Of course a literary editor who has any regard for the vitality of his page or section is interested in book advertising. There’s something wrong with him if he isn’t. If he isn’t he doesn’t measure up to his job, which is to get people to read books and find their way about among them. A book page or a book section without advertising is no more satisfactory than a man or a woman without a sense of the value of money. It looks lopsided and it is lopsided. Readers resent it, and rightly. It’s a beautiful façade, but the side view is disappointing.
The interest the literary editor takes in book advertising need no more be limited than the interest he takes in the growth or improvement of any other feature of his page or section. It has and can have no relation to his editorial or news policy. The moment such a thing is true his usefulness is ended. An alliance between the pen and the pocketbook is known the moment it is made and is transparent the moment it takes effect in print. A literary editor may resent, and keenly, as an editor, the fact that Bing, Bang & Company do not advertise their books in his domain. He is quite right to feel strongly about it. It has nothing to do with his handling of the Bing Bang books. That is determined by their news value alone. He may give the Bing Bang best seller a front page review and at the same time decline to meet Mr. Bing or lunch with Mr. Bang. And he will be entirely honest and justified in his course, both ways. Puff & Boom advertise like thunder. The literary editor likes them both immensely, or, at least, he appreciates their good judgment (necessarily it seems good to him in his rôle as editor of the pages they use). But Puff & Boom’s books are one-stick stories. Well, it’s up to Puff & Boom, isn’t it?
Oh, well, first and last there’s a lot to being a literary editor, new style. But first and last there’s a lot to being a human. Any one who can be human successfully can do the far lesser thing much better than any literary editor has yet done it.
WHAT EVERY PUBLISHER KNOWS
VI
WHAT EVERY PUBLISHER KNOWS
A BIG subject? Not necessarily. Discussed by an authority? No, indeed. On the contrary, about to be written upon by an amateur recording impressions extending a little over a year but formed in several relationships—as a “literary editor,” as an author and, involuntarily, as an author’s agent—but all friendly. Also, perhaps, as a pretty regular reader of publishers’ products. What will first appear as vastness in the subject will shrink on a moment’s examination. For our title is concerned only with what every publisher knows. A common piece of knowledge; or if not, after all, very “common,” at least commonly held—by book publishers.
To state the main conclusion first: The one thing that every publisher knows, so far as a humble experience can deduce, is that what is called “general” publishing—meaning fiction and other books of general appeal—is a highly speculative enterprise and hardly a business at all. The clearest analogy seems to be with the theatrical business. Producing books and producing plays is terrifyingly alike. Full of risks. Requiring, unless genius is manifested, considerable money capital. Likely to make, and far more likely to lose, small fortunes overnight.... Fatally fascinating. More an art than an organization but usually requiring an organization for the exhibition of the most brilliant art—like opera. A habit comparable with hasheesh. Heart-lifting—and headachy. ’Twas the night before publication and all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a stenographer. The day dawned bright and clear and a re-order for fifty more copies came in the afternoon mail.... Absentmindedly, the publisher-bridegroom pulled a contract instead of the wedding ring from his pocket. “With this royalty I thee wed,” he murmured. And so she was published and they lived happily ever after until she left him because he did not clothe the children suitably, using green cloth with purple stamping.