In a word, commercially unprofitable books may be printed, but they cannot be published without ruining the machinery that they are run through. He is the best publisher who has the largest proportion of good books on his list (whether his list be long or short) that are at the same time alive in the market.
There are—let it be said as an exception—a few classes of books that every publisher wishes to have on his list in spite of the fact that they cannot be made profitable, such as works of great scholarship or monumental works that have a lasting value. It is legitimate that the writers or the societies or organizations under whose directions such books were written should pay or share the cost of their manufacture. But few such works yield a profit at last to either publisher or author. And they are not made to clog the book market. They are sold only to special classes of readers.
A book is a commodity. Yet the moment it is treated as a mere commodity it takes severe revenge on its author and on its publisher.
These pseudo-publishers sometimes solicit manuscripts from ignorant writers. They have veiled advertisements in the literary journals. Ignorance and ambition is a susceptible combination. Several years ago one of these plausible swindlers bribed a reader in one of the larger publishing houses to report to him the names of all the writers whose novels were declined there. The fakir then plied them with circulars and letters.
While I have been writing about publishing swindles I have been reminded of the accusation brought several years ago against publishers—especially English publishers—that the temptation to fraud was too strong to be resisted by any but the most upright and successful men. An author gives his book to his publisher. Twice a year the publisher makes a report—pays royalties on the number of books that he has reported as sold. There is no way whereby the author can verify the publisher’s reports. He has to take his word for it. Even if the author or someone who acted for him were to see the publisher’s books, he could learn nothing, for the publisher’s bookkeeping is a very complicated thing; and reports of book sales could easily be “doctored.”
The chance for fraud does exist. But the first wish of every normal man in the business, even if he lacks vigorous honesty, is to make his reports of sales to his author as large as possible. This wish is too strong to be overcome by anything less than the most hopeless moral depravity. A publisher who should commit the crime of making false reports to his authors would be a monstrosity. Yet the contention that Sir Walter Besant made in England for so many years, that the publishing business was conducted without such checks and verifications as are applied to other business transactions was true; and I, for one, see no practical remedy for it.
Moral: Select your publisher with care; make sure that he is honest (by far most of us are); then trust him. But steer clear of all “fake” publishers and “agents.”