How it Operates to the Disadvantage of Both Author and Publisher—The Actual Facts and Figures—Authors’ Earnings Greatly Exaggerated by the Press—Books Sell Too Cheaply—What a Fair Price for All Concerned Would Be.

The author of a very popular book, who has written another that will be as popular, wishes me to publish it, so he is kind enough to say; and he came to see me and asked on what terms I would bring it out. In these strenuous times he can dictate his own terms to his publisher; and I happened to know that two houses had made him offers. I confess, since I am old-fashioned, that this method of an author shocks me. If he does not openly hawk his book and his reputation, he at least tempts one publisher to bid against another, and thus invites the publisher to regard it as a mere commodity. But I suppressed my dislike of the method and went straight about the business of getting the book, for I should like to have it.

“I will give you,” I said, “twenty per cent. royalty, and I will pay you $5,000 on the day of publication.”

The words had not fallen from my mouth before I wished to recall them, for the publishing of books cannot be successfully done on these terms. There are only two or three books a year that can pay so much.

“I will consider it,” said he.

Abject as I was, I recovered myself far enough to say: “No, the offer is made for acceptance now or never—before this conversation ends. I cannot keep it open.”

“My dear sir,” I went on, for I was regaining something of my normal courage, “do you know what twenty per cent. royalty on a $1.50 book means? You receive thirty cents for every copy sold. My net profit is about four or five cents a copy, if I manufacture it well and advertise it generously; and I supply the money in advance. I make an advance to you; I pay the papermaker in advance of my collections, the printer—everybody; and I wait from ninety to one hundred and twenty days after the book is sold to get my money. My profit is so small that it may vanish and become a loss by any misadventure, such as too much advertising, the printing of too large an edition, or the loss of an account with a failed bookdealer. I have no margin as an insurance against accidents or untoward events. I am doing business with you on an unfairly generous basis. I am paying you all the money that the book can earn—perhaps more than it can earn—for the pleasure of having you on my list. If I make money, I must make it on books for which I pay a smaller royalty.”

“But I can get twenty per cent. from almost any other publisher,” he replied, truthfully. “Why should I consider less from you?”

I could not answer him except by saying:

“Yes, I am not blaming you—not quite; but there is a grave fault in the system that has brought about this general result. You may have forgotten that this high royalty is a direct temptation to a publisher to skimp his advertising. You expect generous advertising of the book. Well, I can never sign an order for an advertisement of it without recalling the very narrow margin of profit that I have. An order for $500 worth of advertising will take as much net profit as I can make on several thousand copies.

“Again, when I come to manufacture the book, I cannot help recalling that gilt letters on the cover will increase the cost by one cent or two cents a copy. You tempt me to do all my work in the cheapest possible way.”

Well, we are good friends, this writer and I, and we signed the contract. He is to receive a royalty of twenty per cent., and a payment on his royalty account of $5,000 on the day of publication.

When, therefore, I had the pleasure of receiving the friends of another author, who told me that he would give me the book for twenty per cent. royalty ($5,000 cash on publication) if I cared to read it, I replied, “No.”

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.

I am, therefore, not making a plea, by this confession, for a larger profit to the publisher in any narrow or personal sense. Every successful publisher—really successful, mind you—could make more money by going into some other business. I think that there is not a man of them who could not greatly increase his income by giving the same energy and ability to the management of a bank, or of some sort of industrial enterprise. Such men as Mr. Charles Scribner, Mr. George Brett, Mr. George H. Mifflin, could earn very much larger returns by their ability in banks, railroads or manufacturing, than any one of them earns as a publisher; for they are men of conspicuous ability.

It is, therefore, not as a matter of mere gain to the publisher that it is important to have the business on a sound and fair basis; but it is for the sake of the business itself and for the sake of the writers themselves.

AN AUTHOR’S BLUNDER

Here is a true tale of a writer of good fiction: He made a most promising start. His first book, in fact, caused him to be sought by several publishers, who do not hesitate to solicit clients—a practice that other dignified professions discourage. The publisher of his first book gave him a ten per cent. royalty. For his second book he demanded more. A rival publisher offered him twenty per cent. The second book also succeeded. But the author in the meantime had heard the noise of other publishing houses. He had made the acquaintance of another writer whose books (which were better than his) had sold in much greater quantities. Of course, the difference in sales could not be accounted for by the literary qualities of the books—his friend had a better publisher than he—so he concluded. His third book, therefore, was placed with a third publisher, because he would advertise more loudly. Well, that publisher failed. His failure, by the way, the report of the receivers showed, was caused by spending too much in unproductive advertising.

Here our author stood, then, with three books, each issued by a different publishing house. What should he do with his fourth book? He came back to his second publisher, who had, naturally, lost some of his enthusiasm for such an author. To cut the story short, that man now has books on five publishers’ lists. Not one of the publishers counts him as his particular client. In a sense his books are all neglected. One has never helped another. He has got no cumulative result of his work. He has become a sort of stray dog in the publishing world. He has cordial relations with no publisher; and his literary product has really declined. He scattered his influence, and he is paying the natural penalty.

The moral of this true story (and I could tell half a dozen more like it) is that a publisher is a business man, but not a mere business man. He must be something more. He is a professional man also. He can do his best service only for those authors who inspire his loyalty, who enable him to make his publishing house permanent, and who leave him enough margin of profit to permit him to make books of which he can be proud.

The present fashion of a part of the writing world—to squeeze the last cent out of a book and to treat the publisher as a mere manufacturer and “boomer”—cannot last. It has already passed its high period and is on the decline. A self-respecting worm would have turned long ago. Even the publisher is now beginning to turn.

Better still, the authors whose books will be remembered longest have not caught the fashion of demanding everything. It was that passing school of “booms” and bellowing that did it all—the writers of romances for kitchen maids and shop girls, whose measure of book values was by dollars only. Such fashions always pass. For, if novel writing be so profitable an industry, a large number of persons naturally take it up; and they ruin the market by overstocking it.

THE “BOOMED” BOOK PASSING

Fast passing, then—praise God—is the “boomed” book, which, having no merit, could once be sold by sheer advertising, in several editions of 100,000 each. I have made a list of the writers of books that during the last five or six years have sold in enormous editions; and every one of these writers, but two, has lived to see his (or her) latest book sell far below its predecessors. One man, for instance, wrote a first book which sold more than 200,000 copies. His publishers announce only the sixtieth thousand of his latest novel, though it has now nearly run its course. These are not pleasant facts. I wish that every novelist might have an increasing sale for every book he writes. They all earn more than they receive—even the bad ones whose books prosper; but the system that they brought with them deserves to die—must die, if publishing is to remain an honorable profession. They brought with them the 20 per cent. royalty, and the demand for an advertising outlay that was based on the sale of 100,000 or 200,000 copies. Only the keeper of dark secrets knows how many publishers have lost, or how large their losses have been, on “boomed” books. But any intelligent business man may take the 50 cents that the publisher receives for his $1.50 novel after paying the author’s 20 per cent. royalty, and divide it thus:

Cost of manufacture,
Cost of selling,
Office expense,
Extravagant advertising,
Profit.

If he can find anything left for profit, then he can get rich at any business. There have been novels so extravagantly advertised that the advertising cost alone amounted to 22 cents for every copy sold. The writer drove the publisher to loss; the publisher (foolishly) consented in the hope of attracting other authors to his house. If “other authors” knew that the very cost of the bait that attracted them makes the publishing house unsound, they would not long be fooled.

Thus it comes about, in this strange and fascinating world of writing and making and selling books, that one period of “whooping up” novels is ending. Half the novels advertised during the past few years in big medicine style did not pay the publishers; and any conservative publisher can tell you which half they are.

The manufacturing novelist has always been with us. But he used to be an humble practitioner of the craft whose “output” was sold for ten cents a volume. He always will be with us, and his product will sell, some at ten cents a volume, some at $1.50. But the time seems about to pass when he can disturb the publishing situation. For the publisher has to accept his methods when he accepts his work; and his methods do not pay either in dignity, permanency, or cash. If any of these be lacking—and in proportion as they are lacking—the results will fall short of the ideal. The results to be hoped for are money, but not money only, but also a watchful care by the publisher over his author’s reputation and growth, and a cumulative influence for his books.

THE INCOME OF AUTHORS

There are, perhaps, a dozen American novelists who have large incomes from their work; there are many more who have comfortable incomes; but there is none whose income is as large as the writers of gossip for the literary journals would have us believe. It has been said that Harper’s Magazine pays Mrs. Humphry Ward $15,000 for the serial right of each of her stories and twenty per cent. royalty. Miss Johnston must have made from $60,000 to $70,000 from royalties on “To Have and to Hold,” for any publisher can calculate it.

But along with these great facts let us humbly remember that Mr. Carnegie received $300,000,000 for all his steel mills, good will, etc.; for the authors that I have named are the “millionaires” of the craft. I wish there were more. But the diligent writers of most good fiction, hard as they have ground the publishers in the rise of royalties, are yet nearer to Grub street than they are to Skibo Castle.

The truth is—but it would be a difficult task to reduce such a truth to practice—that the public gets its good new novels too cheap. There is not a large enough margin of profit for author, publisher and bookseller in a new book that is meant to be sold for $1.50 and that is often sold for $1.08. The business of bookmaking and bookselling is underpaid. There is not a publisher in the United States who is today making any large sum of money on his “general trade.” Money is made on educational books, on subscription books, on magazines. But publishing, as publishing, is the least profitable of all the professions, except preaching and teaching, to each of which it is a sort of cousin.