Now there are other subjects that need to be written of just as much. One such subject is science. The world is flooded with popular books about science, but nearly all of them fail either in being accurate or in being popular. There is a better opportunity now than there ever was before for a man who really knows the most recent and scientific achievements, and who can write in the language of the people. To many people, “authoritative books” are dry books, but this is not what I mean. Such books as I have in mind can be written only by men of the best scientific equipment, but they can be written only by men who have also a great deal of literary skill.
Another great subject about which good books are needed is—you may not believe this—American history. Our political history has got itself pretty voluminously written, and there is no lack of slapdash books in distant imitation of Green’s “Short History of the English People.” But most of these have been prepared out of newspaper files by men who would not take their task seriously or who were not well prepared either in matured knowledge or in literary skill to produce them. Then, too, geographically considered, the history of less than one-fourth of our territory has not yet been written. Southern history, for example, is utterly unknown.
It would be easy to name a half-dozen other great subjects which writers who now bring their manuscripts to the publishing houses are neglecting. If, therefore, men and women who have the literary gift, even to a reasonable degree, and who have literary ambition, would frankly seek those two or three publishers who are real publishers and would prove their ability to do serious work of this sort they would be almost sure to find satisfactory careers before them. Of course, one disadvantage of such work is that during its early stages no very large financial returns can be expected. But if the work were done well enough it would pay in the end—pay more money by far than a professorship in science or in history or in literature pays.
All this leads me to this general remark—that the writing public does not take the trouble to find out who the real publishers are. There is a lack of coöperation between publishers and writers in what may be called the formative period of the writer’s lives. A man who writes a book sends it to some publishing house that is chosen by accident or by personal acquaintance or by whim. The public seems to think that one publishing house is as good as another. If a writer’s first volume in this way falls into the hands of a publisher who does not make the acquaintance of the writer, or who cannot make an appraisal of his ability and promise, and who does not understand him, then the writer, after an initial failure, of course, becomes discouraged. On the other hand, all the publishers are so eager to get books that they accept work which is not properly done, and on their part fail to put themselves into such a relation to young authors as would help them to their normal development.
If a man or woman, therefore, proposes to enter upon a literary career his first duty is to make the acquaintance of a real publisher, to be as frank with him as one must be with one’s physician or one’s lawyer. If two such men work together seriously and without too great haste the best results will be achieved for both, and the best results are not likely to come in any other way.
If you start, then, to gossip intelligently about the book market or about anything else with which a publisher has to do, and if you gossip long enough, you will come back to the starting point of the whole matter. What do we do or can we do to encourage the writing of good books? And now we’ve run on a subject as deep as a well and as wide as a door. In the multitude of counsellors about it there is confusion. In the only other “confession” that is to follow this I shall try to show how ignorant and mistaken all those are who differ with me about this fundamental subject.
CHAPTER X
PLAIN WORDS TO AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS
It Pays the Author to Be Honest and Frank with His Publisher, Who Is, After All, His Best Friend—Some Recent Instances of a Discouraging Sort—The Need of Greater Dignity and Statesmanship Among Publishers—The Obligation of Ministering to the Higher Impulses of the People.