When I had finished my story, I still had a few incidents and scenes in my ink-pot; but I could not for the life of me get the curtain up, once it was down. My little drama had put itself together as tight as wax, and even when I had written an additional incident that pleased me particularly, I could find no place to thrust it in. I was interested chiefly in amusing myself, and I never troubled myself in the least as to whether anyone else would care for the story. I was astonished by its sale, which exceeded a quarter of a million copies in this country; it has been translated into French, Italian, German, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian. I have heard of it all the way from Tokyo to Teheran. It was dramatized, and an actor of distinction appeared in the stage version; and stock companies have lately presented the play in Boston and San Francisco. It was subsequently serialized by newspapers, and later appeared in “patent” supplements. The title was paraphrased by advertisers, several of whom continue to pay me this flattering tribute.
I have speculated a good deal as to the success of this book. The title had, no doubt, much to do with it; clever advertising helped it further; the cover was a lure to the eye. The name of a popular illustrator may have helped, but it is certain that his pictures did not! I think I am safe in saying that the book received no helpful reviews in any newspapers of the first class, and I may add that I am skeptical as to the value of favorable notices in stimulating the sale of such books. Serious novels are undoubtedly helped by favorable reviews; stories of the kind I describe depend primarily upon persistent and ingenious advertising, in which a single striking line from the “Gem City Evening Gazette” is just as valuable as the opinion of the most scholarly review. Nor am I unmindful of the publisher’s labors and risks,—the courage, confidence, and genius essential to a successful campaign with a book from a new hand, with no prestige of established reputation to command instant recognition. The self-selling book may become a “best-seller”; it may appear mysteriously, a “dark horse” in the eternal battle of the books; but miracles are as rare in the book trade as in other lines of commerce. The man behind the counter is another important factor. The retail dealer, when he finds the publisher supporting him with advertising, can do much to prolong a sale. A publisher of long experience in promoting large sales has told me that advertising is valuable chiefly for its moral effect on the retailer, who, feeling that the publisher is strongly backing a book, bends his own energies toward keeping it alive.
It would be absurd for me to pretend that the leap from a mild succès d’estime with sales of forty and fourteen thousand, to a delirious gallop into six figures is not without its effect on an author, unless he be much less human than I am. Those gentle friends who had intimated that I could not do it once, were equally sanguine that I could not do it again. The temptation to try a second throw of the dice after a success is strong, but I debated long whether I should try my hand at a second romance. I resolved finally to do a better book in the same kind, and with even more labor I produced a yarn whose title—and the gods have several times favored me in the matter of titles—adorned the best-selling lists for an even longer period, though the total sales aggregated less.
The second romance was, I think, better than the first, and its dramatic situations were more picturesque. The reviews averaged better in better places, and may have aroused the prejudices of those who shun books that are countenanced or praised by the literary “high brows.” It sold largely; it enjoyed the glory and the shame of a “best-seller”; but here, I pondered, was the time to quit. Not to shock my “audience,” to use the term of the trade, I resolved to try for more solid ground by paying more attention to characterizations, and cutting down the allowance of blood and thunder. I expected to lose heavily with the public, and I was not disappointed. I crept into the best-selling list, but my sojourn there was brief. It is manifest that people who like shots in the dark will not tamely acquiesce in the mild placing of the villain’s hand upon his hip pocket on the moon-washed terrace. The difference between the actual shot and the mere menace, I could, from personal knowledge, compute in the coin of the Republic.
When your name on the bill-board suggests battle, murder, and sudden death, “hair-breadth’scapes, i’ th’ imminent deadly breach,” and that sort of thing, you need not be chagrined if, once inside, the eager throng resents bitterly your perfidy in offering nothing more blood-curdling than the heroine’s demand (the scene being set for five o’clock tea) for another lump of sugar. You may, if you please, leave Hamlet out of his own play; but do not, on peril of your fame, cut out your ghost, or neglect to provide some one to stick a sword into Polonius behind the arras. I can take up that particular book now and prove to any fair-minded man how prettily I could, by injecting a little paprika into my villains, have quadrupled its sale.
Having, I hope, some sense of humor, I resolved to bid farewell to cloak and pistols in a farce-comedy, which should be a take-off on my own popular performances. Humor being something that no one should tamper with who is not ready for the gibbet, I was not surprised that many hasty samplers of the book should entirely miss the joke, or that a number of joyless critics should have dismissed it hastily as merely another machine-made romance written for boarding-school girls and the weary commercial traveler yawning in the smoking-car. Yet this book also has been a “best-seller”! I have seen it, within a few weeks, prominently displayed in bookshop windows in half a dozen cities.
It was, I think, Mr. Clyde Fitch who first voiced the complaint that our drama is seriously affected by the demand of “the tired business man” to be amused at the theatre. The same may be said of fiction. A very considerable number of our toiling millions sit down wearily at night, and if the evening paper does not fully satisfy or social diversion offer, a story that will hold the attention without too great a tax upon the mind is welcomed. I should be happy to think that our ninety millions trim the lamp every evening with zest for “improving” literature; but the tired brain follows the line of least resistance, which unfortunately does not lead to alcoves where the one hundred best books wear their purple in solemn pomp. Even in my present mood of contrition, I am not sneering at that considerable body of my countrymen who have laid one dollar and eighteen cents upon the counter and borne home my little fictions. They took grave chances of my boring them; and when they rapped a second time on the counter and murmured another of my titles, they were expressing a confidence in me which I strove hard never to betray.
No one will, I am sure, deny me the satisfaction I have in the reflection that I put a good deal of sincere work into those stories,—for they are stories, not novels, and were written frankly to entertain; that they are not wholly ill-written; that they contain pages that are not without their grace; or that there is nothing prurient or morbid in any of them. And no matter how jejune stories of the popular romantic type may be,—a fact, O haughty critic, of which I am well aware,—I take some satisfaction as a good American in the knowledge that, in spite of their worthlessness as literature, they are essentially clean. The heroes may be too handsome, and too sure of themselves; the heroines too adorable in their sweet distress, as they wave the white handkerchief from the grated window of the ivied tower,—but their adventures are, in the very nature of things, in usum Delphini.
Some of my friends of the writing guild boast that they never read criticisms of their work. I have read and filed all the notices of my stories that bore any marks of honesty or intelligence. Having served my own day as reviewer for a newspaper, I know the dreary drudgery of such work. I recall, with shame, having averaged a dozen books an afternoon; and some of my critics have clearly averaged two dozen, with my poor candidates for oblivion at the bottom of the heap! Much American criticism is stupid or ignorant; but the most depressing, from my standpoint, is the flippant sort of thing which many newspapers print habitually. The stage, also, suffers like treatment, even in some of the more reputable metropolitan journals. Unless your book affords a text for a cynical newspaper “story,” it is quite likely to be ignored.
I cannot imagine that any writer who takes his calling seriously ever resents a sincere, intelligent, adverse notice. I have never written a book in less than a year, devoting all my time to it; and I resent being dismissed in a line, and called a writer of drivel, by some one who did not take the trouble to say why. A newspaper which is particularly jealous of its good name once pointed out with elaborate care that an incident, described in one of my stories as occurring in broad daylight, could not have been observed in moonlight by one of the characters at the distance I had indicated. The same reviewer transferred the scene of this story half-way across the continent, in order to make another point against its plausibility. If the aim of criticism be to aid the public in its choice of books, then the press should deal fairly with both author and public. And if the critics wish to point out to authors their failures and weaknesses, then it should be done in a spirit of justice. The best-selling of my books caused a number of critics to remark that it had clearly been inspired by a number of old romances—which I had not only never read, but of several of them I had never even heard.