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There is a gentleman’s agreement among publishers, arrived at some years back, not to indulge in cutthroat competition for each other’s authors. This ethical principle, like most ethical principles now existing, is dictated quite as much by considerations of keeping a whole skin as by a sense of professional honor. There are some men in the book publishing business whose honorable standards have a respect for the other fellow’s property first among their Fourteen Points. There are others who are best controlled by a knowledge that to do so-and-so would be very unhealthy for themselves.
The agreement, like most unwritten laws, is interpreted with various shadings. Some of these are subtle and some of them are not. It is variously applied by different men in different cases, sometimes unquestionably and sometimes doubtfully. But in the main it is pretty extensively and strictly upheld, in spirit as in letter.
How far it transgresses authors’ privileges or limits authors’ opportunities would be difficult to say. In the nature of the case, any such understanding must operate to some extent to lessen the chances of an author receiving the highest possible compensation for his work. Whether this is offset by the favors and concessions, pecuniary and otherwise, made to an author by a publisher to whom he adheres, can’t be settled. The relation of author and publisher, at best, calls for, and generally elicits, striking displays of loyalty on both sides. Particularly among Americans, the most idealistic people on earth.
In its practical working this publishers’ understanding operates to prevent any publisher “approaching” an author who has an accepted publisher of his books. Unless you, as a publisher, are yourself approached by Author B., whose several books have been brought out by Publisher C., you are theoretically bound hand and foot. And even if Author B. comes to you there are circumstances under which you may well find it desirable to talk B.’s proposal over with C., hitherto his publisher. After that talk you may wish B. were in Halifax. If everybody told the truth matters would be greatly simplified. Or would they?
If you hear that Author D., who writes very good sellers, is dissatisfied with Publisher F., what is your duty in the circumstances? Author D. may not come to you, for there are many publishers for such as he to choose from. Shall we say it is your duty to acquaint D., indirectly perhaps, with the manifest advantages of bringing you his next novel? We’ll say so.
Whatever publishers agree to, authors are free. And every publisher knows how easy it is to lose an author. Why, they leave you like that! (Business of snapping fingers.) And for the lightest reasons! (Register pain or maybe mournfulness.) If D. W. Griffith wanted to make a Movie of a Publisher Losing an Author he would find the action too swift for the camera to record. Might as well try to film The Birth of a Notion.