But stranger than the popularity of very popular novels, or than the utter failure of merely “literary” novels, is the moderate success of a certain kind of commonplace stories. I know a woman of domestic tastes who every two years turns off a quiet story. She has now written a dozen or more. They are never advertised. But they are well printed and put forth by one of our best publishers. The “literary” world pays no heed to her. Her books are not even reviewed in the best journals. They lack distinction. But every one is sure to sell from ten to fifteen thousand copies. No amount of advertising, no amount of noise could increase the number of readers to twenty-five thousand; and there is no way to prevent a sale of from ten to fifteen thousand copies. Why this is so is one of the most baffling problems of psychology. But it is the rule. Authors of novels are known and rated among publishers as ten thousand, or twenty-five thousand, or fifty thousand, or one hundred thousand writers. Book after book reaches a certain level of popularity and—stops. Mr. Marion Crawford, Mr. Hopkinson Smith, Miss Wilkins—all these have their more or less constant levels.
The lay world has no idea of the number of novels that fail. There are one-book authors all over the country. The publishers’ hope always is that a new writer who makes a pretty good novel will do better next time. Thus the first book is accepted for the sake of the next one. The first fails, and the second is not wanted. There are dozens and dozens of such cases every year. The public doesn’t know it, for the very abyss of oblivion is the place where a dead novel falls. Nobody knows it—that is the tragedy—but the publishers and the author.
A case came to light a little while ago of a man who had years ago written novels that failed. He had been forgotten. But he took a new start. Yet he feared that his first failures would damn him with the publishers. He took another name, therefore. Not even his publishers knew who he really was. He succeeded and he concealed his identity until he died.
The publisher’s loss on an unsuccessful novel may be little or big. All publishers lose much on unsuccessful ventures in fiction, chiefly on young authors who are supposed to have a future, or on old authors who have a “literary” reputation and have reached that ghostly period of real decline when they walk in dreams from one publishing house to another.
But there is generally a reason for success or for failure. The trouble is that the reason often does not appear soon enough. The chief reason for the success of a novel is the commonplace one that it contains a story. It may be told ill or it may be told well, but there is a story. And the chief reason for failure is the lack of a story. A novel may be ever so well written,—if it have no story, the public will not care for it.
I wonder if there be any light in this very obvious discovery. Simple as it seems, it costs every publishing house a pretty penny every year to find it out; and as soon as we find it out about one writer we forget it about another! It is a great truth that does not remain discovered.
CHAPTER III
ARE AUTHORS AN IRRITABLE TRIBE?
An Emphatic Answer in the Negative—They Are Gentlemen and Ladies and Treat Their Publisher with Courtesy—Bonds of Friendship Thus Formed That Endure—Some Amusing and Nettling Exceptions—Cranks Among the Scholars—The Inconstant Author Who Is Always Changing Publishers—Why a Publishing Trust Is Impossible.