It is because of this possession that a publisher gets an author's book. It was by this means that he got the books he already has, and by this will he get those which will make him successful in the future. His books being good, it is through them that the bookseller's good-will is acquired, and through them also that the publisher will secure the good-will of the book buyer. No wiser words on this subject have been uttered in our generation than those which may be found, here and there, in "A Publisher's Confession," which I hope was written, as reputed, by Walter H. Page, for it is certainly sound enough and sane enough to be his:—
"The successful publisher sustains a relation to the successful author that is not easily transferable. It is a personal relation. A great corporation cannot take a real publisher's place in his attitude to the author he serves."
"Every great publishing house has been built on the strong friendships between writers and publishers. There is in fact, no other sound basis to build on; for the publisher cannot do his highest duty to any author whose work he does not appreciate and with whom he is not in sympathy. Now, when a man has an appreciation of your work, and sympathy for it, he wins you. This is the simplest of all psychological laws,—the simplest of all laws of friendship, and one of the soundest."
"Mere printers and salesmen have not often built publishing houses. For publishing houses have this distinction over most other commercial institutions—they rest on the friendship of the most interesting persons in the world, the writers of good books."
"And—in all the noisy babble of commercialism—the writers of our own generation who are worth most on a publisher's list respond to the true publishing personality as readily as writers did before the day of commercial methods. All the changes that have come into the profession have not, after all, changed its real character, as it is practised on its higher levels. And this rule will hold true—that no publishing house can win and keep a place on the highest level that does not have at least one man who possesses this true publishing personality."
These are golden words. Men who knew them as self-evident truths laid the foundations, and in a few instances reared the superstructures, of the most famous publishing houses known to modern literature. Let us in part call the roll, restricting it to the dead: James T. Fields, the first Charles Scribner, George P. Putnam, Fletcher Harper, William H. Appleton, Daniel Macmillan, and the second John Murray. These men were more than publishers, adding as they did to that vocation the duties of the literary adviser, and becoming the ablest of their kind. Well may the literary adviser of our day, who is seldom himself a publisher, read the story of their lives and take heart from it in the discharge of his own duties.[Back to Contents]
THE MANUFACTURING DEPARTMENT
By Lawton L. Walton
The manufacture of a book consists primarily of the processes of typography,[1] or type composition, or the setting up of type—presswork or printing—photo-engraving or other methods of reproduction—designing—die-cutting—and binding, all of which are involved in transforming a manuscript into the completed book as it reaches the reader.
In the machinery of a modern publishing house the manufacturing man is the person who follows these processes in their devious volutions and evolutions, until the finished production comes from the binder's hands.
After a manuscript has been accepted by a publishing house, it is turned over to the manufacturing man with such general instructions regarding the make-up of the book, as may have been considered or discussed with the author, who invariably and sometimes unfortunately, has some preconceived notion of what his book should look like.