V
When I told Perkins, he merely remarked that he thought every publishing house ought to have some one in it who knew something about books, apart from the advertising end, although that was, of course, the most important. He said we might go ahead and publish “Lady Audley's Secret” under the title of “The Crimson Cord,” as such things had been done before; but the best thing to do would be to charge Rosa Belle Vincent's thousand dollars to profit and loss, and hustle for another novel—something reliable, and not shop-worn.
Perkins had been studying the literature market a little, and he advised me to get something from Indiana this time; so I telegraphed an advertisement to the Indianapolis papers, and two days later we had ninety-eight historical novels by Indiana authors from which to choose. Several were of the right length; and we chose one, and sent it to Mr. Gilkowsky, with a request that he read it to his sweetheart. She had never read it before.
We sent a detective to Dillville, Ind., where the author lived; and the report we received was most satisfactory.
The author was a sober, industrious young man, just out of the high school, and bore a first-class reputation for honesty. He had never been in Virginia, where the scene of his story was laid, and they had no library in Dillville; and our detective assured us that the young man was in every way fitted to write a historical novel.
“The Crimson Cord” made an immense success. You can guess how it boomed when I say that, although it was published at a dollar and a half, it was sold by every department store for fifty-four cents, away below cost, just like sugar, or Vandeventer's Baby Food, or Q & Z Corsets, or any other staple. We sold our first edition of five million copies inside of three months, and got out another edition of two million, and a specially illustrated holiday edition, and an “edition de luxe;” and “The Crimson Cord” is still selling in paper-covered cheap edition.
With the royalties received from the after-math and the profit on the book itself, we made—well, Perkins has a country place at Lakewood, and I have my cottage at Newport.