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 America, if he have a normal and simple mind such as fits the calling, has the same emotion. Let me say, lest I appear “simple” in another sense, that our cards have, miraculously enough, generally 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. Suppose 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. These “readers” cost money--alas! too little money. They are generally literary persons who have failed, and there is something pathetic about their occupation. 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 rapidity and cheapness that rank among the mechanical wonders of the world.

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 confusion 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 character 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 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, explaining 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 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 advertisements 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 begins 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 nothing in advertising a new book by an unknown writer, until the book began itself 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 reduced prices.) All this activity requires clerks, typewriters, bookkeepers, postage-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 automobile.

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. Therefore I say that publishers who do succeed are among the most astute managers of industry.

Lest I seem to “boast rather than to confess,” I come back to the starting-point, which was this--that the publishers’ 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 important 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 popularity. This is the effort of nearly all the publishing houses to-day. If a novel 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 permanent 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 bookselling 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 higher and more costly service to society. 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 demand, 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 economy, 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 beautiful 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 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; publishers published for the million. Cheap books became the fashion. All very well--this widespread effort, this universal reading. But it has not radically changed human nature nor even the permanent foundations of the profession 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 railway journey. But if you bring it home at all, you send it away at Christmas 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’ catalogues 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 encouragement 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 accustomed to buy new books at $1.50 a volume, you are somewhat reluctant to pay $2 or $4 for a new book. You must break yourself of that habit. In a word, you must become at least as generous to your publisher as you are to your shoemaker; 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 writers 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 people 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 promise 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.