A Publisher's Confession

by Unknown

The Divers Problems Which Constantly Arise—Every Step of the Way Beset with Expense, So That the Publisher Is Amazed When He Finds a Surplus—Why Books of Large Sale Are Hard to Get—The Publisher as Anxious as the Public to Print Better Books.

The wonder is (and in my mind it grows every year) how the publishers of books make enough money to keep their shops going. When I look at my own ledgers (ledger, by the way, is become a mere literary word, for we now all keep accounts on cards and not in books)—whenever I look at my own cards and see a profit, I am astonished as much as I am gratified. Every other publisher in America, if he have a normal and simple mind such as fits the calling, has the same emotion. Let me say, lest I appear “simple” in another sense, that our cards have, miraculously enough, generally shown very satisfactory profits, but the astonishment never becomes less.

See what a long series of processes, or adventures, if you will, a book must go through between the writer and the reader; every step costs money; and the utmost possible profit is small. Suppose it be a novel. “Book” means “novel” these days in “literary” circles and journals. Heaven bless our shallow gabble called “reviews.” A novel comes to the publisher in fairly good English. The English doubtless is the author’s, but the punctuation and capitals are the “typewriter-lady’s” own. It must be read by one person; and, if that person’s report have a ray of hope, it must be read by another; perhaps by a third. These “readers” cost money—alas! too little money. They are generally literary persons who have failed, and there is something pathetic about their occupation. Then, after two or three readers have reported on it, I have to read it—in our particular shop, in any shop, somebody “higher up” must read it—especially if it come from a new writer.

Then we have to correspond with the author or have interviews with h—er. All this takes time, and the cost of this service rolls up. Somebody must next go over the manuscript to prepare it for the printer—to make sure that the heroine’s name is spelt the same way all through and so forth and so forth. With the processes of manufacture I need not weary you. Only I must say that a bad manuscript can be put into legible type, and that type cast into solid metal blocks ready for the press with a rapidity and cheapness that rank among the mechanical wonders of the world.

By this time the artist has appeared, if the novel is to be illustrated. Book salesmen will tell you that pictures help to sell novels, and they ought to know. But I venture to say that you haven’t seen three new novels in ten years whose illustrations conveyed anything but confusion to your mind. The conventional illustration of the conventional novel marks the lowest degradation of the present-day publisher. We confess by these things that we are without character or conviction. But the artist has the benefit of the commercial doubt on his side. He has also the vanity of the author. And he gets his fee—200, 300 or 500 good dollars or more—and the publisher pays the bill. Another artist makes a design for the cover.

Paper, printing, binding—all these are commonplaces, worthy of mention here only because they roll up the cost. But there are other steps in the book’s journey that the public knows less about. For instance, as soon as the first chapter has been put into type and a cover made, “dummies” of the book are got ready. A “dummy” of a book is a sort of model, or sample, of it. The cover is the cover that will appear on the finished novel; the titlepage is the novel’s titlepage; and the first chapter is as it will be when the book is published. But the rest is blank paper. This “dummy” shows the physical size and appearance of the book.

The travelling salesmen take these dummies and begin their work. They go to all the jobbers and book dealers, explaining to them the charming qualities of this newly discovered novelist, and taking orders for the books. By the time they come home and their advance orders are added up, the book is ready to go to press; and the publisher knows what his “first sale” will be. Meantime (not to lose the thread of my story) all this travelling and soliciting of orders have cost a good deal of money. The public has not yet seen a copy of the book nor even so much as heard of it nor of the “talented young author.”

But now the machinery for publicity is put in action. Sly little literary notes about the book and the author begin to appear in the newspapers. These, too, have come from the publisher. From whom else, pray, could they come? But they mean that the publisher has to maintain a literary bureau. The man who writes these news notes and the advertisements of the book and other things about it is a man of skill, if he do his work well; and he, too, costs the publisher a good salary. When he begins to put forth advertising—how much shall he spend on this new novel by an unknown writer? How much shall you risk at Monte Carlo? Your upright man will risk nothing at Monte Carlo. I have sometimes thought that your upright publisher, if there be one, would risk nothing in advertising a new book by an unknown writer, until the book began itself to show some vitality in the market.

But—to go back—as soon as the book is ready, review copies, of course, are sent to the newspapers and the literary journals (to appear a little later in the second-hand book-shops for sale at reduced prices.) All this activity requires clerks, typewriters, bookkeepers, postage-money—a large office, in fact. There are many posters, circulars—there is as much machinery required to sell a book as to sell a piano or an automobile.

From the starting-point, where the book was an ill-written manuscript, to the delivery of it to the bookseller, the publisher has less than 50 cents a copy to pay for this whole journey and to save something for profit if he can. Therefore I say that publishers who do succeed are among the most astute managers of industry.