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 nobody 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 authors lose in the end, and they lose heavily.
Every publisher who appreciates his profession tries to make his house permanent, 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 community, it is even more true that a publishing house should be sound to the core and should deserve financial confidence. 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 “wildcat” 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—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 increase 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, railroads 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 important 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.