NO MONEY ON THAT BASIS
I had recovered. I said: “I cannot make money on that basis. Neither can other legitimate and conscientious publishers, who build their business to last. I will let novels alone, if I must. I will do a small business—but sounder. If that is your condition, do not leave the book. I will pay you a sliding scale of royalties: I cannot give you twenty per cent.”
And he went away. I had just as lief another publisher lost money on the book as to lose it myself. True, the public, the reading public and the writing public, will regard the success of the book (if it succeed) as evidence of a rival publisher’s ability and enterprise. He will win temporary reputation. He will seem to be in the “swim” of success. He will publish flaming advertisements, in the hope of obtaining other successful authors; and he will attract them, for much book advertising is done not with the hope of selling the book, but chiefly to impress writers with the publisher’s energy and generosity. But there’s no profit and great risk in business conducted in this way.
There is positive danger, in fact. And I owe it to myself and to all the men and women whose books I publish to see to it first of all that my own business is sound, and is kept sound. In no other way can I discharge my obligations to them and keep my publishing house on its proper level instead of on the level of a mere business shop.
The rise of royalties paid to popular authors is the most important recent fact in the publishing world. It has not been many years since ten per cent. was the almost universal rule; and a ten per cent. royalty on a book that sells only reasonably well is a fair bargain between publisher and author. If the publisher do his work well—make the book well, advertise it well, keep a well-ordered and well-managed and energetic house—this division of the profits is a fair division—except in the case of a book that has a phenomenally large sale. Then he can afford to pay more. Unless a book has a pretty good sale, it will not leave a profit after paying more than a ten per cent. royalty.
Figure it for yourself. The retail price of a novel is $1.50. The retail bookseller buys it for about ninety cents. The wholesale bookseller buys it from the publisher for about eighty cents. This eighty cents must pay the cost of manufacturing the book; of selling it; of advertising it; must pay its share towards the cost of keeping the publisher’s establishment going—and this is a large and increasing cost; it must pay the author; and it must leave the publisher himself some small profit. Now, if out of this eighty cents which must be divided for so many purposes, the author receives a royalty of twenty per cent. (thirty cents a copy), there is left, of course, only fifty cents to pay all the other items. No other half-dollar in this world has to suffer such careful and continuous division! I have met a good many authors who have never realized that a ten per cent. royalty means nearly twenty per cent. on what the publisher actually sells the book for, and that a twenty per cent. royalty is nearly forty per cent. on the actual wholesale price.
There are several things of greater importance in the long run to an author than a large royalty. One of them is the unstinted loyalty of his publisher. His publisher must have a chance to be generous to his book. He ought not to feel that he must seek a cheap printer, that he must buy cheap paper, that he must make a cheap cover, that he must too closely watch his advertising account. A publisher has no chance to be generous to a book when he can make a profit on it only at the expense of its proper manufacture. The grasping author is, therefore, doing damage to his own book by leaving the publisher no margin of profit.
THE STABILITY OF THE PUBLISHER
There is still another thing that an author should set above his immediate income from any particular book; and that is the stability of his publisher. The publisher is a business man (he has need to be a business man of the highest type), but he is also the guardian of the author’s property. If his institution be not sound and be not kept sound, the loss to the author in money and in standing may be very great. The embarrassment or failure of a publishing firm now and then causes much gossip; for a publishing house is a center of publicity. But nobody outside the profession knows what practical trouble and confusion and loss every failure or financial embarrassment costs the writing world. The normal sale of many books is stopped. The authors lose in the end, and they lose heavily.
Every publisher who appreciates his profession tries to make his house permanent, with an eye not only to his own profit, but also to the service that he may do to the writers on his list. If it is of the very essence of banking that a bank shall be in sound condition and shall have the confidence of the community, it is even more true that a publishing house should be sound to the core and should deserve financial confidence. The publisher must do his business with reference to a permanent success. But if he must do business on the basis of a twenty per cent. royalty, he takes risks that he has no right to take. It deserves to be called “wildcat” publishing.