,loh 11 I''. I .u rki ]>...! r.
 
 PUBLISHER'S 
 CONFESSION 
 
 J~M 
 
 
 
 U-V 
 
 
 NEW YORK 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO. 
 
 i 9 o S 
 
 y
 
 Copyright, 1905, by 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO. 
 
 Published March, IQ05
 
 SRL8 
 URl 
 
 h\ 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I The Ruinous Policy of Large Royal- 
 ties 3 
 
 II Why "Bad" Novels Succeed and 
 
 "Good "Ones Fail . . . .27 
 III Are Authors an Irritable Tribe ? . 45 
 IV Has Publishing Become Commercial- 
 ized ? 61 
 
 V Has the Unknown Author a Chance? 79 
 VI The Printer Who Issues Books at the 
 
 Author's Expense . . . -99 
 VII The Advertising of Books Still Ex- 
 perimental 115 
 
 VIII The Story of a Book from Author 
 
 to Reader 131 
 
 IX The Present Limits of the Book 
 
 Market 147 
 
 X Plain Words to Authors and Pub- 
 lishers 163 
 
 /
 
 PUBLISHERS' NOTE 
 
 There is expressed in these chapters 
 so much that is practical and of interest 
 to those engaged in the various branches 
 of authorship, book-making and book- 
 selling that the present publishers have 
 availed themselves of the permission of 
 the Boston Transcript, in which they 
 originally appeared, to gather them to- 
 gether in book form. 
 
 New York, March, 1905. 

 
 The Ruinous Policy of Large 
 Royalties
 
 A Publisher's Confession 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE RUINOUS POLICY OF LARGE 
 ROYALTIES 
 
 How it Operates to the Disadvantage of Both Au* 
 thor and Publisher — The Actual Facts and Fig- 
 ures — Authors' Earnings Greatly Exaggerated 
 by the Press — Books Sell Too Cheaply — What 
 a Fair Price for All Concerned Would Be. 
 
 The author of a very popular book, 
 who has written another that will be as 
 popular, wishes me to publish it, so he 
 is kind enough to say; and he came to 
 see me and asked on what terms I 
 would bring it out. In these strenuous 
 times he can dictate his own terms to 
 his publisher; and I happened to know 
 that two houses had made him offers. 
 
 /
 
 4 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 I confess, since I am old-fashioned, 
 that this method of an author shocks 
 me. If he does not openly hawk his 
 book and his reputation, he at least 
 tempts one publisher to bid against 
 another, and thus invites the publisher 
 to regard it as a mere commodity. But 
 I suppressed my dislike of the method 
 and went straight about the business of 
 getting the book, for I should like to 
 have it. 
 
 " I will give you," I said, " twenty per 
 cent, royalty, and I will pay you $5,000 
 on the day of publication." 
 
 The words had not fallen from my 
 mouth before I wished to recall them, 
 for the publishing of books cannot be 
 successfully done on these terms. There 
 are only two or three books a year that 
 can pay so much. 
 
 "I will consider it," said he. 
 
 Abject as I was, I recovered myself 
 far enough to say: "No, the offer is 
 made for acceptance now or never —
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 5 
 
 before this conversation ends. I cannot 
 keep it open." 
 
 "My dear sir," I went on, for I was 
 regaining something of my normal cour- 
 age, "do you know what twenty per 
 cent, royalty on a $1.50 book means? 
 You receive thirty cents for every copy 
 sold. My net profit is about four or five 
 cents a copy, if I manufacture it well 
 and advertise it generously; and I sup- 
 ply the money in advance. I make an 
 advance to you; I pay the papermaker 
 in advance of my collections, the printer 
 — everybody ; and I wait from ninety to 
 one hundred and twenty days after the 
 book is sold to get my money. My 
 profit is so small that it may vanish and 
 become a loss by any misadventure, 
 such as too much advertising, the print- 
 ing of too large an edition, or the loss of 
 an account with a failed bookdealer. I 
 have no margin as an insurance against 
 accidents or untoward events. I am 
 doing business with you on an unfairly 

 
 6 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 generous basis. I am paying you all the 
 money that the book can earn — perhaps 
 more than it can earn — for the pleasure 
 of having you on my list. If I make 
 money, I must make it on books for 
 which I pay a smaller royalty." 
 
 " But I can get twenty per cent, from 
 almost any other publisher," he replied, 
 truthfully. "Why should I consider 
 less from you?" 
 
 I could not answer him except by 
 saying : 
 
 "Yes, I am not blaming you — not 
 quite; but there is a grave fault in the 
 system that has brought about this gen- 
 eral result. You may have forgotten 
 that this high royalty is a direct tempta- 
 tion to a publisher to skimp his adver- 
 tising. You expect generous advertis- 
 ing of the book. Well, I can never sign 
 an order for an advertisement of it with- 
 out recalling the very narrow margin of 
 profit that I have. An order for $500 
 worth of advertising will take as much
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 7 
 
 net profit as I can make on several thou- 
 sand copies. 
 
 "Again, when I come to manufacture 
 the book, I cannot help recalling that 
 gilt letters on the cover will increase the 
 cost by one cent or two cents a copy. 
 You tempt me to do all my work in the 
 cheapest possible way." 
 
 Well, we are good friends, this writer 
 and I, and we signed the contract. He 
 is to receive a royalty of twenty per 
 cent., and a payment on his royalty 
 account of $5,000 on the day of publi- 
 cation. 
 
 When, therefore, I had the pleasure of 
 receiving the friends of another author, 
 who told me that he would give me the 
 book for twenty ■ per cent, royalty 
 ($5,000 cash on publication) if I cared to 
 read it, I replied, "No." 
 
 NO MONEY ON THAT BASIS 
 
 I had recovered. I said: "I cannot 
 make money on that basis. Neither
 
 8 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 can other legitimate and conscientious 
 publishers, who build their business to 
 last. I will let novels alone, if I must. 
 I will do a small business — but sounder. 
 If that is your condition, do not leave 
 the book. I will pay you a sliding scale 
 of royalties: I cannot give you twenty 
 per cent." 
 
 And he went away. I had just as lief 
 another publisher lost money on the 
 book as to lose it myself. True, the 
 public, the reading public and the writ- 
 ing public, will regard the success of the 
 book (if it succeed) as evidence of a rival 
 publisher's ability and enterprise. He 
 will win temporary reputation. He will 
 seem to be in the " swim ' ' of success . He 
 will publish naming advertisements, in 
 the hope of obtaining other successful 
 authors; and he will attract them, for 
 much book advertising is done not with 
 the hope of selling the book, but chiefly 
 to impress writers with the publisher's 
 energy and generosity. But there's no
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 9 
 
 profit and great risk in business con- 
 ducted in this way. 
 
 There is positive danger, in fact. 
 And I owe it to myself and to all the 
 men and women whose books I publish 
 to see to it first of all that my own busi- 
 ness is sound, and is kept sound. In no 
 other way can I discharge my obliga- 
 tions to them and keep my publishing 
 house on its proper level instead of on 
 the level of a mere business shop. 
 
 The rise of royalties paid to popular 
 authors is the most important recent 
 fact in the publishing world. It has 
 not been many years since ten per cent, 
 was the almost universal rule ; and a ten 
 per cent, royalty on a book that sells 
 only reasonably well is a fair bargain 
 between publisher and author. If the 
 publisher do his work well — make the 
 book well, advertise it well, keep a well- 
 ordered and well-managed and energetic 
 house — this division of the profits is a 
 fair division — except in the case of a
 
 io A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 book that has a phenomenally large 
 sale. Then he can afford to pay more. 
 Unless a book has a pretty good sale, it 
 will not leave a profit after paying more 
 than a ten per cent, royalty. 
 
 Figure it for yourself. The retail 
 price of a novel is $1.50. The retail 
 bookseller buys it for about ninety 
 cents. The wholesale bookseller buys it 
 from the publisher for about eighty 
 cents. This eighty cents must pay the 
 cost of manufacturing the book ; of sell- 
 ing it; of advertising it; must pay its 
 share towards the cost of keeping the 
 publisher's establishment going — and 
 this is a large and increasing cost; it 
 must pay the author ; and it must leave 
 the publisher himself some small profit. 
 Now, if out of this eighty cents which 
 must be divided for so many purposes, 
 the author receives a royalty of twenty 
 per cent, (thirty cents a copy), there is 
 left, of course, only fifty cents to pay all 
 the other items. No other half-dollar
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION n 
 
 in this world has to suffer such careful 
 and continuous division! I have met 
 a good many authors who have never 
 realized that a ten per cent, royalty 
 means nearly twenty per cent, on what 
 the publisher actually sells the book for, 
 and that a twenty per cent, royalty is 
 nearly forty per cent, on the actual 
 wholesale price. 
 
 There are several things of greater 
 importance in the long run to an author 
 than a large royalty. One of them is the 
 unstinted loyalty of his publisher. His 
 publisher must have a chance to be gen- 
 erous to his book. He ought not to feel 
 that he must seek a cheap printer, that 
 he must buy cheap paper, that he must 
 make a cheap cover, that he must too 
 closely watch his advertising account. 
 A publisher has no chance to be gener- 
 ous to a book when he can make a profit 
 on it only at the expense of its proper 
 manufacture. The grasping author is, 
 therefore, doing damage to his own book
 
 12 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 by leaving the publisher no margin of 
 profit. 
 
 THE STABILITY OF THE PUBLISHER 
 
 There is still another thing that an 
 author should set above his immediate 
 income from any particular book; and 
 that is the stability of his publisher. 
 The publisher is a business man (he has 
 need to be a business man of the highest 
 type) , but he is also the guardian of the 
 author's property. If his institution be 
 not sound and be not kept sound, the loss 
 to the author in money and in standing 
 may be very great. The embarrassment 
 or failure of a publishing firm now and 
 then causes much gossip ; for a publishing 
 house is a center of publicity. But no- 
 body outside the profession knows what 
 practical trouble and confusion and loss 
 every failure or financial embarrassment 
 costs the writing world. The normal 
 sale of many books is stopped. The
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 13 
 
 authors lose in the end, and they lose 
 heavily. 
 
 Every publisher who appreciates his 
 profession tries to make his house per- 
 manent, with an eye not only to his own 
 profit, but also to the service that he 
 may do to the writers on his list. If it is 
 of the very essence of banking that a 
 bank shall be in sound condition and 
 shall have the confidence of the com- 
 munity, it is even more true that a pub- 
 lishing house should be sound to the 
 core and should deserve financial con- 
 fidence. The publisher must do his 
 business with reference to a permanent 
 success. But if he must do business on 
 the basis of a twenty per cent, royalty, 
 he takes risks that he has no right to 
 take. It deserves to be called "wild- 
 cat" publishing. 
 
 I am, therefore, not making a plea, by 
 this confession, for a larger profit to the 
 publisher in any narrow or personal 
 sense. Every successful publisher —
 
 14 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 really successful, mind you — could make 
 more money by going into some other 
 business. I think that there is not a 
 man of them who could not greatly in- 
 crease his income by giving the same 
 energy and ability to the management 
 of a bank, or of some sort of industrial 
 enterprise. Such men as Mr. Charles 
 Scribner, Mr. George Brett, Mr. George 
 H. Mifflin, could earn very much larger 
 returns by their ability in banks, rail- 
 roads or manufacturing, than any one 
 of them earns as a publisher; for they 
 are men of conspicuous ability. 
 
 It is, therefore, not as a matter of 
 mere gain to the publisher that it is im- 
 portant to have the business on a sound 
 and fair basis ; but it is for the sake of 
 the business itself and for the sake of the 
 writers themselves. 
 
 AN AUTHOR'S BLUNDER 
 
 Here is a true tale of a writer of good 
 fiction: He made a most promising
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 15 
 
 start. His first book, in fact, caused him 
 to be sought by several publishers, who 
 do not hesitate to solicit clients — a 
 practice that other dignified professions 
 discourage. The publisher of his first 
 book gave him a ten per cent, royalty. 
 For his second book he demanded more. 
 A rival publisher offered him twenty 
 per cent. The second book also suc- 
 ceeded. But the author in the mean- 
 time had heard the noise of other 
 publishing houses. He had made the 
 acquaintance of another writer whose 
 books (which were better than his) had 
 sold in much greater quantities. Of 
 course, the difference in sales could not 
 be accounted for by the literary quali- 
 ties of the books — his friend had a bet- 
 ter publisher than he — so he concluded. 
 His third book, therefore, was placed 
 with a third publisher, because he 
 would advertise more loudly. Well, 
 that publisher failed. His failure, by 
 the way, the report of the receivers
 
 1 6 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 showed, was caused by spending too 
 much in unproductive advertising. 
 
 Here our author stood, then, with 
 three books, each issued by a different 
 publishing house. What should he do 
 with his fourth book? He came back to 
 his second publisher, who had, natur- 
 ally, lost some of his enthusiasm for such 
 an author. To cut the story short, that 
 man now has books on five publishers' 
 lists. Not one of the publishers counts 
 him as his particular client. In a sense 
 his books are all neglected. One has 
 never helped another. He has got no 
 cumulative result of his work. He has 
 become a sort of stray dog in the pub- 
 lishing world. He has cordial relations 
 with no publisher ; and his literary prod- 
 uct has really declined. He scattered 
 his influence, and he is paying the 
 natural penalty. 
 
 The moral of this true story (and I 
 could tell half a dozen more like it) is 
 that a publisher is a business man, but
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 17 
 
 not a mere business man. He must be 
 something more. He is a professional 
 man also. He can do his best service 
 only for those authors who inspire his 
 loyalty, who enable him to make his 
 publishing house permanent, and who 
 leave him enough margin of profit to 
 permit him to make books of which he 
 can be proud. 
 
 The present fashion of a part of the 
 writing world — to squeeze the last cent 
 out of a book and to treat the publisher 
 as a mere manufacturer and "boomer" 
 — cannot last. It has already passed 
 its high period and is on the decline. A 
 self-respecting worm would have turned 
 long ago. Even the publisher is now 
 beginning to turn. 
 
 Better still, the authors whose books 
 will be remembered longest have not 
 caught the fashion of demanding every- 
 thing. It was that passing school of 
 "booms" and bellowing that did it all 
 — the writers of romances for kitchen
 
 1 8 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 maids and shop girls, whose measure of 
 book values was by dollars only. Such 
 fashions always pass. For, if novel writ- 
 ing be so profitable an industry, a large 
 number of persons naturally take it up ; 
 and they ruin the market by overstock- 
 ing it. 
 
 THE "BOOMED" BOOK PASSING 
 
 Fast passing, then — praise God — is 
 the "boomed" book, which, having no 
 merit, could once be sold by sheer adver- 
 tising, in several editions of 100,000 each. 
 I have made a list of the writers of books 
 that during the last five or six years 
 have sold in enormous editions; and 
 every one of these writers, but two, has 
 lived to see his (or her) latest book sell 
 far below its predecessors. One man, 
 for instance, wrote a first book which 
 sold more than 200,000 copies. His 
 publishers announce only the sixtieth 
 thousand of his latest novel, though it 
 has now nearly run its course.
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 19 
 
 These are not pleasant facts. I wish 
 that every novelist might have an in- 
 creasing sale for every book he writes. 
 They all earn more than they receive — 
 even the bad ones whose books prosper ; 
 but the system that they brought with 
 them deserves to die — must die, if pub- 
 lishing is to remain an honorable pro- 
 fession. They brought with them the 
 20 per cent, royalty, and the demand for 
 an advertising outlay that was based on 
 the sale of 100,000 or 200,000 copies. 
 Only the keeper of dark secrets knows 
 how many publishers have lost, or how 
 large their losses have been, on 
 "boomed" books. But any intelligent 
 business man may take the 50 cents 
 that the publisher receives for his $1.50 
 novel after paying the author's 20 per 
 cent, royalty, and divide it thus : 
 
 Cost of manufacture, 
 
 Cost of selling, 
 
 Office expense, 
 
 Extravagant advertising,
 
 2o A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 Profit. 
 
 If he can find anything left for profit, 
 then he can get rich at any business. 
 There have been novels so extravagantly 
 advertised that the advertising cost 
 alone amounted to 22 cents for every 
 copy sold. The writer drove the pub- 
 lisher to loss; the publisher (foolishly) 
 consented in the hope of attracting 
 other authors to his house. If "other 
 authors" knew that the very cost of the 
 bait that attracted them makes the 
 publishing house unsound, they would 
 not long be fooled. 
 
 Thus it comes about, in this strange 
 and fascinating world of writing and 
 making and selling books, that one 
 period of "whooping up" novels is end- 
 ing. Half the novels advertised during 
 the past few years in big medicine style 
 did not pay the publishers; and any 
 conservative publisher can tell you 
 which half they are. 
 
 The manufacturing novelist has al-
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 21 
 
 ways been with us. But he used to be 
 an humble practitioner of the craft 
 whose " output " was sold for ten cents a 
 volume. He always will be with us, and 
 his product will sell, some at ten cents a 
 volume, some at $1.50. But the time 
 seems about to pass when he can disturb 
 the publishing situation. For the pub- 
 lisher has to accept his methods when he 
 accepts his work; and his methods do 
 not pay either in dignity, permanency, 
 or cash. If any of these be lacking — 
 and in proportion as they are lacking — 
 the results will fall short of the ideal. 
 The results to be hoped for are money, 
 but not money only, but also a watchful 
 care by the publisher over his author's 
 reputation and growth, and a cumula- 
 tive influence for his books. 
 
 THE INCOME OP AUTHORS 
 
 There are, perhaps, a dozen American 
 novelists who have large incomes from 
 their work; there are many more who
 
 22 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 have comfortable incomes ; but there is 
 none whose income is as large as the 
 writers of gossip for the literary journals 
 would have us believe. It has been 
 said that Harper's Magazine pays Mrs. 
 Humphry Ward $15,000 for the serial 
 right of each of her stories and twenty 
 per cent, royalty. Miss Johnston must 
 have made from $60,000 to $70,000 
 from royalties on "To Have and to 
 Hold," for any publisher can calculate 
 it. 
 
 But along with these great facts let us 
 humbly remember that Mr. Carnegie 
 received $300,000,000 for all his steel 
 mills, good will, etc. ; for the authors 
 that I have named are the "million- 
 aires" of the craft. I wish there were 
 more. But the diligent writers of most 
 good fiction, hard as they have ground 
 the publishers in the rise of royalties, 
 are yet nearer to Grub street than they 
 are to Skibo Castle. 
 
 The truth is — but it would be a dim-
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 23 
 
 cult task to reduce such a truth to prac- 
 tice — that the public gets its good new 
 novels too cheap. There is not a large 
 enough margin of profit for author, pub- 
 lisher and bookseller in a new book that 
 is meant to be sold for $1.50 and that is 
 often sold for $1.08. The business of 
 bookmaking and bookselling is under- 
 paid. There is not a publisher in the 
 United States who is today making any- 
 large sum of money on his "general 
 trade." Money is made on educational 
 books, on subscription books, on maga- 
 zines. But publishing, as publishing, is 
 the least profitable of all the professions, 
 except preaching and teaching, to each 
 of which it is a sort of cousin.
 
 Why " Bad " Novels Succeed and 
 "Good" Ones Fail
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 WHY "BAD" NOVELS SUCCEED AND 
 "GOOD" ONES FAIL 
 
 The First May Have No Literary Quality, but 
 They Have a Genuine Quality — Power of Con- 
 struction the Main Thing hi Story-Writing — 
 Literary Reviews of Novels are Regarded as of 
 Little Value by Publishers — Odd Incidents and 
 Facts in the Business. 
 
 A report on the manuscript of a novel 
 made by a "literary" reader not long 
 ago ended with this sentence: "This 
 novel is bad enough to succeed." He 
 expressed the feeling of a great many 
 literary persons that fiction often suc- 
 ceeds in the market in proportion to its 
 " badness." And surely there are many 
 instances to support such a contention 
 from the "Lamplighter" to "When 
 Knighthood Was in Flower." But the 
 
 27
 
 28 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 "literary" view of fiction is no more 
 trustworthy than the "literary" view 
 of politics or of commerce; for it con- 
 cerns itself more with technique than 
 with substance. 
 
 It is a hard world in which " Knight- 
 hood," "Quincy Adams Sawyer" and 
 "Graustark," to say nothing of "The 
 One Woman," " Alice of Old Vincennes " 
 and a hundred more "poor" books 
 make fortunes, while Mr. Howells and 
 Mr. James write to unresponsive mar- 
 kets and even Mr. Kipling cannot find 
 so many readers for a new novel as Mr. 
 Bacheller of " Eben Holden." It seems 
 a hard world to the professional literary 
 folk; but the professional literary folk 
 would find it a hard world anyhow ; for 
 it has a way of preferring substance to 
 color. And novels, after all, have less 
 to do with literature than they have to 
 do with popular amusement. 
 
 Heaven forbid that I should make de- 
 fence of bad writing, or of sensational
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 29 
 
 literature, or of bad taste, or of any- 
 other thing that is below grade ; but, as 
 between the professional literary class, 
 and the great mass of men who buy 
 " Eben Holdens" and " David Harums" 
 the mass of men have the better case. 
 
 Why does a man read a novel? Let 
 us come down to common sense. He 
 seeks one of two things — either a real 
 insight into human nature (he got that 
 in "David Harum") or he seeks diver- 
 sion, entertainment. A writer's style 
 is only a part of the machinery of pre- 
 sentation. The main thing is that he has 
 something to present. Even though I 
 am a publisher I think that I know 
 something about literary quality and 
 literary values, and it must be owned at 
 once that hardly one in a dozen of the 
 very popular recent novels has any 
 literary quality. But every one of 
 them, nevertheless, has some very gen- 
 uine and positive quality. They were 
 not written by any trick, and their pop-
 
 30 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 ularity does not make the road to suc- 
 cess any easier to find. They have 
 qualities that are rarer than the merely 
 literary quality. Mr. Henry James's 
 novels have what is usually called the 
 literary quality. Yet half the publish- 
 ing houses in the United States have lost 
 money on them, while the publisher and 
 the author of "Richard Carvel" and 
 "The Crisis" and "The Crossing" made 
 a handsome sum of money from these 
 books, which have no literary style. 
 
 This does not mean a whining confes- 
 sion that "literature" does not pay. 
 For my part I cannot weep because Mr. 
 James and Mr. Howells do not find many 
 readers for their latest books. They 
 find all they deserve. Mere words were 
 never worth much money or worth 
 much else. But, while Mr. Churchill is 
 not a great writer (since he has no style) , 
 and while few persons of the next gen- 
 eration of readers (whereby I mean 
 those of year after next) are going to
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 31 
 
 take the trouble to read his books, yet, 
 for all that, they have a quality that is 
 very rare in this world, a quality that 
 their imitators never seem to see. They 
 have construction. They have action. 
 They have substance. A series of 
 events come to pass in a certain order, 
 by a well-laid plan. Each book makes 
 its appeal as a thing built, finished, 
 shapen, if not well-proportioned, sub- 
 stantial. It is a real structure — not a 
 mere pile of bricks and lumber. The 
 bricks and lumber that went into them 
 are not as fine nor as good as somebody 
 else may have in his brickyard and his 
 lumber pile. But they are put together. 
 A well shapen house of bad bricks is a 
 more pleasing thing than any mere 
 brick-pile whatever. 
 
 I recall this interesting experience of a 
 man whose novels are now fast winning 
 great popular favor. He sat down and 
 wrote a story and sent it to a publisher. 
 It was declined. He sent it to another.
 
 32 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 Again it was declined. Then he brought 
 it to me. (He told me of the preceding 
 declinations a year later). I told him 
 frankly that it lacked construction. I 
 supposed that that was the last that I 
 should see of him. But about a year 
 later he came again with another manu- 
 script and with this interesting story. 
 
 "Like a fool," said he, "I simply 
 blazed away and wrote what I supposed 
 was a novel. Nobody would publish it. 
 When you said that it lacked construc- 
 tion, I went to work to study the con- 
 struction of a novel. I analyzed twenty. 
 I found a dozen books on the subject 
 which gave me some help. But there 
 are few books that do help. I con- 
 structed a sort of method of my own." 
 
 That man yet has no sense of literary 
 values, as they are usually considered. 
 The only good quality of his style is its 
 perfect directness and clearness. He 
 writes blunt, plain sentences. But every 
 one of them tells something. He does
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 33 
 
 not bother himself about style, nor 
 about literary quality. He fixes his 
 mind on the story itself, to see that it 
 has substance, form, action, proportion. 
 And he worked out this new novel with 
 these qualities in it. 
 
 It was a dime novel in praise of one of 
 the cardinal Christian virtues — very 
 earnest, very direct. But the persons in 
 it were real. They not only said things, 
 they did things ; and many of the things 
 they did were interesting. One of our 
 salesmen was asked to read the manu- 
 script. " It'll sell," said he. Our liter- 
 ary adviser said that it was a bald moral 
 Sunday school play. " You could put it 
 on the stage by cutting it here and 
 there," he declared. "But it has no 
 literary quality." Both were right. 
 The book has sold well. It has amused 
 and interested its tens of thousands. 
 
 The author's next book after that was 
 very much better. Having learned 
 something of the art of construction he
 
 34 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 began to think of such a detail as style. 
 He re-wrote the book to make it 
 "smooth." But the point is, he first 
 paid attention to his construction and 
 made sure that he had a story to tell. 
 
 The enormous amount of waste work 
 done by unsuccessful novel writers is 
 done without taking the trouble first to 
 make sure that they have a story to tell. 
 
 Few persons have any constructive 
 faculty. This is the sad fact that comes 
 home at last to a man who has read 
 novels in manuscript for many years. 
 A publisher comes to look for construc- 
 tion in a novel before he looks for style 
 or literary quality. 
 
 This confession is enough to provoke 
 the literary journals to condemn the 
 publishers as mere mercenary dealers in 
 sensational books. Yet, while a book 
 that is well constructed may not be 
 "literature," very few books have a 
 serious chance to become literature un- 
 less they have good construction.
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 35 
 
 I, for one, and I know no publisher 
 who holds a different opinion, care noth- 
 ing for the judgment of the professional 
 literary class. Their judgment of a 
 novel, for instance, is of little value or 
 instruction. It may be right — often it 
 is. It may be wrong. But whether 
 right or wrong (and there is no way that 
 I know to determine finally whether any 
 judgment be right or wrong) it is of no 
 practical value. A literary judgment 
 of a new novel cannot affect the judg- 
 ment that men will form of it ten years 
 hence. Therefore it is of no permanent 
 value. Neither can it affect the sales of 
 a new novel. It is therefore of no prac- 
 tical importance for the moment. I look 
 upon reviews of novels as so much pub- 
 licity — they have value, as they tell the 
 public that the book is published and 
 can be bought, and as they tell some- 
 thing about it which may prod the read- 
 er's curiosity. Further than this they 
 are of no account. Not one of the three
 
 36 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 publishers whose personal habits I know 
 as a rule takes the trouble to read the 
 reviews of novels of his own publishing. 
 
 Novel making, then, is an industry, 
 and the people who make them best con- 
 cern themselves very little about what 
 is usually meant by "literary values," 
 and very little about their popularity. 
 The writers who deliberately set out to 
 write novels of great popularity have 
 almost always missed it. The industry 
 is an art, also, but it is not an art of 
 mere fine writing. It is chiefly an art of 
 construction — an art of putting things 
 in due proportion. This assumes, of 
 course, that the novelist has things to 
 put. 
 
 The truth is, the delicate and difficult 
 art of finding out just what the public 
 cares for — the public of this year or the 
 public of ten years hence — has not been 
 mastered by many men, whether writ- 
 ers or publishers. If you find out what 
 the great public of today wants, you are
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 37 
 
 a sensationalist. If you find out what 
 the great public of ten or twenty years 
 hence will want, you are a maker or a 
 publisher of literature. And the public 
 of the future is pretty sure to want 
 something different from the public of 
 today. 
 
 Within six months after the publica- 
 tion of a popular novel the publisher of 
 it (other publishers, too) will receive a 
 dozen or a hundred stories that have 
 been suggested by it. Many an author 
 of such a manuscript will write that he 
 has discovered the secret of the popular 
 book's success and that he has turned it 
 to profit in his own effort. Such letters 
 are singularly alike. The writers of 
 them regard success as something won 
 by a trick, as a game of cards might be 
 won. These remind one, too, of the ad- 
 vertisements of patent medicines — ex- 
 cept that the writers of them are sincere. 
 They believe heartily in their discovery. 
 Thus every very popular novel gives a
 
 38 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 great stimulus to the production of 
 novels. "To Have and To Hold" 
 brought cargoes of young women for 
 colonists' wives to hundreds of amateur 
 story writers. 
 
 But stranger than the popularity of 
 very popular novels, or than the utter 
 failure of merely "literary" novels, is 
 the moderate success of a certain kind of 
 commonplace stories. I know a woman 
 of domestic tastes who every two years 
 turns off a quiet story. She has now 
 written a dozen or more. They are never 
 advertised. But they are well printed 
 and put forth by one of our best pub- 
 lishers. The "literary" world pays no 
 heed to her. Her books are not even 
 reviewed in the best journals. They lack 
 distinction. But every one is sure to 
 sell from ten to fifteen thousand copies. 
 No amount of advertising, no amount of 
 noise could increase the number of read- 
 ers to twenty-five thousand; and there 
 is no way to prevent a sale of from ten
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 39 
 
 to fifteen thousand copies. Why this is 
 so is one of the most baffling problems of 
 psychology. But it is the rule. Authors 
 of novels are known and rated among 
 publishers as ten thousand, or twenty- 
 five thousand, or fifty thousand, or one 
 hundred thousand writers. Book after 
 book reaches a certain level of popular- 
 ity and — stops. Mr. Marion Crawford, 
 Mr. Hopkinson Smith, Miss Wilkins — 
 all these have their more or less con- 
 stant levels. 
 
 The lay world has no idea of the num- 
 ber of novels that fail. There are one- 
 book authors all over the country. The 
 publishers' hope always is that a new 
 writer who makes a pretty good novel 
 will do better next time. Thus the first 
 book is accepted for the sake of the next 
 one. The first fails, and the second is 
 not wanted. There are dozens and 
 dozens of such cases every year. The 
 public doesn't know it, for the very 
 abyss of oblivion is the place where a
 
 40 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 dead novel falls. Nobody knows it — 
 that is the tragedy — but the publishers 
 and the author. 
 
 A case came to light a little while ago 
 of a man who had years ago written 
 novels that failed. He had been forgot- 
 ten. But he took a new start. Yet he 
 feared that his first failures would damn 
 him with the publishers. He took 
 another name, therefore. Not even his 
 publishers knew who he really was. He 
 succeeded and he concealed his identity 
 until he died. 
 
 The publisher's loss on an unsuccess- 
 ful novel may be little or big. All pub- 
 lishers lose much on unsuccessful ven- 
 tures in fiction, chiefly on young authors 
 who are supposed to have a future, or on 
 old authors who have a " literary " repu- 
 tation and have reached that ghostly 
 period of real decline when they walk in 
 dreams from one publishing house to 
 another. 
 
 But there is generally a reason for
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 41 
 
 success or for failure. The trouble is 
 that the reason often does not appear 
 soon enough. The chief reason for the 
 success of a novel is the commonplace 
 one that it contains a story. It may 
 be told ill or it may be told well, but 
 there is a story. And the chief reason 
 for failure is the lack of a story. A novel 
 may be ever so well written, — if it have 
 no story, the public will not care for it. 
 
 I wonder if there be any light in this 
 very obvious discovery. Simple as it 
 seems, it costs every publishing house 
 a pretty penny every year to find it out ;. 
 and as soon as we find it out about one 
 writer we forget it about another ! It is 
 a great truth that does not remain dis- 
 covered.
 
 Are Authors an Irritable Tribe ?
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ARE AUTHORS AN IRRITABLE TRIBE? 
 
 An Emphatic Answer in the Negative — They Are 
 Gentlemen and Ladies and Treat Their Pub- 
 lisher with Courtesy — Bonds of Friendship 
 Thus Formed That Endure — Some Amusing 
 and Nettling Exceptions — Cranks Among the 
 Scholars — The Inconstant Author Who Is Al- 
 ways Changing Publishers — Why a Publishing 
 Trust Is Impossible. 
 
 The old and persistent notion that the 
 writers of books are an irritable tribe, 
 hard to deal with, and manageable only 
 by flattery — if it was ever true, is not 
 true now. During an experience of a 
 good many years I have suffered a dis- 
 courtesy from only two. Both these 
 were "philosophers" — not even poets, 
 nor novelists. They wrote books that 
 the years have proved are dull; and, 
 
 45
 
 46 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 when it became my duty to disappoint 
 them, although I hope I did it courte- 
 ously, they wrote ill-tempered letters. 
 The hundreds of other writers of all sorts 
 that I have had the pleasure to deal with 
 have conducted themselves as men and 
 women of common sense, and most of 
 them are men and women of very un- 
 usual attractiveness. I doubt whether a 
 man of any other calling has the privi- 
 lege of dealing with persons of such 
 graciousness and of such consideration. 
 
 But the women who write require 
 more attention than the men. Their 
 imaginations are more easily excited by 
 the hope of success, and few of them 
 have had business experience. They 
 want to be fair and appreciate frank 
 dealing. Yet they like to have every- 
 thing explained in great detail. 
 
 One woman, now one of our most 
 successful novelists — successful both as 
 a writer of excellent books and as an 
 earner of a good income — was kind
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 47 
 
 enough to seek my advice about one of 
 her early novels. It was a book that she 
 ought not to have written; the subject 
 was badly chosen. I frankly told her so. 
 The whole reading world has told her so 
 since. But naturally she did not agree 
 with me. She took the book to another 
 publisher. Two years passed. She had 
 a second novel ready. This was one of 
 the best American stories of a decade. 
 To my great gratification I received a 
 letter from her one day asking if I cared 
 to read it. Of course I said yes. 
 
 Then came another telling how she 
 had never changed her opinion of her 
 former book — not a jot — I must under- 
 stand that thoroughly. If that were 
 clearly understood she went on to say 
 she would like to have me publish the 
 new book on two conditions: (1) That 
 I should myself read it immediately and 
 say frankly what I thought of it, and (2) 
 that I should pay her a royalty large 
 enough to repair her wounded feelings
 
 48 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 about the former book. Subsequently 
 she added another condition — 
 
 "You may publish it," she said, "if 
 you heartily believe in the book." 
 
 Very shrewdly said — that "heartily 
 believe in the book." For the secret of 
 good publishing lies there. There are 
 some books that a publisher may suc- 
 ceed with without believing in them — a 
 dictionary or a slapdash novel, for ex- 
 amples. But a book that has any ster- 
 ling quality — a real book — ought never 
 to have the imprint of a publisher who is 
 not really a sharer of its fortunes, a true 
 partner with the author. For only with 
 such a book can he do his best. 
 
 I did believe in this book. As soon as 
 it was in type I required every man in 
 my office who had to do with it to read 
 it — the writer of "literary notes," the 
 salesman and even the shipping clerk. 
 When the author next called I introduced 
 to her all these. They showed their 
 enthusiasm. She was convinced. The
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 49 
 
 book succeeded in the market almost 
 beyond her expectations. It is a good 
 book. Everyone of us believes in it and 
 believes in her. 
 
 She is not a crank, " but only a wo- 
 man." We have our reward in her 
 friendship and she is generous enough to 
 think that we have done her some ser- 
 vice. We esteem it a high privilege to be 
 her publishers. 
 
 But God save me from another wo- 
 man who has won a conspicuous success 
 in the market. The first question she 
 ever asked me was : 
 
 "Are you a Christian?" 
 
 " Do I look like a Jew or a Mohamme- 
 dan?" I asked. 
 
 She never forgave me. Her novel had 
 a great religious motive. It sold by the 
 tens of thousands and most maudlin 
 emotionalists in the land have read it. 
 But I do not publish it. To do so, I 
 should have had to pay the price of 
 being "converted." Now this lady is
 
 So A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 a crank. But it is not fair to call her 
 books literature. 
 
 The veriest crank of all is our great 
 scholar. It is an honor to publish the re- 
 sults of his scholarship (few parsnips as 
 it butters), for the man's work is as at- 
 tractive as he is odd. He thinks himself 
 the very soul of fairness. Yet he comes 
 at frequent intervals wishing so to 
 change his contract as to make publish- 
 ing his books an even more expensive 
 luxury than it was before. A contract 
 is to him a thing to make endless ex- 
 periments with. When we were once 
 driven to desperation, one of my asso- 
 ciates suggested that we propose half a 
 dozen unimportant changes in it, on the 
 theory that change — any change — was 
 all he wanted. It was an inspired sug- 
 gestion. A great scholar, a restless 
 child. But some day (we feel) he will 
 break over all traces, and we are all afraid 
 of him. 
 
 But very sane and sensible men and
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 51 
 
 women are most of those who succeed 
 in winning the public favor. Some are 
 grasping, as other men are. One, for in- 
 stance, whose book had earned $7,000 in 
 two years, demanded a prepayment of 
 $8, 000 for the next book. A compro- 
 mise was made on $2 ,000 ! That was the 
 measure of my folly, for the book is 
 waning in its popularity and has hardly 
 earned this prepaid royalty. 
 
 An author came to my office one day 
 indignant because his novel was not 
 more extensively advertised. There was 
 the usual explanation — it would not 
 pay. He had money to spare and he 
 proposed to advertise it himself. He 
 wrote the advertisements, he selected 
 the journals in which the advertise- 
 ments should appear, and he inserted 
 them — $1,000 worth. 
 
 By some strange fate the sales of the 
 book began just then greatly to decline. 
 They have kept declining since, and why 
 nobody can tell. When the public has
 
 52 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 bought a certain number of copies of a 
 novel — of one novel it may be 1,000 
 copies, of another 100,000 copies — there 
 is nothing that can be done to make 
 it buy another 1,000 or 100,000. It 
 seems to know when it has enough. 
 Take more it will not. The worst 
 "crank" that any publisher ever en- 
 countered is not an author; it is the 
 public, unreasoning, illogical, uncon- 
 vincible, stolid! 
 
 Odd persons are found in every craft. 
 But I think that there are fewer odd ones 
 among successful writers than among 
 successful lawyers, for instance. And 
 this is what one would naturally expect, 
 but for the traditional notion that writ- 
 ers are unbalanced. Who else is so well 
 balanced as the writer of good books? 
 He must have sanity and calmness and 
 judgment, a sense of good proportion, an 
 appreciation of right conduct and of all 
 human relations, else he could not make 
 books of good balance and proportion.
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 53 
 
 Most writers have few financial deal- 
 ings, and they often innocently pro- 
 pose impracticable things. But this is 
 not a peculiar trait of writers. Most 
 preachers and many women show it. I 
 have known a successful college presi- 
 dent, for instance, to cut a paragraph 
 out of a proof sheet with a pair of scis- 
 sors, imagining that this would cause it 
 to be taken out by the printers. 
 
 They are appreciative, too ; and they 
 make the most interesting friends in the 
 world. Almost all writers of books work 
 alone. Lawyers work with clients and 
 with associated and opposing lawyers. 
 Even teachers have the companionship 
 of their pupils in the work. Men of most 
 crafts work with their fellows, and they 
 forget how much encouragement they 
 owe to this fellowship. A dreary task is 
 made light by it and monotonous labor 
 is robbed of its weariness. But the 
 writer works alone. 
 
 Almost the first man to be taken into
 
 54-4 PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 his confidence about his work is his pub- 
 lisher. If the publisher be appreciative 
 and sympathetic and render a real ser- 
 vice, how easily and firmly the writer is 
 won. A peculiarly close friendship fol- 
 lows in many cases — in most cases, per- 
 haps, certainly in most cases when the 
 author's books are successful. 
 
 And this is why a great publishing 
 trust, or "merger" is impossible. The 
 successful publisher sustains a relation 
 to the successful author that is not easily 
 transferable. It is a personal relation. 
 A great corporation cannot take a real 
 publisher's place in his attitude to the 
 authors he serves. 
 
 This is the reason, too, why the 
 "authors' agents" seldom succeed in 
 raising the hopes of unsuccessful writ- 
 ers. As soon as a writer and a publisher 
 have come into a personal relation that 
 is naturally profitable and pleasant, a 
 "go-between" has no place. There is 
 no legitimate function for him.
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 55 
 
 Writers are as constant in their rela- 
 tions as other men and women. As they 
 acquire experience, they become more 
 constant. Every one for himself works 
 his way to this conclusion — once having 
 an appreciative and successful publisher, 
 it is better to hold to him. And the 
 strong friendships that grow out of this 
 relation are among the most precious 
 gains to each. 
 
 One publisher said to another the 
 other day: "I see by your announce- 
 ments that one of my authors has gone 
 to you — you are welcome." 
 
 "Yes," was the reply, "I have in al- 
 most every instance made a mistake 
 when I have taken in a dissatisfied 
 writer — one cannot make lasting friends 
 with them." 
 
 Every great publishing house has been 
 built on the strong friendships between 
 writers and publishers. There is, in fact, 
 no other sound basis to build on ; for the 
 publisher cannot do his highest duty to
 
 56 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 any author whose work he does not ap- 
 preciate, and with whom he is not in 
 sympathy. Now, when a man has an 
 appreciation of your work and sym- 
 pathy for it, he wins you. This is the 
 simplest of all psychological laws — the 
 simplest of all laws of friendship and one 
 of the soundest. 
 
 Those who know the personal history 
 of the publishing houses that in recent 
 years have failed or met embarrass- 
 ments know that, in most cases, one 
 cause of decline was the drawing apart 
 of publishers and authors. When auth- 
 ors begin to regard their publishers as 
 mere business agents, and publishers to 
 regard authors as mere "literary men" 
 with whom they have only business 
 relations, the beginning of a decline has 
 come. 
 
 I recall as one of the pleasantest days 
 of my life the day on which I accepted a 
 book by an author I had never before 
 seen. So pleasant was our correspond-
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 57 
 
 ence that I took the first occasion I 
 could to go nearly a thousand miles to 
 see him. In his own house we talked 
 about his literary plans, and I spent a 
 day always to be remembered. Our 
 friendship began then. Of course I was 
 interested in his work — you cannot long 
 feign an interest that you do not feel. 
 This friendship has lasted now long 
 enough to make it very much more se- 
 cure a bond than any merely commer- 
 cial service could have become. 
 
 Every publisher's experience is the 
 same — if he be a real publisher and will 
 long remain a real publisher. Else he 
 would be only a printer and a salesman, 
 and mere printers and salesmen have 
 not often built publishing houses. For 
 publishing houses have this distinction 
 over most other commercial institutions 
 — they rest on the friendship of the most 
 interesting persons in the world, the 
 writers of good books. 
 
 The more formal cultivation of
 
 58 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 friendly relations such as the famous 
 dinners that some publishers used regu- 
 larly to give to writers has gone out of 
 fashion. There are yet a few set dinners 
 in the routine of several American pub- 
 lishing houses. But every true publisher 
 knows the authors of his books — knows 
 them as his friends ; and the tradition of 
 irritability is false. It is usually the un- 
 successful who are irritable, whether 
 they be authors or not.
 
 Has Publishing Become Commer- 
 cialized ?
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 HAS PUBLISHING BECOME COMMER- 
 CIALIZED? 
 
 A Charge Fairly Met and Its Truths Admitted — 
 Many Features of the Business in Which a Low 
 Tone Prevails — The Literary Solicitor an Ab- 
 horrent Creature — On the Whole, However, 
 Commercial Degradation Prevails Less with 
 Publishers Than in Many Other Callings — The 
 Confidence Authors Have in Them Is Their 
 Best Asset. 
 
 Authorship and publishing — the 
 whole business of producing contem- 
 poraneous literature — has for the mo- 
 ment a decided commercial squint. It 
 would be wrong to say, as one some- 
 times hears it said, that it has been de- 
 graded ; for it has probably not suffered 
 as nearly a complete commercialization 
 as the law has suffered, for instance. 
 But that fine indifference to commercial 
 
 61
 
 62 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 results which was once supposed to be 
 characteristic of the great publishers 
 does not exist today. Perhaps it never 
 existed except in memoirs and literary 
 journals! But there was a less obvious 
 effort to make money in the days of the 
 first successful American publishing 
 houses than there is now. 
 
 The old publishing houses put forth 
 schoolbooks; and many a dignified 
 literary venture was "financed" by 
 money made from the sale of textbooks 
 and subscription books. But now the 
 greater part of the money made from 
 these two special departments is made 
 by houses that publish nothing else. 
 The making of schoolbooks and the 
 making of subscription-books have been 
 specialized, and almost separated from 
 general publishing. Two great textbook 
 houses have made large incomes; and 
 they publish nothing but schoolbooks. 
 These profits, which were once at the 
 service of literature, are now withdrawn
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 63 
 
 from it. The " general " publisher has to 
 make all his profits on his "general" 
 books. The necessity is the heavier on 
 him, therefore, to make every book pay. 
 This is one reason why the general pub- 
 lisher has to watch his ledger closely. 
 
 Another reason for greater emphasis 
 on the financial side of literary produc- 
 tion is the enormously increased ex- 
 pense of conducting a general publishing 
 house. The mere manufacture of books 
 is perhaps a trifle cheaper than it used to 
 be, but every other item of expense has 
 been increased enormously within a 
 generation. It costs more to sell books 
 than it ever cost before. Advertising 
 rates have been doubled or trebled, and 
 more advertising must be done. Even 
 a small general publishing house must 
 spend as much as $30,000 or $50,000 a 
 year in general advertising. There are 
 many houses that each spend a great 
 deal more than this every year. 
 
 The author, too, it must be remem-
 
 64 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 bered, has become commercial. He de- 
 mands and he receives a larger share of 
 the gross receipts from his book than 
 authors ever dreamed of receiving in the 
 days of the old-time publisher. All the 
 other expenses of selling books have in- 
 creased. There was a time when pub- 
 lishing houses needed no travelling 
 salesmen. Now every house of any im- 
 portance has at least two. They go 
 everywhere, with "dummies" and pros- 
 pectuses of books long before they are 
 ready for the market. Other items of 
 "general expense" besides advertising 
 and salesmen and ever-increasing rent, 
 are the ever-growing demands of the 
 trade for posters and circulars; corres- 
 pondence grows more and more; more 
 and more are special "window dis- 
 plays" required, for which the publisher 
 pays. All the while, too, books are sold 
 on long time. As a rule they are not paid 
 for by many dealers till six months after 
 they are manufactured.
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 65 
 
 All these modern commercial methods 
 have added to the publisher's expense or 
 risk; and for these reasons his business 
 has become more like any other manu- 
 facturing business than it once seemed 
 to be — perhaps more than it once was. 
 Of course there are publishers — there 
 always were such — who look only to 
 their ledgers as a measure of their suc- 
 cess. These are they who have really 
 demoralized the profession, and the 
 whole publishing craft has suffered by 
 their methods. 
 
 It was once a matter of honor that one 
 publisher should respect the relation 
 established between another publisher 
 and a writer, as a physician respects the 
 relation established between another 
 physician and a patient. Three or four 
 of the best publishing houses still live 
 and work by this code. And they have 
 the respect of all the book world. 
 Authors and readers, who do not know 
 definitely why they hold them in esteem,
 
 66 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 discern a high sense of honor and con- 
 duct in them. Character makes its way 
 from any man who has it down a long 
 line — everybody who touches a sterling 
 character comes at last to feel it both in 
 conduct and in product. The very best 
 traditions of publishing are yet a part of 
 the practice of the best American pub- 
 lishing houses, which are conducted by 
 men of real character. 
 
 But there are others — others who keep 
 " literary drummers," men who go to see 
 popular writers and solicit books. The 
 authors of very popular books them- 
 selves also — some of them at least — put 
 themselves up at auction, going from 
 publisher to publisher or threatening to 
 go. This is demoralization and com- 
 mercialization with a vengeance. But 
 it is the sin of the authors. 
 
 As a rule, this method has not suc- 
 ceeded; or it has not succeeded long. 
 There are two men in the United States 
 who have gone about making commer-
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 67 
 
 cial calls on practically every man and 
 woman who has ever written a success- 
 ful book ; and they are not well thought 
 of by most of the writers whom they see. 
 Every other publisher hears of their 
 journeyings and of their "drumming." 
 Sometimes they have secured immediate 
 commercial results, but as a rule they 
 have lost more than they have gained. 
 The permanent success of every publish- 
 ing house is built on the confidence and 
 the esteem of those who write books. 
 When a house forfeits that, it begins to 
 lose. Its very foundations begin to be- 
 come insecure. 
 
 Commercial as this generation of writ- 
 ers may be, almost every writer of books 
 has an ambition to win literary esteem. 
 They want dignity. They seek reputa- 
 tion on as high a level as possible. 
 "The trouble with the whole business" 
 (I quote from a letter from a successful 
 novelist) " is that novel- writing has be- 
 come so very common. 'Common' is
 
 68 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 the word. It is no longer distinguished. 
 What I want is distinction. Money I 
 must have — some money at least; but 
 I want also to be distinguished." That 
 is a frank confession that almost every 
 writer makes sooner or later. 
 
 Now, when a publishing house forfeits 
 distinction it, too, becomes common, 
 and loses its chance to confer a certain 
 degree of distinction. And literary 
 "drummers" have this effect — authors 
 who can confer distinction shun their 
 houses. The literary solicitor, therefore, 
 can work only on a low level; and the 
 houses that use him are in danger of 
 sinking to a low level. 
 
 The truth is, it is a personal service 
 that the publisher does for the author, 
 almost as personal a service as the phy- 
 sician does for his patient or the lawyer 
 for his client. It is not merely a commer- 
 cial service. Every great publisher knows 
 this and almost all successful authors 
 find it out, if they do not know it at first.
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 69 
 
 The ideal relation between publisher 
 and author requires this personal ser- 
 vice. It even requires enthusiastic ser- 
 vice. "Do you thoroughly believe in 
 this book? and do you believe in me?" 
 these are the very proper questions that 
 every earnest writer consciously or un- 
 consciously puts to his publisher. Even 
 the man who writes the advertisements 
 of books must believe in them. Else his 
 advertisements will not ring true. The 
 salesmen must believe what they say. 
 The booksellers and the public will soon 
 discover whether they believe it. They 
 catch the note of sincerity — the public 
 is won ; the author succeeds. Or they 
 catch the note of insincerity and the 
 book lags. 
 
 This is the whole story of good pub- 
 lishing. Good books to begin with, then 
 a personal sincerity on the part of the 
 publisher. And there is no lasting sub- 
 stitute for these things. 
 
 The essential weakness in most of even
 
 70 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 the best publishing houses of our day is 
 the lack of personal literary help to 
 authors by the owners of the publishing 
 houses themselves. Almost every writer 
 wishes to consult somebody. If they do 
 not wish advice, they at least wish sym- 
 pathy. Every book is talked over with 
 somebody. Now, when a publishing 
 house has a head — an owner — who will 
 read every important manuscript, and 
 freely and frankly talk or write about it, 
 and can give sympathetic suggestions, 
 that is the sort of publishing house that 
 will win and hold the confidence of the 
 best writers. From one point of view the 
 publisher is a manufacturer and sales- 
 man. From another point of view he 
 is the personal friend and sympathetic 
 adviser of authors — a man who has a 
 knowledge of literature and whose judg- 
 ment is worth having. A publisher who 
 lacks the ability to do this high and inti- 
 mate service may indeed succeed for a 
 time as a mere manufacturer and seller
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 71 
 
 of books; but he can add little to the 
 best literary impulses or tendencies of 
 his time; nor is he likely to attract the 
 best writers. 
 
 And — in all the noisy rattle of com- 
 mercialism — the writers of our own gen- 
 eration who are worth most on a pub- 
 lisher's list respond to the true publish- 
 ing personality as readily as writers did 
 before the day of commercial methods. 
 All the changes that have come in the 
 profession, therefore, have not after all 
 changed its real character as it is prac- 
 tised on its higher levels. And this rule 
 will hold true — that no publishing house 
 can win and keep a place on the highest 
 level that does not have at least one man 
 who possesses this true publishing per- 
 sonality. 
 
 There is much less reason to fear the 
 commercial degradation of many other 
 callings than the publishers'. 
 
 A louder complaint of commercialism 
 has been provoked by the unseemly
 
 72 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 advertising of novels than by any other 
 modern method of publishers. Now this 
 is a curious and interesting thing. A 
 man or woman writes a story (let us call 
 it a story, though it be a mild mush of 
 mustard, warranted to redden the faded 
 cheeks of sickly sentimentality) which, 
 for some reason that nobody can ex- 
 plain, has the same possibilities of popu- 
 larity as Salvation Soap. A saponace- 
 ous publisher puts it out ; he advertises 
 it in his soapy way; people buy it — 
 sometimes two hundred or three hun- 
 dred thousand of them. 
 
 Behold ! a new way has been found to 
 write books that sell, and a new way to 
 sell them. Hundreds of writers try the 
 easy trick. Dozens of minor publishers 
 see their way to fortune. But the trick 
 cannot be imitated, and the way to 
 fortune remains closed. It is only 
 now and then that a novel has a big 
 "run" by this method. The public 
 does not see the hundreds of failures.
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 73 
 
 It sees only the occasional accidental 
 success. 
 
 There is no science, no art, no litera- 
 ture in the business. It is like writing 
 popular songs: One "rag-time" tune 
 will make its way in a month from one 
 end of the country to the other. A hun- 
 dred tune-makers try their hands at the 
 trick — not one of their tunes goes. The 
 same tune-maker who "scored a suc- 
 cess" often fails the next time. There 
 is, I think, not a single soap-novelist who 
 has put forth a subsequent novel of as 
 great popularity as his "record- 
 breaker," and several publishing houses 
 have failed through unsuccessful efforts 
 at the brass-band method. 
 
 This is not publishing. It is not even 
 commercialism. It is a form of gamb- 
 ling. A successful advertising "dodge" 
 makes a biscuit popular, or a whiskey, or 
 a shoe, or a cigarette, or anything. Why 
 not a book, then ? This would be all that 
 need be said about it but for the "liter-
 
 74 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 ary" journals. They forthwith fall to 
 gossiping, and keep up a chatter about 
 "great sellers," and bewail commercial- 
 ism in literature, until we all begin to 
 believe that the whole business of book- 
 writing and book-publishing has been 
 degraded. Did it ever occur to you that 
 in the "good old days" of publishing 
 there were no magazines that retailed 
 the commercial and personal gossip of 
 the craft? 
 
 As nearly as I can make out the pub- 
 lishing houses in the United States that 
 are conducted as dignified institutions 
 are conducted with as little degrading 
 commercialism as the old houses whose 
 history has become a part of English 
 literature, and I believe that they are 
 conducted with more ability. Certainly 
 not one of them has made a colossal for- 
 tune. Certainly not one of them ever 
 failed to recognize or to encourage a high 
 literary purpose if it were sanely di- 
 rected. Every one of them every year
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 75 
 
 invests in books and authors that they 
 know cannot yield a direct or immediate 
 profit, and they make these investments 
 because they feel ennobled by trying to 
 do a service to literature. 
 
 The great difficulty is to recognize 
 literature when it first comes in at the 
 door, for one quality of literature is that 
 it is not likely even to know itself. The 
 one thing that is certain is that the criti- 
 cal crew .and the academic faculty are 
 sure not to recognize it at first sight. 
 To know its royal qualities at once under 
 strange and new garments — that is to be 
 a great publisher, and the glory of that 
 achievement is as great as it ever was.
 
 Has the Unkown Author a Chance ?
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 HAS THE UNKNOWN AUTHOR A 
 CHANCE? 
 
 A Popular Illusion Based on "Graustark" and 
 "David Harum" Dispelled — Publishers Blunder 
 More Often in Welcoming Than in Rejecting 
 Manuscripts of the "New Man" — Guess Work 
 Enters Largely Into the Fate of a Novel — How 
 Publishers ludge Manuscripts and How " Read- 
 ing " Is Done. 
 
 It will probably always be believed by 
 many persons that publishing houses do 
 not give careful attention to book manu- 
 scripts that come from strangers. The 
 case of " David Harum" did much to fix 
 this notion in the public mind. The 
 manuscript was declined by three or 
 four publishers before it was accepted by 
 the Appletons. Its declination was an 
 evidence of bad financial book-judg- 
 
 79
 
 80 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 ment, but it is not proof that it was 
 carelessly considered. Most publishers' 
 readers are literary folk, pure and sim- 
 ple. Not one in a hundred has a good 
 financial judgment of a manuscript. As 
 a literary product, judged by academic 
 standards, there was not much in " David 
 Harum" to commend it. The publish- 
 ers who rejected it acted on the readers' 
 reports. When it went to the Apple- 
 tons, somebody was shrewd enough to 
 see that if it were shortened and put in 
 somewhat better form, it would have a 
 commercial value. A publishing judg- 
 ment was passed on it there and not 
 merely a conventional literary judg- 
 ment. 
 
 Or, take the case of " Graustark." It 
 was declined at least by one publisher. 
 There is, perhaps, not a "literary" 
 reader in the world who would have 
 commended it in manuscript, or (for 
 that matter) who will commend it now. 
 It does violence to every literary canon.
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 81 
 
 But a Chicago publisher, by some divine 
 or subterranean suggestion, saw a 
 chance for it. Its roughest edges were 
 hewn off with an axe, and it was put 
 forth. There have now appeared four 
 " Graustark " books, three of which have 
 each sold perhaps a hundred times as 
 many copies as Mr. Howell's latest novel 
 will sell. 
 
 The difference between a mere literary 
 judgment and a publishing judgment in- 
 dicates the greatest weakness in the or- 
 ganizations of most publishing houses. 
 The publisher himself is usually a busi- 
 ness man. He has to concern himself 
 with the financial work of his house — 
 with the manufacture and the sale of 
 books. In a great measure he relies, for 
 his judgment of literary values, on his 
 advisers and readers. As a rule these 
 advisers and readers are employed men 
 or women. They know nothing about 
 what may be called the commercial 
 value of books. Many of them know
 
 82 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 nothing about the losses or the profits on 
 the books that they have commended. 
 They have had no experience in selling 
 books. These facts indicate the wrong 
 organization of most publishing houses. 
 Yet the faithfulness that they show to as- 
 piring authors is amazing; they plough 
 conscientiously through thousands of 
 manuscripts looking for the light of 
 some possible genius, and they com- 
 mend dozens of books where their em- 
 ployers accept a single volume. 
 
 But the publisher does acquire a sort 
 of sixth sense about a book. He may or 
 he may not know literary values, but he 
 comes to have a peculiar sort of knowl- 
 edge of the commercial possibilities of 
 books. If he takes "literary read- 
 ers'" judgments and does not read 
 manuscripts himself, he will now and 
 then let a " David Harum " pass through 
 his hands. To avoid such mistakes 
 every publishing house has at least two 
 readers, and these read manuscripts in-
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 83 
 
 dependently of one another. The pub- 
 lisher then makes his judgment from 
 them both, or perhaps from a third read- 
 ing by a specialist, if the manuscript 
 seem good enough to warrant a third 
 reading. 
 
 The mistake of permitting a profitable 
 manuscript to be rejected does not come, 
 therefore, from inattention to the work 
 of strangers, but from sheer fallibility of 
 judgment. And the work of strangers 
 is very carefully considered in every 
 publishing house that I know anything 
 about. Every publisher in these days is 
 just as eager to get a new good writer on 
 his list as any unknown writer is eager to 
 get a publisher; and no manuscript 
 above the grade of illiteracy is neglected. 
 
 A " first reader " — a man of all around 
 general knowledge of books, and he 
 ought to be a man full of hard common- 
 sense, common-sense being worth more 
 than technical literary knowledge — the 
 " first reader" examines the manuscript.
 
 84 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 If it be a shopworn piece of common- 
 place work, obviously hopeless, he may 
 not read it from preface to end, but he 
 must say in his written report whether 
 he has read it all. Whether he condemn 
 it or approve it, it is examined or read by 
 another reader. If both these condemn 
 it as hopeless, the publisher declines it 
 without more ado. 
 
 The greater number of manuscripts 
 that come to publishing houses are hope- 
 less. Three-fourths of them, or more, 
 are novels that have been written by 
 lonely women or by men who have no 
 successful occupation; and most of 
 these are conscious or unconscious imi- 
 tations of recent popular novels. It does 
 not require very shrewd judgment to see 
 that they are hopeless. But it does re- 
 quire time. If they are above the grade 
 of illiteracy somebody must read a hun- 
 dred pages or more to make sure that 
 the dulness of the early chapters may 
 not be merely a beginner's way of find-
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 85 
 
 ing his gait. And many of these manu- 
 scripts go from publishing house to pub- 
 lishing house. There are, I should say, a 
 thousand hopeless novels in manuscript 
 at all times making this weary journey. 
 
 Sometimes one comes back to the 
 same publisher a second time, the author 
 having perhaps not kept an accurate 
 record of its itinerary. Sometimes it 
 comes back a year later, somewhat 
 changed. There is one novel-manuscript 
 that has come to me four times within 
 two years, every time in a somewhat 
 different form, and twice with different 
 titles — obviously to fool the "careless" 
 publisher. 
 
 While very few mistakes are made or 
 are likely to be made with these manu- 
 scripts that two readers independently 
 declare hopeless, the class next to these 
 require a great deal of work and care. 
 This class includes those books by un- 
 known writers that are not bad. One 
 reader will say that they are worth con-
 
 86 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 sidering. The next reader will say that 
 they have some sort of merit. Then the 
 publisher must go slowly. A third per- 
 son must read them. If the publisher be 
 an ideal publisher, he will read them 
 himself. (The weakness of most Ameri- 
 can publishing houses of this generation 
 comes just here — the publisher himself 
 does not read many manuscripts.) 
 
 In the best publishing houses (this, I 
 know, is the habit of three) the reports 
 on books of this class are all read at a 
 meeting of the firm, or (better) at a 
 meeting of the firm and of the heads of 
 departments. At such a meeting the 
 judgment of a sensible man who is at the 
 head of the sales department of a pub- 
 lishing house is very useful. He knows 
 by his everyday work what sort of books 
 the public is buying. Some of them are 
 books that the "literary" world knows 
 nothing about or has forgotten. 
 
 And three or four or five men, by a 
 little discussion, can reach a clearer and
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 87 
 
 saner judgment about a book from the 
 reports of three or four readers than the 
 readers themselves can reach or than 
 any one man or any two men who con- 
 sider the reports could reach. There is 
 no subject in the world about which a 
 conference is likely to be more helpful. 
 One man's judgment about the publish- 
 ing quality of a book may easily be 
 wrong. The judgment of two men may 
 be wrong if they look at it from the same 
 angle or with the same temperament. 
 But the judgment of three, or four, or 
 five men, if they have the facts before 
 them and if they indulge in frank dis- 
 cussion, is very seldom wrong. No book 
 on which serious work has been done 
 ought to be rejected or accepted without 
 the benefit of the independent reports of 
 two or three sensible persons who have 
 carefully read it, and without the dis- 
 cussions of these reports by three or four 
 other persons of experience and judg- 
 ment. And in at least three American
 
 88 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 publishing houses every manuscript of 
 any value or promise runs a course of 
 hopeful consideration such as this; for 
 the publisher wants good new books, he 
 wants good new writers ; and he wants 
 them badly. Half a dozen popular 
 writers will build a publishing house. 
 It is, therefore, doubtful whether any 
 other business is so carefully conducted 
 with reference to its sources of supply. 
 
 In fact, all publishers make many 
 more mistakes in accepting books than 
 in declining them. They accept many 
 books from new writers that they hope 
 may possibly succeed, but in which they 
 have not very strong faith. It is the 
 book manuscripts of this class that 
 cause the most work and the greatest 
 trouble — the class that may possibly 
 succeed. A book of this class by a new 
 writer who shows cleverness or some 
 other good quality is often accepted in 
 the hope that the author may do better 
 with the next- book. It is accepted as an
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 89 
 
 encouragement and as a hope ; it chiefly 
 is for this reason that so many books are 
 published that are barely good enough 
 to warrant publication. The publisher 
 is trying to "develop" an author. 
 
 Sometimes this method succeeds ; for 
 it sometimes happens that a good writer 
 writes a first book that is merely a prom- 
 ise of later achievement. But this does 
 not often happen. In most cases the sec- 
 ond book is no better than the first — or 
 is worse. Then the publisher loses and 
 the writer is seldom heard of again. The 
 number of one-novel writers scattered 
 over the land would surprise the world if 
 it were known. There is no rule about 
 literary production to which there are 
 not an embarrassing number of excep- 
 tions. But in most cases a successful 
 writer starts with a successful book. 
 The hope that the second book will be 
 better is one of the rocks on which many 
 publishing ventures wreck. 
 
 But if the publishers put forth a num-
 
 96 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 ber of commonplace books (chiefly 
 novels) from a false hope that they may 
 thus develop good writers, they also do a 
 service of the opposite kind. They save 
 the long-suffering public from many 
 worthless books. For if the public had 
 thrust upon it all or half or a tenth of the 
 books that are written, what a dull 
 world we should have ! 
 
 When a book-manuscript has been re- 
 jected, the delicate task comes next of 
 informing the author. This task is 
 seldom done as well as it ought to be. It 
 is almost impossible for a publisher — 
 who receives and rejects manuscripts as 
 a matter of business — to put himself in 
 the place of a writer who has spent 
 lonely weeks in her work. To send a 
 mere business note is almost an insult. 
 Yet what more can the publisher write ? 
 He does not dare write hopefully. If he 
 does he will give a degree of encourage- 
 ment that is dishonest. Yet the author 
 expects a long and explicit letter telling
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 91 
 
 why the manuscript is unavailable. If 
 she does not receive such a letter she 
 jumps to the conclusion that her manu- 
 script has not had fair consideration. 
 Publishers' letters of rejection are the 
 chief cause, I suspect, of the persistent 
 notion that they are careless in the ex- 
 amination of manuscripts. 
 
 Every letter of declination ought to be 
 written by a skilful man — a diplomatist 
 who can write an unpleasant truth with- 
 out offence. Every such letter ought to 
 be written with a pen. No general form 
 ought to be used. Yet in only one of the 
 publishing houses whose habits I know 
 is this degree of care taken. The con- 
 sideration of manuscript from strangers 
 is careful and conscientious, but letters 
 of rejection are often perfunctory. 
 
 To sell a novel that has the mysterious 
 quality of popularity in it is not difficult. 
 Properly launched, it sells itself. To sell 
 a novel that lacks the inherent quality of 
 popularity — that is almost impossible.
 
 92 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 Apparently it has sometimes been done, 
 but nobody can be sure whether the 
 result after all was due to the book or 
 to the salesman. Every publisher has 
 proved, over and over again, to his dis- 
 gust, that he cannot make the people 
 buy a novel that they do not want ; and 
 when a novel appears (no better novel) 
 that they do want, the novel-readers 
 find it out by some free-masonry and 
 would buy it if the publishers tried to 
 prevent them. 
 
 Nobody has discovered a rule — to say 
 nothing of a principle — whereby the 
 popularity of a novel by a new writer 
 may be determined. If it be a really 
 great, strong book, of course it is easy to 
 understand that it will sell ; but whether 
 it will sell 10,000 copies or 100,000 no- 
 body knows. If it be a slap-dash dime- 
 novel, full of action, it is easy to guess 
 that it will sell; but whether 5,000 or 
 500,000 nobody knows. Sometimes a 
 book of the sheerest commonplace hap-
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 93 
 
 pens to hit the public mood at the happy- 
 angle and sells beyond all expectation. 
 The truth is, every new novel by an un- 
 known writer presents a problem peculiar 
 to itself ; and in advertising it and offer- 
 ing it for sale, every book's peculiar 
 problem must be studied by itself. 
 
 The whole question is a subtle social 
 one. Who could have foretold popular- 
 ity for "pigs in clover," rather than for 
 some other silly puzzle; or for ping- 
 pong; or for women's hats of a certain 
 grotesque construction? The popular 
 whim about novels is like the whims for 
 these things. And a popular novel 
 passes as quickly as any other fashion. 
 The story has been many times told of 
 the sudden falling off of the demand for 
 "Trilby" — so sudden that the publish- 
 ers had a large number of copies left on 
 hand which could not be sold at all ex- 
 cept as waste paper. Every publisher is 
 afraid to publish very large editions of 
 any very popular novel; for they have
 
 94 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 all had an experience parallel to this ex- 
 perience with "Trilby." 
 
 But other kinds of books are less 
 capricious than novels ; and the business 
 of the publisher has been reduced more 
 nearly to a science in dealing with books 
 of information. Several publishers, for 
 example, have series of little books 
 made of selections from English and 
 American classics. Many of them have 
 sold well ; but some of them have sold by 
 the million and others just as good and 
 just as attractive have stopped at the 
 ten- thousand limit or at a lower limit. 
 The difference is with the skill with 
 which they were put on the market. 
 Sometimes an ingenious "scheme" will 
 sell information books in great numbers ; 
 and it often happens that the worst of 
 three or four books on the same subject 
 and published for the same price, be- 
 comes far better known than the other 
 better books. 
 
 As a theoretical proposition it seems
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 95 
 
 plain that the publisher who will spend 
 the most money in newspaper advertis- 
 ing will sell the most books. Authors 
 not infrequently take up this notion. 
 Sometimes it is true; for sometimes 
 newspaper advertising will cause a great 
 demand for a book. But this is not true 
 with every book. And most recent pub- 
 lishing failures have been due — in a 
 great measure, at least — to prodigal ad- 
 vertising — or, perhaps, to misdirected 
 advertising. ' 
 
 Every book is a problem unto itself. 
 The wise publisher so regards it from the 
 beginning; and he makes his plans for 
 every book to suit its peculiar case and 
 not another. All the long road from 
 author to reader, the book — any book — 
 presents a series of interesting, original 
 problems. Many of them are very fas- 
 cinating problems. They call for im- 
 agination, fertility, ingenuity. The 
 reason why few authors or authors' 
 societies or other persons who have not
 
 96 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 been definitely trained to publishing 
 fail, is that they are too likely to regard 
 publishing as a mere routine business — a 
 business of manufacturing a certain pro- 
 duct and then of offering it for sale. 
 They forget that every book — and even 
 every edition of every book — presents a 
 problem that was never presented be- 
 fore since the world was made. And 
 when its sympathetic ingenuity and in- 
 ventiveness fail, a publishing house be- 
 gins to become a mere business and the 
 drying-up period is not far off. 
 
 But no publishing house fails because 
 it does not examine manuscripts care- 
 fully. There is no other business that I 
 know of that is done more seriously ; and 
 the mistakes made are fewer than the 
 public thinks. They are mistakes of 
 judgment and not of carelessness.
 
 The Printer Who Issues Books at 
 the Author's Expense
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PRINTER WHO ISSUES BOOKS 
 AT THE AUTHOR'S EXPENSE 
 
 A Heartless Pirate Who Preys Upon the Un- 
 sophisticated and Ambitious Writer — The Con- 
 tract in Which This Sort of "Publisher" Can- 
 not Lose — The Inevitable Disappointment — 
 How the Publication by Even a Responsible 
 House of a Book That Sells Poorly Injures the 
 House. 
 
 An innocent and ambitious good 
 woman sent to me last year a form of 
 contract that a printer who pretended 
 to be a publisher had sent her to 
 sign for the publication of a novel. In 
 its unessential clauses it was like the 
 usual publisher's contract; but it re- 
 quired the author to pay in advance a 
 fixed sum for the plates and for the 
 manufacture of one thousand copies; 
 
 99
 
 ioo A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 and this sum was just about twice what 
 they should cost him. Then he was to 
 pay her not the usual ten or even fifteen 
 per cent, royalty, but fifty per cent, on 
 all copies sold — as well he might; and, 
 if at the end of a year the book had 
 ceased to sell, she was bound to buy the 
 plates from him at half cost. The 
 meaning of all this translated into 
 figures, is this: The plates would cost 
 him $250, for he does cheap work; a 
 thousand copies of the book would cost 
 him $200, for he makes cheap books; 
 total, $450. She would pay him in ad- 
 vance $900. He has a profit so far of 
 $450. He does not expect to sell any 
 of the books. Her friends would buy 
 perhaps as many as two hundred copies. 
 They would not be on sale at the book- 
 stores — except in her own town. At 
 the end of the year she would pay him 
 again for the plates half what he charged 
 her at first — which is just what they 
 cost him. By this time she would have
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 101 
 
 paid just three times their cost to him. 
 His outlay in the whole transaction 
 would be : 
 
 For plates $250 
 
 For 1000 copies 200 
 
 $450 
 
 His income would be: Her prepayment.. 900 
 Her purchase of the plates a year later. . 250 
 
 1150 
 
 His profit $700 
 
 He would not have even to make any 
 outlay of capital. She supplies the cap- 
 ital and he makes his $700 profit by 
 writing her a few letters. If any of the 
 books were sold he would receive also 
 half what they brought. She would 
 have spent $1150, less what she re- 
 ceived for the few copies that were sold. 
 Her book would not have been pub- 
 lished — only printed at an excessive 
 cost. 
 
 There are several "publishers" who 
 seem to do a prosperous brief business 
 of this kind by preying upon inexpe-
 
 102 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 rienced and disappointed authors. It 
 is only by accident they ever get a book 
 that sells; and they hardly pretend to 
 put books on the market, for of course 
 the booksellers will not buy them. A 
 really good book would, therefore, in 
 their hands be buried. The public 
 would never find it out. They print a 
 large number of the novels that the real 
 publishers decline. 
 
 The long list of books — chiefly novels 
 — that these pseudo-publishers put out 
 tells a sad tale of misdirected energy 
 and of disappointed hopes. A man — 
 oftener it is a woman — conceives the 
 notion of writing a novel. She works 
 alone. She shuts herself off from life 
 about her. Any human being who 
 spends months at a self-imposed secret 
 task becomes profoundly, even abnor- 
 mally interested in it. The story grows 
 — or flows; for the author becomes 
 more fluent as she goes on. She is likely 
 to accept all the stories of extraordinary
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 103 
 
 successes that she reads in the literary 
 journals as if they were common suc- 
 cesses. She goes on working by herself 
 with no corrective companionship. At 
 last she sends it to a real publisher and 
 gets a disappointing decision. She 
 imagines a thousand reasons why she is 
 not appreciated. She sends it to an- 
 other, and so on. The story of the 
 wanderings of " David Harum" in man- 
 uscript has given courage to thousands 
 of worthless novels — a courage to travel 
 to the last ditch, and the last ditch is the 
 pseudo-publisher. "Yes," he writes, 
 "it is an unusual story;" and he will 
 be greatly honored to publish it, and 
 sends one of his remarkable contracts. 
 
 To get the book published by any- 
 body will bring her recognition, she 
 thinks. The public will be kinder than 
 the publishers. She takes the risk — 
 sometimes goes into debt to do so. That 
 is the end of the book, and in most cases 
 the end of the author's career. The
 
 104 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 work begun in loneliness has ended in 
 oblivion — wasted days, wasted dollars, 
 wasted hopes. 
 
 Yet what is an author to do who be- 
 lieves in his own work when it is refused 
 by the regular publisher? Publish it 
 himself or let it remain in manuscript. 
 Never permit it to be brought out by a 
 publisher to whom any suspicion at- 
 taches. 
 
 There is not much danger (I do not 
 believe there is any danger) that a man- 
 uscript of any value whatever will under 
 present conditions fail to find a legiti- 
 mate purchaser. But one way out of 
 the difficulty that authors often seek is 
 to propose to a legitimate publisher to 
 publish his book at the writer's ex- 
 pense; and it is not apparent to the 
 layman why the publisher cannot afford 
 to make such arrangements. "If the 
 author pays the bill," he says, " the pub- 
 lisher will surely lose nothing. ' ' But the 
 publisher does lose, and loses heavily,
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 105 
 
 every time he publishes a book that is 
 not successful in the market. A pub- 
 lisher cannot afford to accept a book 
 that will not itself earn a profit. If the 
 author pay all the cost and a good 
 profit besides, even this does not change 
 the case; for unsalable books clog the 
 market and stop the wheels of the pub- 
 lisher's whole trade. He soon begins to 
 lose influence and standing in the book 
 trade. The jobbers buy new books 
 from him in smaller quantities. The 
 booksellers become suspicious of his 
 judgment. 
 
 Last year, to give a true instance, a 
 publisher put out four new novels by 
 four new writers. His salesmen and his 
 advertising man announced them as 
 good books. They made enthusiastic 
 estimates of them. The book dealers 
 ordered liberally. Three out of the 
 four failed to make any appreciable 
 success. The dealers had many copies 
 of them left on hand. This year, when
 
 106 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 the same publisher brought out two 
 more new novels by two more new 
 writers, his salesmen met with incre- 
 dulity and indifference. The booksellers 
 said to them with a sad smile, "We'll 
 swap copies of your last year's novels 
 for these." 
 
 Now it so happens that both of these 
 new books of this year are good and 
 popular. A demand for them was made 
 as soon as the reviews appeared and 
 people began to read them. But the 
 booksellers were ill supplied. They 
 would order only a few copies at a time 
 — or none. Thus the good books of this 
 year suffered because the publisher's 
 dull books of last year failed to bring 
 profit or satisfaction to anybody. They 
 stood in the way of this year's better 
 books. 
 
 While, therefore, no legitimate pub- 
 lisher wishes to reduce his business to a 
 mere commercial basis, and while he is 
 eager to maintain the dignity of his pro-
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 107 
 
 fession — must maintain it in fact— and 
 do as high service as possible to the 
 literary production of his time; yet he 
 can not load down his list with many 
 books that have not a good commercial 
 reason for existence. 
 
 The plausible proposition which is so 
 often made in these days of universal 
 authorship — to publish books at the 
 author's expense — is for these reasons 
 not a sound proposition. If the book 
 succeeds there is no reason why the 
 author should make the investment. 
 If it fail, the publisher loses, even though 
 the author settle the bill; and he loses 
 heavily. 
 
 A writer who asks a publisher to 
 bring out a book that has no commer- 
 cial reason for existence is asking him 
 to imitate the "fake" publisher. The 
 "fake" publisher could not make a liv- 
 ing (since he has no character and can- 
 not sell books) except by cash payments 
 from his authors. As soon as the pub-
 
 108 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 lisher begins to receive cash payments 
 from his authors (be the basis ever so 
 legitimate) he begins to clog up ths out- 
 lets for his product. He has taken the 
 first step towards "fake" publishing. 
 
 In a word, commercially unprofitable 
 books may be printed, but they cannot 
 be published without ruining the ma- 
 chinery that they are run through. He 
 is the best publisher who has the largest 
 proportion of good books on his list 
 (whether his list be long or short) that 
 are at the same time alive in the 
 market. 
 
 There are — let it be said as an excep- 
 tion — a few classes of books that every 
 publisher wishes to have on his list in 
 spite of the fact that they cannot be 
 made profitable, such as works of great 
 scholarship or monumental works that 
 have a lasting value. It is legitimate 
 that the writers or the societies or or- 
 ganizations under whose directions such 
 books were written should pay or share
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 109 
 
 the cost of their manufacture. But few 
 such works yield a profit at last to either 
 publisher or author. And they are not 
 made to clog the book market. They 
 are sold only to special classes of readers. 
 
 A book is a commodity. Yet the mo- 
 ment it is treated as a mere commodity 
 it takes severe revenge on its author and 
 on its publisher. 
 
 These pseudo-publishers sometimes 
 solicit manuscripts from ignorant writ- 
 ers. They have veiled advertisements 
 in the literary journals. Ignorance and 
 ambition is a susceptible combination. 
 Several years ago one of these plausible 
 swindlers bribed a reader in one of the 
 larger publishing houses to report to 
 him the names of all the writers whose 
 novels were declined there. The fakir 
 then plied them with circulars and 
 letters. 
 
 While I have been writing about pub- 
 lishing swindles I have been reminded 
 of the accusation brought several years
 
 no A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 ago against publishers — especially Eng- 
 lish publishers — that the temptation to 
 fraud was too strong to be resisted by 
 any but the most upright and successful 
 men. An author gives his book to his 
 publisher. Twice a year the publisher 
 makes a report — pays royalties on the 
 number of books that he has reported as 
 sold. There is no way whereby the 
 author can verify the publisher's re- 
 ports. He has to take his word for it. 
 Even if the author or someone who 
 acted for him were to see the publisher's 
 books, he could learn nothing, for the 
 publisher's bookkeeping is a very com- 
 plicated thing; and reports of book 
 sales could easily be "doctored." 
 
 The chance for fraud does exist. But 
 the first wish of every normal man in the 
 business, even if he lacks vigorous hon- 
 esty, is to make his reports of sales to 
 his author as large as possible. This 
 wish is too strong to be overcome by 
 anything less than the most hopeless
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION in 
 
 moral depravity. A publisher who 
 should commit the crime of making 
 false reports to his authors would be a 
 monstrosity. Yet the contention that 
 Sir Walter Besant made in England for 
 so many years, that the publishing bus- 
 iness was conducted without such checks 
 and verifications as are applied to other 
 business transactions was true; and I, 
 for one, see no practical remedy for it. 
 
 Moral: Select your publisher with 
 care; make sure that he is honest (by 
 far most of us are) ; then trust him. 
 But steer clear of all "fake" publishers 
 and "agents."
 
 The Advertising of Books Still 
 Experimental
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE ADVERTISING OF BOOKS STILL 
 EXPERIMENTAL 
 
 Publishers Are Uncertain as to the Amount of 
 Sales Made in That Way — How the Book Busi- 
 ness Differs from the Shoe Trade, for Example 
 — The Problem of How to Get the Books Be- 
 fore the People Is at the Root of All Other 
 Book Trade Questions — Why the Book Can- 
 vasser Is Still Necessary — A Vast Field Wait- 
 ing for Development. 
 
 About the advertising of books, no- 
 body knows anything. The most that 
 can be said is that some publishers are 
 making very interesting experiments. 
 But nobody has yet worked out a single 
 general principle that is of great value. 
 The publishers themselves frankly con- 
 fess that they do not know how to ad- 
 vertise books — except a few publishers 
 who have had little experience. 
 
 "5
 
 n6 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 The fundamental difficulty of course 
 is that hardly any two books present the 
 same problem. Find a successful ad- 
 * vertising plan for one book — it will not 
 be a good plan for another. This fun- 
 damental difficulty marks the difference, 
 for instance, between books and shoes. 
 When a shoe merchant finds out by ex- 
 periment how to describe his shoes and 
 in what periodicals to print his descrip- 
 tion, his problem is solved. Recently 
 several publishers discovered a success- 
 ful way to advertise a novel. They 
 tried the same plan with another novel 
 and another. But it's hit or miss. I, 
 for one, would give much to know how 
 often it has been "miss." 
 
 The old-fashioned way was to insert 
 a brief, simple, dignified announcement 
 of every book, as is still done in The 
 Spectator, of London, for example. 
 Good; but such an announcement 
 doesn't go far. A very few thousand 
 persons see it. They wait until the
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 117 
 
 books are reviewed or till some friend 
 or authority speaks about them. For 
 this perfectly good reason some publish- 
 ers do not insert many advertisements 
 in those publications that go only to the 
 literary class — they are to a degree su- 
 perfluous. Those that are inserted are 
 inserted to give the publishers and the 
 books a certain "standing," and to 
 keep pleasant the relations between the 
 publishers and these journals. 
 
 Then come, of course, the monthly 
 popular magazines. They reach a very 
 much wider class of readers, and to ad- 
 vertise books in them is a logical pro- 
 cedure. But their advertising rates are 
 almost prohibitory. The margin of 
 profit on books is very small. There 
 is not money enough in the business to 
 warrant extensive and expensive maga- 
 zine advertising. The result is the pub- 
 lishers put their announcements of per- 
 haps a dozen new books on a single ad- 
 vertising page of the magazines, and
 
 n8 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 they cannot, in this restricted space, 
 say enough about any particular book 
 to make the advertisement effective. 
 
 Then there are the daily papers. One 
 or two of the best dailies in every large 
 city are used by the publishers for an- 
 nouncements of new books. They can- 
 not afford more — except in the case of 
 those novels which may reach enormous 
 editions. Given a novel that will sell 
 100,000 copies or more, and you have 
 enough possible profit to warrant a 
 good deal of advertising. But during 
 this calendar year only two novels (per- 
 haps three) have new editions of more 
 than 100,000 copies. What is a pub- 
 lisher to do, then, who has a novel that 
 will sell 10,000 copies, or 20,000 copies 
 and no more? Can he make it sell 
 50,000 or 100,000 by spending a large 
 sum in advertising it? Perhaps, once 
 in ten times, or once in twenty times; 
 but not oftener. 
 
 Five or six publishing houses spend
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 119 
 
 more than $50,000 a year, each, in ad- 
 vertising. Two spend a good deal more 
 than this sum; and one is reported as 
 saying that he spends $250,000. These 
 are not large sums when compared with 
 the sums spent for advertising other 
 wares. But an advertisement of a shoe 
 published to-day will help to sell that 
 shoe next year. The shoemaker gets a 
 cumulative effect. But your novel ad- 
 vertised to-day will be dead next year. 
 You get no cumulative effect. When 
 I say, therefore, that no publisher has 
 mastered the art of advertising books, 
 I tell the literal truth. They all run 
 against a dead wall; and they will all 
 tell you so in frank moments. 
 
 The study of the problem of adver- 
 tising books takes one far afield. What 
 quality in a book makes it popular any- 
 how? Even if you are wise enough to 
 know that (and you are very wise if you 
 do know that) the question arises 
 whether advertising is necessary. There
 
 120 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 have been as many popular books sold 
 in large editions without advertising as 
 with it. If your book is really popular 
 it may sell anyhow. I could make a 
 long list of such books, and a still longer 
 list of books that extensive advertising 
 did not sell — books which seemed to 
 their publishers to have the quality of 
 great popularity. 
 
 The question carries us further back 
 still. Let us take the analogy of the 
 shoemaker again. He has shoe stores 
 within reach of the whole population. 
 There is not a village in the land where 
 there is not a store in which shoes are 
 sold. The manufacturers' salesmen find 
 this distributing machinery ready to 
 their hands. If a man in Arkansas or 
 in Montana or in Florida wants a pair of 
 shoes, he is within reach of a place where 
 he may buy them. Not so with books. 
 There are few bookstores. Two or 
 three per cent, of the population (per- 
 haps less) live within convenient reach
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 121 
 
 of bookshops. True, a book may be 
 ordered by mail. But so may a pair of 
 shoes. But this is not a good substitute 
 for a store, where a man may see the 
 book. The mail-order business will 
 always be secondary to direct sales. 
 But, since bookstores are so few, the 
 book-distributing machinery is wholly 
 inadequate. The publisher has no ef- 
 fective way yet to reach his normal pub- 
 lic with his wares. 
 
 There is nobody to blame, perhaps. 
 Surely, it would not be a profitable 
 undertaking for any man or woman to 
 buy a stock of books and to open a store 
 in a small town. What is the remedy, 
 then? 
 
 The simple truth is, here is one of the 
 problems of distribution that have not 
 yet been solved. There are throughout 
 the land another one hundred thousand 
 persons who v/ould buy any novel of 
 which one hundred thousand have been 
 sold, if they could see the book and hear
 
 122 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 about it — if it were intelligently kept 
 for sale where they would see it. This 
 is a self-evident proposition. But no- 
 body has yet found a way thus to distrib- 
 ute a book. And (this is the point) until 
 better distributing machinery is organ- 
 ized, it will not pay publishers to adver- 
 tise with as prodigal a hand as shoe- 
 makers and soapmakers use in making 
 their wares known. 
 
 It is this lack of proper distributing 
 machinery that has made possible the 
 career of the book-agent. There are no 
 shoe peddlers. Almost all the publish- 
 ing houses — all the important houses — 
 employ book peddlers. The busines is 
 generally regarded as a — nuisance, to say 
 the most for it. But, from the publish- 
 er's point of view, it is a necessity. And 
 this is the crude way whereby it is 
 sought to remedy the radical deficiency 
 of proper distributing machinery. Of 
 course, the book-agent method has its 
 obvious disadvantages. It is not a dig-
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 123 
 
 nified occupation, as most agents prac- 
 tise it. The most dignified members of 
 the community, therefore, do not take 
 it up. In every case it is not even the 
 trustworthy members of the community 
 that take it up. Again, the agent must 
 be paid; and this is a very costly 
 method (to the purchaser) of buying 
 books. The purchaser pays half his 
 money for the books ; the other half for 
 being persuaded to buy them. 
 
 And (to take a broad, economic view 
 of the subject) the book peddler surely 
 cannot be considered the final solution 
 of the problem of a proper distribution 
 of books. At some time in the future, 
 when the country is three or four times 
 as densely settled as it now is, there will 
 be book stores in all towns. There may 
 still be need for the persuasiveness of 
 the agent, for some of the most success- 
 ful of them now do their best work in 
 cities within sight of good book shops. 
 But the point is, few book-agents sell
 
 i2 4 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 new books, and few of them sell single 
 books: they usually sell books in sets. 
 The problem, therefore, of the proper 
 distribution of the four or five really 
 good books that my publishing house 
 has put out this fall still remains un- 
 solved and, though I advertised them 
 in all magazines and newspapers, I 
 should not effectively reach the atten- 
 tion of one-fifth or one-tenth of the pos- 
 sible buyers of them. I should simply 
 spend in advertising the profit that I 
 may make on the copies that I sell with 
 a reasonable publicity through the regu- 
 lar channels. I do insert advertisements 
 of them for three or four reasons — with 
 the hope of helping their sales ; to keep 
 the public informed of the activity of our 
 publishing house; to please the press; 
 and — to please the authors of the books. 
 But I know very well that I am working 
 (as every publisher is working) in a busi- 
 ness that has not yet been developed, 
 that is behind the economic organization
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 125 
 
 of other kinds of manufacturing and sell- 
 ing, that awaits proper organization. 
 
 Figure it out yourself. Here is a 
 book of which eighty thousand copies 
 have been sold through "the trade;" 
 that is, through the book stores. Our 
 salesmen have visited every important 
 bookseller from Portland, Me., to Port- 
 land, Ore., and from Duluth to New 
 Orleans. We have spent quite a hand- 
 some sum in advertising it. Four-fifths 
 of these eighty thousand copies were 
 sold in a few months after its publica- 
 tion. The booksellers said that they 
 could sell many more if we would ad- 
 vertise it more. We did so. By this 
 time our salesmen were making another 
 trip. No, they would not buy more, 
 thank you ; it is a little slow now. The 
 second effort at advertising did not 
 cause it to " move " in the market. The 
 demand is slow yet. In other words, 
 the demand for it that could be supplied 
 by the existing book stores was practi-
 
 126 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 cally exhausted. Our second adver- 
 tising effort was a waste of money. We 
 have frankly to confess that we do not 
 know how to sell more copies of this 
 book until the time comes when it may 
 be put into a "set" and sold by book 
 agents. This is the same as to say that, 
 the few existing book stores utilized, 
 there is no organized machinery for find- 
 ing more buyers except the book agent. 
 
 Yet it is obvious that a wholesome 
 book (as this is) which eighty thousand 
 persons have bought would please eighty 
 thousand other persons of like minds 
 and taste if we had any way to find these 
 second eighty thousand persons. They 
 exist, of course. But they live out of 
 easy reach of the book stores. The 
 book agents will find them several years 
 hence. 
 
 I have (I think) shown why there can 
 never be a publishers' trust, or "com- 
 bine," because the relation of the pub- 
 lisher and the author is a personal rela-
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 127 
 
 tion as intimate and personal as the rela- 
 tion of a physician to his patient or of a 
 lawyer and his client. But, after a book 
 has been sold and has become a com- 
 modity, the problem is a different one. 
 The booksellers have perceived this; 
 and they have made ineffective efforts 
 to "combine." They have failed be- 
 cause they have not made plans to widen 
 the existing market. An organization 
 of those that exist is not enough. The 
 real problem is to extend their area, to 
 find book-buyers whom they do not now 
 reach. 
 
 Perhaps all this is very dull — this 
 trade talk. But a publisher who is 
 worthy of his calling regards himself as 
 an educator of the public; and he has 
 trade reasons and higher reasons as well 
 for wishing to reach as many buyers of 
 his good books as he possibly can. He 
 knows (and you know, if you know the 
 American people) that the masses even 
 of intelligent folk have yet hardly fairly
 
 128 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 begun to buy books. Go where you 
 will among the people and you will find 
 few books — pitifully few. We are just 
 coming into a period when book-buying 
 is even beginning to become general. 
 The publishers of a generation hence will 
 sell perhaps ten times as many good 
 books as are sold now — surely, if they 
 find in their day distributing machinery 
 even half adequate.
 
 The Story of a Book from Author 
 to Reader
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE STORY OF A BOOK FROM AUTHOR 
 TO READER 
 
 The Divers Problems Which Constantly Arise — 
 Every Step of the Way Beset with Expense, So 
 That the Publisher Is Amazed When He Finds 
 a Surplus — Why Books of Large Sale Are Hard 
 to Get — The Publisher as Anxious as the Public 
 to Print Better Books. 
 
 The wonder is (and in my mind it 
 grows every year) how the publishers of 
 books make enough money to keep their 
 shops going. When I look at my own 
 ledgers (ledger, by the way, is become a 
 mere literary word, for we now all keep 
 accounts on cards and not in books) — • 
 whenever I look at my own cards and 
 see a profit, I am astonished as much as 
 I am gratified. Every other publisher in 
 131
 
 132 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 America, if he have a normal and simple 
 mind such as fits the calling, has the 
 same emotion. Let me say, lest I ap- 
 pear " simple " in another sense, that our 
 cards have, miraculously enough, gen- 
 erally shown very satisfactory profits, 
 but the astonishment never becomes 
 less. 
 
 See what a long series of processes, or 
 adventures, if you will, a book must go 
 through between the writer and the 
 reader; every step costs money; and 
 the utmost possible profit is small. Sup- 
 pose it be a novel. "Book" means 
 "novel" these days in "literary" circles 
 and journals. Heaven bless our shallow 
 gabble called " reviews." A novel comes 
 to the publisher in fairly good English. 
 The English doubtless is the author's, 
 but the punctuation and capitals are the 
 "typewriter-lady's" own. It must be 
 read by one person ; and, if that person's 
 report have a ray of hope, it must be 
 read by another; perhaps by a third.
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 133 
 
 These "readers" cost money — alas! too 
 little money. They are generally liter- 
 ary persons who have failed, and there is 
 something pathetic about their occupa- 
 tion. Then, after two or three readers 
 have reported on it, I have to read it — 
 in our particular shop, in any shop, 
 somebody "higher up" must read it — 
 especially if it come from a new writer. 
 Then we have to correspond with the 
 author or have interviews with h — er. 
 All this takes time, and the cost of this 
 service rolls up. Somebody must next 
 go over the manuscript to prepare it for 
 the printer — to make sure that the 
 heroine's name is spelt the same way all 
 through and so forth and so forth. With 
 the processes of manufacture I need not 
 weary you. Only I must say that a bad 
 manuscript can be put into legible type, 
 and that type cast into solid metal 
 blocks ready for the press with a rapid- 
 ity and cheapness that rank among the 
 mechanical wonders of the world.
 
 134 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 By this time the artist has appeared, 
 if the novel is to be illustrated. Book 
 salesmen will tell you that pictures help 
 to sell novels, and they ought to know. 
 But I venture to say that you haven't 
 seen three new novels in ten years whose 
 illustrations conveyed anything but con- 
 fusion to your mind. The conventional 
 illustration of the conventional novel 
 marks the lowest degradation of the 
 present-day publisher. We confess by 
 these things that we are without charac- 
 ter or conviction. But the artist has 
 the benefit of the commercial doubt on 
 his side. He has also the vanity of the 
 author. And he gets his fee — 200, 300 
 or 500 good dollars or more — and the 
 publisher pays the bill. Another artist 
 makes a design for the cover. 
 
 Paper, printing, binding — all these 
 are commonplaces, worthy of mention 
 here only because they roll up the cost. 
 But there are other steps in the book's 
 journey that' the public knows less
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 135 
 
 about. For instance, as soon as the first 
 chapter has been put into type and a 
 cover made, " dummies " of the book are 
 got ready. A " dummy" of a book is a 
 sort of model, or sample, of it. The 
 cover is the cover that will appear on the 
 finished novel ; the titlepage is the novel's 
 titlepage ; and the first chapter is as it 
 will be when the book is published. 
 But the rest is blank paper. This 
 "dummy" shows the physical size and 
 appearance of the book. 
 
 The travelling salesmen take these 
 dummies and begin their work. They go 
 to all the jobbers and book dealers, ex- 
 plaining to them the charming qualities 
 of this newly discovered novelist, and 
 taking orders for the books . By the time 
 they come home and their advance 
 orders are added up, the book is ready 
 to go to press ; and the publisher knows 
 what his " first sale " will be. Meantime 
 (not to lose the thread of my story) all 
 this travelling and soliciting of orders
 
 136 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 have cost a good deal of money. The 
 public has not yet seen a copy of the 
 book nor even so much as heard of it nor 
 of the "talented young author." 
 
 But now the machinery for publicity 
 is put in action. Sly little literary notes 
 about the book and the author begin to 
 appear in the newspapers. These, too, 
 have come from the publisher. From 
 whom else, pray, could they come? But 
 they mean that the publisher has to 
 maintain a literary bureau. The man 
 who writes these news notes and the ad- 
 vertisements of the book and other 
 things about it is a man of skill, if he do 
 his work well; and he, too, costs the 
 publisher a good salary. When he be- 
 gins to put forth advertising — how much 
 shall he spend on this new novel by an 
 unknown writer? How much shall you 
 risk at Monte Carlo ? Your upright man 
 will risk nothing at Monte Carlo. I have 
 sometimes thought that your upright 
 publisher, if there be one, would risk
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 137 
 
 nothing in advertising a new book by an 
 unknown writer, until the book began it- 
 self to show some vitality in the market. 
 
 But — to go back — as soon as the book 
 is ready, review copies, of course, are 
 sent to the newspapers and the literary 
 journals (to appear a little later in the 
 second-hand book-shops for sale at re- 
 duced prices.) All this activity requires 
 clerks, typewriters, bookkeepers, post- 
 age-money — a large office, in fact. 
 There are many posters, circulars — 
 there is as much machinery required to 
 sell a book as to sell a piano or an auto- 
 mobile. 
 
 From the starting-point, where the 
 book was an ill-written manuscript, to 
 the delivery of it to the bookseller, the 
 publisher has less than 50 cents a copy to 
 pay for this whole journey and to save 
 something for profit if he can. There- 
 fore I say that publishers who do suc- 
 ceed are among the most astute man- 
 agers of industry.
 
 138 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 Lest I seem to " boast rather than to 
 confess," I come back to the starting- 
 point, which was this — that the pub- 
 lishers' calling is not a very profitable 
 one ; not a profitable one at all except in 
 fair weather and with a good skipper. 
 
 The truth is, publishing is too impor- 
 tant a profession and our publishing 
 houses are too important as institutions 
 to be at the mercy of present conditions. 
 The making of schoolbooks and the 
 vending of standard old books in sets, 
 which are useful vocations, but are not 
 publishing proper, are now done best by 
 firms and companies that do nothing 
 else. Hence publishing proper — the 
 bringing out of new books — must find a 
 safer basis than the present conventional 
 profit. It will find this safer basis in two 
 ways. 
 
 The first and obvious way is to secure 
 books that have an enormous popular- 
 ity. This is the effort of nearly all the 
 publishing houses to-day. If a novel
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 139 
 
 reach an edition of 100,000 copies, there 
 is a good profit in it as matters now 
 stand. And a novel, or other book, that 
 will be bought by 100,000 persons ought 
 not to be sold for more than such books 
 now fetch. But there are not enough 
 such books to go around ; and the least 
 worthy publishing house is as likely to 
 secure them as the most worthy. A per- 
 manent institution, therefore, cannot be 
 built on these or on the hope of them. 
 They are the accidents of the calling. 
 
 The other way to maintain a worthy 
 publishing institution is to publish 
 worthy books, to manufacture them 
 well, to do every piece of work that is 
 done on them or that is done for them in 
 the most conscientious way — to keep 
 bookmaking as a fine art, to keep book- 
 selling a dignified profession, to keep the 
 selection of books to publish on the high 
 level of scholarly judgment. This done, 
 a publisher may set his prices higher — 
 must set his prices higher, for he does a
 
 140 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 higher and more costly service to soci- 
 ety. Excellent and worthy of all praise 
 as is some of the publishing work of this 
 sort that is now done, a beginning has 
 hardly yet been made. There is a de- 
 mand, or a dormant demand can be 
 awakened, for books that have merit (I 
 mean new books as well as old) of better 
 manufacture than we now often see. 
 They must be sold for higher prices, of 
 course. 
 
 This is the same as to say that just as 
 a three-dollar shoe is made for most feet 
 that tread this weary continent, but a 
 five-dollar shoe is made for an increasing 
 number of feet that prefer ease to econ- 
 omy, so we are becoming rich enough 
 and wise enough to pay two dollars, or 
 three dollars, or five dollars for a good 
 new book that shall have large and beau- 
 tiful type, good paper, good margins, 
 good binding — shall be a work of art in 
 its manufacture as well as in the quality 
 of its contents. The public gets its good
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 141 
 
 books too cheap ; and the reason is plain. 
 
 It was only the other day that the 
 publishers discovered the possibility of 
 securing book after book that would run 
 into large editions. A novel-reading 
 democracy — a public-school democracy 
 — is a new thing. It is an impressive 
 thing. It made new and big markets, 
 and we all rushed after it. Cheapness 
 and great editions became the rage. 
 Writers wrote for the million; publish- 
 ers published for the million. Cheap 
 books became the fashion. All very 
 well — this widespread effort, this uni- 
 versal reading. But it has not radically 
 changed human nature nor even the 
 permanent foundations of the profes- 
 sion of publishing. We shall come back 
 to higher and better work — some of us 
 will, at least. 
 
 Bring the subject home to yourself. 
 What do you want for your book 
 money? Not the latest "big seller." 
 You may buy that to entertain you on a
 
 142 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 railway journey. But if you bring it 
 home at all, you send it away at Christ- 
 mas to some country library. What you 
 want in your own library for your book- 
 money are good books, made at least as 
 well as the furniture in the room; and 
 you want the new books of permanent 
 value. You are sometimes disgusted 
 when you look over the publishers' cata- 
 logues to find so few books of this kind. 
 Your publishers, too, are becoming 
 weary of having such catalogues ; and as 
 soon as we rediscover the old truth that 
 there is a permanent demand for just 
 the kind of books that you want, we 
 shall turn to a more generous encourage- 
 ment of them. Men who might do better 
 work will then cease trying to write 
 "best sellers." But you must pay the 
 price. Since you have become accus- 
 tomed to buy new books at $1.50 a vol- 
 ume, you are somewhat reluctant to pay 
 $2 or $4 for a new book. You must 
 break yourself of that habit. In a word,
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 143 
 
 you must become at least as generous to 
 your publisher as you are to your shoe- 
 maker; and then the change will take 
 place. 
 
 By a similar course of reasoning (and 
 it is sound) you may discover that you 
 are yourself to blame for what our writ- 
 ers write and our publishers publish — in 
 a measure at least; and, whenever you 
 want better books, better books will be 
 ready for you. For the publisher and 
 even the author are but human after all ; 
 and in the mood that has possessed us 
 all for a decade or two — since presses 
 and paper became so cheap — we have 
 perhaps worshipped mere numbers. I 
 have published some books only because 
 thousands and thousands of persons 
 would read them. You have read them 
 simply because thousands of other peo- 
 ple were reading them and for no better 
 reason. Perhaps our sins have not been 
 heinous. But, if you are so stubbornly 
 virtuous as to cry shame at me, I prom-
 
 144 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 ise you this: I will reform on the day 
 that you yourself reform ; but you must 
 first signify repentance. For you — the 
 public — are after all our masters.
 
 The Present Limits of the Book 
 Market
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE PRESENT LIMITS OF THE BOOK 
 MARKET 
 
 In Spite of the Many Books Issued and the Many 
 "Large Sellers," the People Are Very Poorly 
 Equipped with Good Books — Circulating Libra- 
 ries and the Sale of Books — Many Neglected 
 Subjects on Which Successful Books Could be 
 Written — The Lack of Good Writers the Main 
 Source of Poor Sale of Books. 
 
 How large the book market is, nobody- 
 knows. Still less does anybody know 
 how large it may become, say, in another 
 decade of our present prosperity and 
 spread of intelligence. Beyond any 
 doubt more books are bought in the 
 United States than in any other coun- 
 try. Yet it is a constant surprise to dis- 
 cover how ill supplied the mass of the 
 people are with good books. But the 
 147
 
 148 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 enormous increase of the market in re- 
 cent years gives hope of a still greater in- 
 crease to come. The number of books 
 published every year in the United 
 States and in the United Kingdom is 
 about the same, but more American 
 than English books run to large editions. 
 Leaving out fiction, which is the spec- 
 tacular and sensational part of publish- 
 ing, books of reference, of standard 
 literature, of history, of applied science 
 and even of poetry are sold in constantly 
 increasing quantities. The public hears 
 little of these because the literary jour- 
 nals pay little attention to them. There 
 is, for instance, one publisher of sub- 
 scription books who now adds few books 
 to his list of which he does not expect to 
 sell 100,000 copies. He has agents in 
 every part of the United States, and 
 they probably sell more books in a year 
 than all the publishing houses in the 
 United States put together sold thirty 
 years ago— rexcluding textbooks, of
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 149 
 
 course. Last year a literary man went 
 to a remote railway station, 1,000 miles 
 from Boston or New York, to shoot 
 quail. One day he saw men unloading 
 boxes of books from a freight car on the 
 side track. The wonder was that there 
 should be even a freight car in that cor- 
 ner of the woods; and that the freight 
 car should be filled with books was sim- 
 ply incredible. But there were wagon 
 loads of Thackerays, of Dickenses, of 
 Eliots, and even of sets of the poets, 
 fairly well-printed, fairly well-bound 
 volumes which had been sold to the 
 country folk for miles around. Perhaps 
 there has been more money spent for 
 encyclopaedias and dictionaries than 
 Noah Webster could compute, these last 
 ten years. The book market, therefore, 
 is very much bigger than persons who 
 live outside the book selling world are 
 likely to think. 
 
 Still, relatively it is small. The largest 
 retail book store in the country is a de-
 
 iSo A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 partment store in New York or Philadel- 
 phia; but the book department is not 
 considered one of the important parts of 
 the store. The much-abused depart- 
 ment store, by the way, has done much 
 to bring a new class of persons to acquire 
 the book-buying habit. It has made 
 books common merchandise for the first 
 time. Since the "Century Dictionary," 
 to take a definite example, was thus 
 made common merchandise, the sets of 
 it that have been sold are incomparably 
 more than were ever sold in any other 
 way. Yet how small the book market 
 yet is, is shown by this fact — that a novel 
 of which one hundred thousand copies 
 are sold reaches only one person in every 
 eight thousand of the population. 
 
 Do circulating libraries lessen book 
 sales? Yes, I dare say they do. But you 
 will find that the publishers do not com- 
 plain of them. They are disposed to ac- 
 cept the comforting doctrine that every- 
 thing which . encourages the reading of
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 151 
 
 books in the end helps the sale of them. 
 In the end — yes. But for the moment 
 probably no. 
 
 One man will tell you that he used 
 regularly to buy a novel a week — some- 
 times two novels. He was a pretty good 
 customer of the publishers ; for fifty-two 
 novels a year is about as many as the 
 most avaricious publisher could reason- 
 ably expect one man to buy. But now 
 he says he does not buy three a year. A 
 circulating library will for $5 bring him 
 all he wants. The publishers have, 
 therefore, lost him as a good customer. 
 On the other hand it is a working theory 
 that every subscriber to a circulating 
 library who reads a novel and talks 
 about it at the woman's club may induce 
 somebody to buy a copy who otherwise 
 would never have heard of it. At any 
 rate, the total number of novels, or of 
 books of other sorts, now sold is not less 
 than the number that was sold before 
 the libraries found subscribers. The
 
 152 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 discussion is, after all, a vain one. The 
 publisher and the author must do the 
 best they can by the help of the libraries 
 or in spite of them. 
 
 Yet I am sure that the great widening 
 of the market for which we are all look- 
 ing will be found, when it is found, not 
 by any special machinery or mechanical 
 device; but the person who will really 
 find it — or make it — will be a great 
 writer. Whenever books are written 
 that are interesting enough to compel 
 the attention of the whole people, the 
 poorest publishing house can sell them. 
 The secret of success, after all, is the 
 secret of writing books that touch 
 masses of men deeply and directly. We 
 have much to learn from the careers of 
 such books as "Progress and Poverty" 
 and "Looking Backward." They 
 reached their great sale not by the inge- 
 nuity of their publishers, nor by their 
 literary merit, but only because they 
 carried messages to many minds. How-
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 153 
 
 ever delusive these messages may be, 
 they were sincere. The truth is that 
 the publisher (exalt him as I am trying 
 my best to do) is, after all, only a piece 
 of machinery. The real force that 
 makes itself felt in the world that has to 
 do with books is the initial force of the 
 men and women who write. Whenever 
 a great mind, or a great sympathy, be 
 found which puts forth an appeal or a 
 hope in the form of a book that has the 
 power to touch those emotions or aspira- 
 tions that all men have in common — 
 then the trick's done. The mechanical 
 plans that we make have power to carry 
 only as far as the book has strength to 
 go. If I had five great living writers on 
 my list, my publishing task would be 
 easy. 
 
 For the broadening of the book mar- 
 ket, then, what we need is writers — 
 writers of the proper quality. Of 
 novels, we have enough and to spare, 
 such as they are. But not of good books
 
 154 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 of other sorts. Let us take a hint from 
 the novel writers. Twenty years ago or 
 less the American public was amusing 
 itself with novels written by English 
 writers. But about that time came 
 those story tellers, a whole army of 
 them, who began to write about life in 
 different parts of our own country. Of 
 New England, Miss Jewett and Miss 
 Wilkins and Mrs. Austin and many 
 more ; in the Middle West, Mr. Garland, 
 Mr. Churchill, Mr. Tarkington and half 
 a hundred more; in New York, the 
 author of "David Harum," Mr. Fred- 
 erick, Mr. Bacheller and others; of the 
 South, Mr. Page, Miss Johnston, Miss 
 Glasgow and more; and there are Cali- 
 fornia stories in profusion. In other 
 words, an army of men and women be- 
 gan about the same time to write stories 
 of local history and manners. 
 
 Now there are other subjects that 
 need to be written of just as much. One 
 such subject is science. The world is
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 155 
 
 flooded with popular books about 
 science, but nearly all of them fail either 
 in being accurate or in being popular. 
 There is a better opportunity now than 
 there ever was before for a man who 
 really knows the most recent and scien- 
 tific achievements, and who can write in 
 the language of the people. To many 
 people, "authoritative books" are dry 
 books, but this is not what I mean. Such 
 books as I have in mind can be written 
 only by men of the best scientific equip- 
 ment, but they can be written only by 
 men who have also a great deal of liter- 
 ary skill. 
 
 Another great subject about which 
 good books are needed is — you may not 
 believe this — American history. Our 
 political history has got itself pretty 
 voluminously written, and there is no 
 lack of slapdash books in distant imita- 
 tion of Green's "Short History of the 
 English People." But most of these 
 have been prepared out of newspaper
 
 156 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 files by men who would not take their 
 task seriously or who were not well pre- 
 pared either in matured knowledge or in 
 literary skill to produce them. Then, 
 too, geographically considered, the his- 
 tory of less than one-fourth of our terri- 
 tory has not yet been written. Southern 
 history, for example, is utterly un- 
 known. 
 
 It would be easy to name a half-dozen 
 other great subjects which writers who 
 now bring their manuscripts to the pub- 
 lishing houses are neglecting. If, there- 
 fore, men and women who have the lit- 
 erary gift, even to a reasonable degree, 
 and who have literary ambition, would 
 frankly seek those two or three publish- 
 ers who are real publishers and would 
 prove their ability to do serious work of 
 this sort they would be almost sure to 
 find satisfactory careers before them. 
 Of course, one disadvantage of such 
 work is that during its early stages no 
 very large financial returns can be ex-
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 157 
 
 pected. But if the work were done well 
 enough it would pay in the end — pay- 
 more money by far than a professorship 
 in science or in history or in literature 
 pays. 
 
 All this leads me to this general re- 
 mark — that the writing public does not 
 take the trouble to find out who the real 
 publishers are. There is a lack of co- 
 operation between publishers and writ- 
 ers in what may be called the formative 
 period of the writer's lives. A man who 
 writes a book sends it to some publish- 
 ing house that is chosen by accident or 
 by personal acquaintance or by whim. 
 The public seems to think that one pub- 
 lishing house is as good as another. If a 
 writer's first volume in this way falls 
 into the hands of a publisher who does 
 not make the acquaintance of the writer, 
 or who cannot make an appraisal of his 
 ability and promise, and who does not 
 understand him, then the writer, after 
 an initial failure, of course, becomes dis-
 
 158/4 PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 couraged. On the other hand, all the 
 publishers are so eager to get books that 
 they accept work which is not properly- 
 done, and on their part fail to put them- 
 selves into such a relation to young 
 authors as would help them to their 
 normal development. 
 
 If a man or woman, therefore, pro- 
 poses to enter upon a literary career his 
 first duty is to make the acquaintance 
 of a real publisher, to be as frank with 
 him as one must be with one's physician 
 or one's lawyer. If two such men work 
 together seriously and without too great 
 haste the best results will be achieved 
 for both, and the best results are not 
 likely to come in any other way. 
 
 If you start, then, to gossip intelli- 
 gently about the book market or about 
 anything else with which a publisher 
 has to do, and if you gossip long enough, 
 you will come back to the starting point 
 of the whole matter. What do we do or 
 can we do to encourage the writing of
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 159 
 
 good books? And now we've run on a 
 subject as deep as a well and as wide as a 
 door. In the multitude of counsellors 
 about it there is confusion. In the only 
 other "confession" that is to follow this 
 I shall try to show how ignorant and 
 mistaken all those are who differ with 
 me about this fundamental subject.
 
 Plain Words to Authors and 
 Publishers
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 PLAIN WORDS TO AUTHORS AND PUB- 
 LISHERS 
 
 // Pays the Author to Be Honest and Frank ■with 
 His Publisher, Who Is, After All, His Best 
 Friend — Some Recent Instances of a Discour- 
 aging Sort — The Need of Greater Dignity and 
 Statesmanship Among Publishers — The Obli- 
 gation of Ministering to the Higher Impulses 
 of the People. 
 
 I am flattered by hearing that a 
 prominent publishing house wishes to 
 print these rambling "confessions" in a 
 pamphlet, to send to persons who write 
 books; "for," says this house, "they 
 tell some plain facts that authors ought 
 to know." I hope so ; and, for my part, 
 I am not averse to publishers knowing 
 them either. For instance, the wretched 
 smallness of one sinner among the pub- 
 163
 
 1 64 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 lishers came to light to-day. Here is 
 the unpleasant story: 
 
 A year and a half ago I published the 
 first novel by a young author. He is a 
 promising writer and his story was a 
 good one. We sold it in fairly satis- 
 factory numbers. We advertised it, 
 "exploited" it — did the best we could. 
 We invited the author to come and see 
 us. We took him into our confidence. 
 We have regarded him as our partner, 
 so far as his book is concerned. We 
 have had a continuous correspondence. 
 We have exchanged visits a time or two. 
 He paid me the compliment to ask my 
 advice about his next story. We have 
 become good friends, you see; and we 
 are as helpful to each other as we know 
 how to be. Now his second novel is 
 finished. In a letter that came from 
 him to-day he informed me that another 
 publishing house (I have a great mind 
 to write the name of it here) has made 
 him a very handsome offer of serial pub-
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 165 
 
 lication, provided, of course, that they 
 may also publish the book! 
 
 Now, if the young author wishes to go 
 browsing in these new pastures, I have 
 no power or wish to prevent him. I 
 cannot serve him — or do not care to 
 serve him — if he is unwilling that I 
 should. But I was nevertheless very 
 grateful when he wrote, "Of course, I 
 prefer you. I hope you have never 
 thought me unloyal." 
 
 If publishing his first book had been 
 a mere job done under contract, a com- 
 mercial job and nothing more — that 
 would have been one thing. But that's 
 not publishing. What I did was to 
 give the man the unstinted service of 
 our house, as publishers, as advisers, as 
 friends. We print and advertise and 
 sell his books — yes, to the very best of 
 our ability. But we do more. We try- 
 to make friends for his book and for him 
 throughout the reading world. We all 
 take a personal interest in him and in
 
 1 66 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 his future. We invest our money, our 
 good will, our work, our experience, our 
 advice, our enthusiasm in him and in 
 his future. This service (except the in- 
 vestment of money) is not a matter of 
 contract. It is a personal, friendly ser- 
 vice. If the service had not been suc- 
 cessful, he would have had a perfect 
 right to come and say that he feared 
 that we did not serve him well and to 
 go away from us. That would have 
 been frank and honorable. Even, since 
 we did succeed and have become friends, 
 he could still go to another publisher. 
 Yet, I maintain, if he had, he would 
 have shown himself a man of blunt 
 appreciation and dull honor. And the 
 publisher who tried to win him away 
 did a trick unworthy of the profes- 
 sion. 
 
 This is my last story about a pub- 
 lisher; and the moral is plain, alike to 
 publisher and to author. 
 
 And now - 1 will tell my last story
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 167 
 
 about an author, the moral of which also 
 is plain: 
 
 There is an author for whom we have 
 published two books, and they have 
 been uncommonly successful. A little 
 while ago he finished his third book. 
 He wrote that many publishers had so- 
 licited it, that he had had several hand- 
 some offers, that he needed a large sum 
 of money. Would we make a big ad- 
 vance payment? He disliked to men- 
 tion the subject, but business was busi- 
 ness after all. Now I had been at that 
 man's service for several years. Day 
 and night, he had sought my advice. 
 
 Well, we were cajoled into making a 
 big advance payment — about half as 
 big as he first asked for; and the con- 
 tract was signed. Two days later, I 
 met another publisher under conditions 
 which invited free and friendly talk; 
 and I told him this story. The pub- 
 lisher smiled and declared that that 
 author had approached him and asked
 
 1 68 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 how much he would give for this very- 
 book ! 
 
 Men and brethren, we live in a com- 
 mercial age. I suspect that, if we knew 
 history well enough, we should discover 
 that all ages have been commercial, and 
 that all our predecessors had experiences 
 like these. For ungrateful men have 
 written books for many a century, I 
 have no doubt; and we know that 
 Barabbas was a publisher. But let us 
 lift an honorable calling to an honorable 
 level. Hence these frank " confessions." 
 And, if any publisher wishes to reprint 
 them to send to authors, or any author 
 to send to publishers, they both have 
 my permission. For dignity and honor 
 thrive best in an atmosphere of perfect 
 frankness. 
 
 Thinking over the behavior of authors 
 and publishers to one another, I am 
 obliged to confess that, while the pea- 
 nut methods that I have just described 
 are not common enough to cause us to
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 169 
 
 despair, the truth is that the whole 
 business is yet somewhat unworthily 
 conducted. I mean that it is con- 
 ducted on too low a plane. For what 
 is it that we are engaged in? 
 
 The writers of good books are among 
 the greatest benefactors of society ; and 
 the publishers of good books, if publish- 
 ing be worthily regarded and properly 
 done, is a necessary and complimentary 
 service. The publisher is the partner, the 
 helper of the author and his high servant 
 or minister to the people. It is work 
 worthy of large men and of high- 
 minded men. Honest men we are— 
 those of us who conduct the publishing 
 houses that are in good repute. But I 
 sometimes think that we miss being 
 large men; for we do not do our busi- 
 ness in (shall I say?) a statesmanlike 
 way. We imitate the manners of trades- 
 men. We speak in the vocabulary of 
 tradesmen. We are too likely to look 
 at small projects as important — to pay
 
 170 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 our heed to the mere tricks of our trade 
 — and to treat large enterprises, if we 
 have them, as if they were but a part 
 of the routine. A good book is a Big 
 Thing, a thing to be thankful to heaven 
 for. It is a great day for any of us when 
 we can put our imprint on it. Here is 
 a chance for reverence, for something 
 like consecration. And the man or the 
 woman who can write a good book is a 
 form of capital infinitely more attractive 
 than a large bank account or a great 
 publishing "plant." Yet, if we regard 
 an author simply as "capital," we are 
 not worthy to serve him. The relation 
 leads naturally to a friendly and helpful 
 attitude. We know something about 
 books, about the book-market, about 
 the public, that no author is likely to 
 know. With this knowledge we can 
 serve those that write. And with our 
 knowledge of the author and of his work, 
 we can serve the public. It is our habit 
 to keep our accounts with authors ac-
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 171 
 
 curately, to pay them promptly, to re- 
 ceive them courteously when they call, 
 to answer their letters politely and 
 sometimes to bore them with formal 
 dinners at our clubs, before they sail 
 for Europe. But how many of us really 
 know the intellectual life of any author 
 whose books we print and supply a 
 stimulus to his best plans? 
 
 And the authors? How little they 
 know about us or about publishing! 
 They seem to select publishers by whims 
 and not often by knowledge. I know a 
 writer of good books who is at this mo- 
 ment seeking his third publisher. One 
 of the others failed. The other dis- 
 pleased him. And now he is thinking 
 of giving his next book to a third pub- 
 lisher who also will fail within five 
 years, or I am no prophet. Yet I am 
 hindered by courtesy from telling him 
 so. Why the man has not by this time 
 found a personality among the publish- 
 ers who has a soundly constructed busi-
 
 172 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 ness and at the same time a helpful 
 intellectual appreciation of his work, I 
 cannot understand. He, too, is looking 
 at a great matter in a small way. 
 
 Therefore I am led to write down 
 these rules for an author to follow when 
 he looks for a publisher : 
 
 Find out whether the publishing 
 house that you have in mind be finan- 
 cially sound. The commercial agencies 
 will tell you, or will tell any commercial 
 friend who may make inquiry for you. 
 And find out who the real owners of the 
 house are. 
 
 Then find out who conducts it. If it 
 is conducted by a lot of hired " literary" 
 men, avoid it. They are, most of them, 
 men who have failed at authorship; 
 they "read" and "advise" for salaries; 
 and most of them know nothing about 
 the houses that they serve. They are 
 not principals, but (as Henry George 
 once called them) "literary operatives." 
 I mean to say nothing harsh about a
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 173 
 
 well-meaning, hard-working class of 
 men. But if you have a good book, you 
 wish to find not a "literary operative," 
 but a real publisher. 
 
 Having found a real publisher, you 
 will expect him to read your book him- 
 self. I am assuming that you have an 
 important book. When he has read it, 
 he will talk to you about it frankly. 
 When I say frankly, I mean frankly. If 
 he is himself a real man and knows men 
 and books, he will not retail hack lit- 
 erary phrases to you. He will talk good 
 English and good sense straight out of 
 his intelligence to your intelligence, with 
 no nonsense such as reviewers write in 
 the "literary" magazines. He will be- 
 come your intellectual friend. 
 
 Having found such a man, give him 
 your book and leave him to work out 
 the details of publishing. He will be 
 proud to serve you. You will discover 
 as your acquaintance ripens, that he has 
 your whole career as a writer in his mind
 
 174 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 and plans. He will shape his whole 
 publishing activities to your develop- 
 ment and to the development of other 
 writers like you. 
 
 Then — if you are capable of writing 
 great books — you will discover that you 
 have set only natural forces at work for 
 your growth and for your publisher's 
 growth ; and the little artificial tricks of 
 the trade whereby a flashy story has a 
 "run" — into swift oblivion — will pass 
 from your mind and from his. You 
 will both be doing your best work. 
 
 After all, the authors of any genera- 
 tion generally have the publishers that 
 they deserve to have; and this axiom 
 is reversible. For my part, while I am 
 as glad as Podunk, Exploitem & Com- 
 pany to have novels that will sell ioo,- 
 ooo copies, provided they give clean and 
 decent amusement, I take no permanent 
 interest in anything that comes this 
 month and goes the next ; nor does any 
 serious man.- My wish and aim is to
 
 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 175 
 
 become a helpful partner of some of the 
 men and women of my generation who 
 can, by their writings, lay the great 
 democracy that we all serve under obli- 
 gations to them for a new impulse. By 
 serving them, I, too, serve my country 
 and my time. And, when I say that 
 this is my aim and wish, I could say with 
 equal truth that it is the aim and wish 
 of every other real publisher. But, as 
 every good physician constantly won- 
 ders at the ignorance and credulity of 
 otherwise sensible men who seek quacks, 
 so I wonder at the simplicity of many 
 respectable writers of books in seeking 
 publishers. Of downright quacks in the 
 publishing world, there are not many. 
 But there are incompetents a-plenty and 
 a fair share of adventurers. 
 
 We shall both — authors and publish- 
 ers — get the proper cue if we regard the 
 swarming, eager democracy all about us 
 as a mass of constantly rising men and 
 women, ambitious to grow, with the
 
 176 A PUBLISHER'S CONFESSION 
 
 same higher impulses that we feel in our 
 best moods; and if we interpret our 
 duty as the high privilege of ministering 
 to these higher impulses and not to their 
 lower senses, without commercialism on 
 one side and without academicism on 
 the other, men among men, worthy 
 among the worthy, we may make our 
 calling under such a conception a call- 
 ing that leads.
 
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