Author and Publisher
A GLANCE at a page at the beginning of this hook, the page entitled Bibliographical, will show that mine has been a busy pen. I ought, therefore, to have something to say about books and publishers, and this I wish to say in all ciA ility and gratitude. I have also done a good deal in journalism — that is to say, in magazines and newspapers and reviews. I have never seen any inconsistency between preaching the Gospel and writing it. I admit, however, that anonymous journalism presents many temptations to an active and undisciplined pen. “What an opportunity for revenge! What a chance to take another man’s vanity down a peg or two! A guinea so earned must be a guinea of special value. But do editors pay as little as a guinea for an article r They used to do. Even to-day some papers with which the private apartments of angels are or ought to be garnished get out of their obligations by paying half a guinea a column for literary matter. On the other hand, literary matter has gone up very materially in value. There are editors who scorn the policy of accepting the cheap and worthless kind of drudgery. Literature, even in some departments of poetry, was never so well paid as to-day. The old order of mendicant editors is fast dying out, and honourable gentlemen are taking their places. I am persuaded that journalism will never do itself justice until all articles carry the names of their writers. Then we shall know exactly their value and their influence. We shall then get rid of the pompous and misleading “Ave” and come down upon the rock or the swamp of individual authority. An article would lose nothing by the open signature “John Stuart Mill,” or “Thomas Henry Huxley,” or “Edward Bouverie Pusey.” On the other hand, there is an anonymity which hardly conceals the identity of the unnamed author. Who could hesitate to say this is by Thomas Babington Macaulay, and this by William Ewart Gladstone, and certainly this is by Mr. Jonkins, and that by his sister-in-law the Hon. Sarah Wilkins?
Heal jiower needs no secrecy, nor can secrecy conceal inherent weakness.
Even publishers must submit to be variously appraised and classified, as the stars themselves have been scheduled under high apostolic sanction. For the purposes of this reminiscence it may, for the moment, be sufficient roughly to distribute publishers, like authors, and even like preachers, into good and bad, ignoring the shades and tones which indicate, without offensive invidioiisness, professional jilus and minus quantities. Life would be greatly simplified if all men were definitely good or bad; it is amongst the mixtures and modifications that criticism goes astray, and especially at that sensitive point at which it becomes uncertain whether a man should be categorically voted black or white. That there are good publishers is an established fact; that there have been bad ones only imagination at its worst could seriously deny.
As a rule, what does the young author expect of his publisher r Expectation is the measure of disappointment. But expectation is the young author’s forte! Weak in a thousand points he may be, but at the point of expectation he is every inch full-grown. Naturally the young author expects his publisher to bring him at least fame and wealth, with all that is implied by those glittering terms. Naturally, too, the young author supposes that he confers a favour upon his publisher by allowing that servile personage to undertake his lousiness and forward his periodical cheques. The young author feels that as he came into the world with great talents. Providence can never intend that he should go out of it with great disappointments. Vain, in the coxcomb sense, the young author can never be; but there is another and superior vanity before whose altar he may fall, — a very pale and shadowy consciousness that the keys of a literary kingdom have been handed to him by its invisible master. He would not say so for the world, but he feels it all the same; saying it would be conceit, Imt feeling it is genius. How can such a man be just to his publisher r What circulation could satisfy such ambition? What cheques could realise such dreams of gold? The publisher, on the other hand, works in a more limited world, — a world of discounts, false dozens, scale advertisements, secret profits, commissions too shadowy to be discerned by the naked eye, job-lots and remainders, together with mysterious editions
AT’THOPv AXD PUBLISHER for the colonial market, and expensive arrangements for securing* coj)yrights that yield the author no return. How can a budding author, every bud tipped with the crimson of genius, follow the arithmetical hocus-pocus of the sordid side of authorship? He could detect a false quantity in a pentameter, or offer a suggestion to an out-Avorn Milton, but how could he ever persuade himself that thirteen is twelve, or that he is bound to pay seven-and-sixpence for an adA’crtisement for which the publisher paid tAVO-and-threepence with two and a half off for cash? This would be much too great a strain even for a prose-poet.
From another point of vicAA* the publisher may, in the first instance, be of greatei* consequence than the author — may, in fact, be the employer and patron of the aspiring but unknown writer, Clearly the publisher may at first be better known than the author, and may, in that sense, be his creator, running the historical risk of not being gratefully remembered by the very person he has created. Suppose, for example, that I see advertised a book with some such title as “A New Sphere for the Dream,” by Jeremiah Jonkins. I naturally think it must be erratic or worthless. The title is insane. The author is unknown. The price is seven-and-sixpence. But on looking further down I notice that the publisher is Murray, or Blackwood, or Longman, or Macmillan, or some other eminent house. I then take a different Yiey of Jonkins and his “Dream.” Why? Because these firms hold high positions in the puhlishing world, and each name is a guarantee on the part of the writer. Hoav many times would Jonkins have to be multiplied before he resulted in a Murray? But Jonkins may make only ten pounds by his book. Is that a fact? Yes and No. He received only ten pounds in money, but he may have made a friend and a client of the publisher; he may have prepared the way for his next book; he may have begun his fame! But if the publisher’s name had also been Jonkins, how then? Then the circulation of the “Dream” might have been confined to the Jonkins family, for one unknown Jonkins can seldom lift another into fame and a balance at the bank. Thus the publisher must be taken into account, and it is l)ut fair that his commission should be determined by his av ell-merited influence. It is not only absurd, but unjust, to say that one publisher is as good as another. Through one house a book may acquire reputation, through
ATTHOl? AM) ITBLLSHEH another it may end in bankruptcy. Do let us be fair, even to publishers. In every other department of life we pay for experience and reputation, why not in the case of publishers? TJie village doctor charges live shillings a visit; the West-end doctor expects two guineas for an intervicAv and a prescription, yet the higher fee may be the cheaper of the two. Mr, Briefless may go into court for a guinea; Mr. Brief may want fifty, and ]Ir. Brief may be the cheaper man! It is practically the same with publishers. In all departments of life we must pay for ability and standing.
The skill of publishers in declining MSS. is almost pathetic in its tender expression. The delicate terms in which medical men express themselves have often been commented on, but I am not aware that publishers have had their deserts in this respect. They have created a special literature for their own use.” Whilst recognising the ability of your
Work “Need Ave read further? “We
regret that we may have nothing in the line
of your work “Enough!” If your work
had come under our notice six months ago, Ave might — — ,” No doubt. Archbishop Tait used to instruct his chaplain, in answering a letter of a certain Avell-known sort, to say,
A PREACHER’8 LIFE
“Tell the man he is an ass, but tell him kindly y What a discriminating publisher the genial Archbishop would have made! In the case of literature, however, the fortune-seeker linds an intermediate reward in Sir Walter Besant’s comforting assurance that “literature is property.” Probably; but what is literature? I have (happily in imagination only) twenty essays or articles in my desk which twenty publishers have declined. Each paper I value at five shillings, (and dear at the price); am I therefore at liberty to credit my estate with a dormant as set of five pounds P Dare I offer it to my laiuUord? I respectfully assure him that it is “property,” yet, having no literary instincts, and believing more in advertisements than in leading articles, he stiffly says that he must have his rent in a more commercial and negotiable form! But even this dilemma is not without its compensations, because it is always left to me to stamp on the prejudiced stupidity of publishers and landlords who fail to see that my obscurity is depth and that my feebleness is self-control.
Perhaps the best way of testing the real value of a well-known and efficient publisher is to do without him. An ambitious and
AUTHOR AXI) PrKLISHER disappointed author lias sometimes been ])roiight to his senses by this painful process. l*ublishing- is not the virginal simplicity which it casually appears to be. It means capital, sagacity, experience, opportunity, and the confidence of the trade. Of course it does seem unreasonable and even unjust that in the Cfise of a ten-shilling book the publisher should make a profit of seventy pounds and the author should receive a cheque for tAVo-and-tvventy. Undoubtedly the figures have an ugly look, especially in the eyes of the mortified author. On the other hand, if the author had dispensed with the publisher, the printer and book-binder might have made a bankrupt of him and ruined his literary career. These ghastly possibilities ought to be faced. In the former case the author incurred no responsibility, and received tAventy-tAvo pounds in cash; in the latter he ran into debt and filled his house with nine hundred volumes which nobody earc?(l to read. Prom this point of view the eifieient publisher is clearly indispensable, and it is from this point of view that the publisher has a right to be regarded.
On the Avliole, therefore, I am of opinion that Barabbas was not a publisher, or if he did belong to the book craft he was an impecunious publisher of minor religious books — a man who persuaded incompetent writers that they should look at the “great good” they were doing and not at the commercial aspect of their missionary labours. In that case Barabbas may possibly have done a contraband trade in a way that justly brought him to the gallows. Even in the religious world there are publishers and publishers. I have known more than one publisher pay handsomely, even lavishly, for writing of a religious order. In only one instance have I heard of real meanness by an obscure “religious” publisher in the provinces, and that was in the case of an exceptional Scot who had been deeply corrupted by long residence in Christian England. To take him as a type of “religious” publishers would be not only unjust, but ridiculous. On all such points we must not too readily take the opinion of disajipointed authors. As a melancholy matter of fact there are “religious” books that will not sell. I am told that even “poetry” is often laid at the Beautiful Gate of the temyle askingalms of them that enter therein. Publishers know the taste of the market, and may be relied upon not wilfully to reject books that may possibly secure the attention of the public. Self-interest js one of the guarantees of genius.