Why Authors Go Wrong, and Other Explanations

by Grant M. Overton

A very big publishing house does differently. To the cost of manufacture of each book is added a specific, flat and appropriate sum of money to advertise that particular book. The price of the book is fixed accordingly. When the book is published there is a definite sum ready to advertise it. No book goes unadvertised. If the book “catches on” there is no trouble, naturally, about more advertising money; if it does not sell the advertising of it stops when the money set aside has been exhausted and the publishers take their loss with a clear conscience; they have done their duty by the book. It may be added that this policy has always paid. Combined with other distinctive methods it has put the house which adopted it in the front rank.

9

Whether to publish a small, carefully selected list of books in a season or a large and comprehensive list is not wholly decided by the capital at the publisher’s command. Despite the doubling of all costs of book manufacture, publishing is not yet an enterprise which requires a great amount of capital, as compared with other industries of corresponding volume. The older a publishing house the more likely it is to restrict its list of new books. It has more to lose and less to gain by taking a great number of risks in new publications. At the same time it is subjected to severe competition because the capital required to become a book publisher is not large. Hence much caution, too much, no doubt, in many cases and every season. Still, promising manuscripts are lamentably few. “Look at the stuff that gets published,” is the classic demonstration of the case.

The older the house, the stronger its already accumulated list, the more conservative, naturally, it becomes, the less inclined to play with loaded dice in the shape of manuscripts. Yet a policy of extreme caution and conservatism is more dangerous and deadly than a dash of the gambler’s makeup. Two poor seasons together are noticed by the trade; four poor seasons together may put a house badly behind. A season with ten books only, all good, all selling moderately well, is perhaps more meritorious and more valuable in the long run than a season with thirty books, nearly all poor except for one or two sensational successes. But the fellow who brings out the thirty books and has one or two decided best sellers is the fellow who will make large profits, attract attention and acquire prestige. It is far better to try everything you can that seems to have “a chance” than to miss something awfully good. And, provided you drop the bad potatoes quickly, it will pay you better in the end.

There must be a big success somewhere on your list. A row of respectable and undistinguished books is the most serious of defeats.

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Suppose you were a book publisher and had put out a novel or two by Author A. with excellent results on the profit side of the ledger. Author A. is plainly a valuable property, like a copper mine in war time. A.’s third manuscript comes along in due time. It is entirely different from the first two so-successful novels; it is pretty certain to disappoint A.’s “audience.” You canvass the subject with A., who can’t “see” your arguments and suggestions. It comes to this: Either you publish the third novel or you lose A. Which, darling reader, would you, if you were the publisher, do? Would you choose the lady and The Tiger?

You are neatly started as a book publisher. You can’t get advance sales for your productions (to borrow a term from the theatre). You go to Memphis and Syracuse and interview booksellers. They say to you: “For heaven’s sake, get authors whose names mean something! Why should we stock fiction by Horatius Hotaling when we can dispose of 125 copies of E. Phillips Oppenheim’s latest in ten days from publication?” Returning thoughtfully to New York, you happen to meet a Celebrated Author. Toward the close of luncheon at the Brevoort he offers to let you have a book of short stories. One of them (it will be the title-story, of course) was published in the Saturday Evening Post, bringing to Mr. Lorimer, the editor, 2,500 letters and 117 telegrams of evenly divided praise and condemnation. Short stories are a stiff proposition; but the Celebrated Author has a name that will insure a certain advance sale and a fame that will insure reviewers’ attention. For you to become his publisher will be as prestigious as it is adventitious.

From ethical and other motives, you seek out the C. A.’s present publisher—old, well-established house—and inquire if Octavo & Duodecimo will have any objection to your publishing the C. A.’s book of tales. Mr. Octavo replies in friendly accents:

“Not a bit! Not a bit! Go to it! However, we’ve lent ... (the C. A.) $2,500 at one time or another in advance moneys on a projected novel. Travel as far as you like with him, but remember that he can’t give you a novel until he has given us one or has repaid that $2,500.”