LVIII
As a literary adviser of the Harpers, I very earnestly urged them to publish Mrs. Custer's "Boots and Saddles." In my "opinion" recommending its acceptance, I said that their other readers would probably be unanimous in advising its rejection, and would offer excellent reasons in support of that advice. I added that those very reasons were the promptings of my advice to the contrary.
When all the opinions were in—all but mine being adverse—Mr. Joe Harper sent copies of them to me, asking me to read them carefully and, after consideration, to report whether or not I still adhered to my opinion in favor of the book. I promptly replied that I did, giving my reasons, which were based mainly on the very considerations urged by the other readers in behalf of rejection. In my earnestness I ventured, as I had never done before, upon a prediction. I said that in my opinion the book would reach a sale of twenty thousand copies—a figure then considered very great for the sale of any current book.
"Boots and Saddles"
A month after "Boots and Saddles" was published, I happened to be in the Harper offices, and Mr. Joe Harper beckoned me to him. With a very solemn countenance, which did not hide the twinkle in his eye, he said:
"Of course, when you make a cock-sure prediction as to the sale of a book, and we accept it on the strength of your enthusiastic advice, we expect you to make the failure good."
"To what book do you refer?" I asked.
"Mrs. Custer's. You predicted a sale of twenty thousand for it, and it has now been out a full month and——"
"What are the figures for the first month, Mr. Harper?" I interrupted.
"Well, what do you think? It is the first month that sets the pace, you know. What's your guess?"
"Ten thousand," I ventured.
"What? Of that book? In its first month? Are you a rainbow chaser?"
I had caught the glint in his eye, and so I responded:
"Oh, well, if that guess is so badly out I'll double it, and say twenty thousand."
"Do you mean that—seriously?" he asked.
"Yes, quite seriously. So seriously that I'll agree to pay the royalties on all copies short of twenty thousand, if you'll agree to give me a sum equal to the royalties on all copies sold in excess of that number."
He chuckled inwardly but audibly. Then, picking up a paper from his desk, he passed it to me, saying;
"Look. There are the figures."
The sales had amounted to some hundred more than the twenty thousand I had guessed, and there were no indications of any early falling off of the orders that were daily and hourly coming in.
I mention this case of successful prediction because it gives me a text for saying that ordinarily there is nothing so utterly impossible as foresight, of any trustworthy sort, concerning the sale of a book. In this case the fact that "Boots and Saddles" was the very unliterary, and altogether winning tribute of a loving wife to her dead hero husband, afforded a secure ground of prediction. The book appealed to sentiments with which every human heart—coarse or refined, high, low, or middle class—is in eternal sympathy. Ordinarily there is no such secure ground upon which to base a prediction of success for any book. The plate-room of every publisher is the graveyard of a multitude of books that promised well but died young, and the plates are their headstones. Every publisher has had experiences that convince him of the impossibility of discovering beforehand what books will sell well and what will "die a-borning." Every publisher has had books of his publishing succeed far beyond his expectations, and other books fail, on the success of which he had confidently reckoned. And the worst of it is that the quality of a book seems to have little or nothing to do with the matter, one way or the other.
One night at the Authors Club, I sat with a group of prolific and successful authors, and as a matter of curious interest I asked each of them to say how far their own and their publishers' anticipations with respect to the comparative success of their several books had been borne out by the actual sales. Almost every one of them had a story to tell of disappointment with the books that were most confidently expected to succeed, and of the success of other books that had been regarded as least promising.
The experience is as old as literature itself, doubtless. Thomas Campbell came even to hate his "Pleasures of Hope," because its fame completely overshadowed that of "Gertrude of Wyoming" and some other poems of his which he regarded as immeasurably superior to that work. He resented the fact that in introducing him or otherwise mentioning him everybody added to his name the phrase "Author of the 'Pleasures of Hope,'" and he bitterly predicted that when he died somebody would carve that detested legend upon his tombstone. In the event, somebody did.
A lifelong intimate of George Eliot once told me that bitterness was mingled with the wine of applause in her cup, because, as she said: "A stupid public persists in neglecting my poems, which are far superior to anything I ever wrote in prose."
In the same way such fame as Thomas Dunn English won, rested mainly upon the song of "Ben Bolt." Yet one day during his later years I heard him angrily say in response to some mention of that song: "Oh, damn 'Ben Bolt.' It rides me like an incubus."