of sound and profitable novels than America; and, if one must speculate, it is safer speculating with the foreign pro- duction. One of the most conspicuous novels of recent years was held, by its American agent, for a year and a half at ten thousand dollars advance against 175 THE PUBLISHER twenty per cent royalty; and, one after another, most of the big American houses examined it and declined the risk. But finally abrave publisher risked it and won. It practically meant that he bet the novel would sell forty thousand copies, which, considering the author's former sales, and the unsettled condition of the fiction market at the time, was distinctly sporty. This matter of big advances is another English institution as unwelcome as the English sparrow, and it is his insistence upon it that has chiefly caused the liter- ary agent's American unpopularity. With fiction so uncertain a risk under the best of circumstances, it forces the publisher to add the further risk of a one-sided bet with the author on the sales of the book — in which the author assumes no risk and, even if the publisher wins, makes at least twice as much as he does out of the joint venture. Consider the author the producing de- partment of a joint business of which the 176 PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR publisher is the selling department, each helping the other for the common benefit and dividing the profits and losses of suc- ceeding ventures covering a series of years on a basis fair to both, and you have the most effective moneymaking ma- chine possible in publishing. Americans, with their superior business keenness, are quick to see this, which accounts for the superior effectiveness and satisfaction of American publishing relations and the small place the literary agent occupies in them. I heard a publisher say to his advertis- ing man : — " Don't spend a dollar more than you absolutely have to on Brown's novel — not a cent even. Be under rather than over. Let us save every cent we can on this, for it 's the last one we '11 get. I hear confidentially that he 's made a deal with Harpers' for his next three and we 're not going to spend money boost- ing their people for them." 177 THE PUBLISHER This is how changing often hurts the author's interests. The same publishers got out three suc- cessive books at a loss for a short-story writer in whose future they believed, all the while encouraging her to write a novel. She did so, and it failed too. She tried again and the book sold twenty-five thousand copies, making good money and well recouping all previous losses; but the publisher said to his advertising man: — "Don't spare on I\Irs. Jones. Adver- tise her for the future — not the present. I don't care if we don't make a cent on this book. Let us make her, and her future will take care of the past." " But suppose, after our losses on her past, we spend the profits on this and then she goes oft' to somebody else?" " She won't," said the publisher confi- dently. "She 's the sort that sees and ap- preciates — that stands by her friends." With her next book, this author en- PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR tered the hundred-thousand class, and she remains with her publisher still, though the target of many offers. It is an example of publishing relations in their highest class. If I should tell you that your favorite novelist has to write short stories, and sell at least one a month to the maga- zines in order to average thirty-five hun- dred dollars a year, you would be sur- prised. There are not many who do so well as that, year in, year out, notwith- standing an occasional lucrative hit. Oc- casional serialization adds several thou- sand. And yet your novelist will make two or three times out of a book what his publisher does; and man}^, many times his publisher actually loses money. So Grub Street needs its compensa- tions! Once I asked Charles Scribner to de- fine publishing. "Can you call it a business?" I de- manded. 179 THE PUBLISHER "Yes," he said doubtfully; "but that doesn't define it — it is so much more than a business." "Is it a profession, then?" "No; certainly not, but it is certainly professional." He thought a moment and said, smil- ing:— "Publishing is neither a business nor a profession. It is a career." THE END CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A a55 IflHI ^ IJUV RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT TO O 198 Main Stacks LOAN PERIOD 1 HOME USE 2 3 4 5 6 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS Renewals and Recharges may be made 4 days prior to the due date. Books may be Renewed by calling 642-3405 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW SENT ON ILL nm A ?nnn UL ! 1 '^ tUUU U. C. BFR ^Fir FORM NO. DD6 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. BERKELEY BERKELEY CA 94720-6000