"BEST SELLERS"

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 143, 20 June 1925, Page 17

"BEST SELLERS"

FAMO.TJS' SUCCESSES THAT WERE

TURNED DOW tt,

The ordinary first, novel does pretty well _if it 3 .sale reaches 3000 (writes a publisher's reader in the "Star"). Obviously, there is no ready-to-hand formula for a "best-seller." The most experienced of publishers' advisers can only work -on. broad ■■ vague principles. No one can say, "Ihis manuscript will sell; that one won't." .Again and again expert prophecy has proved false and many famous successes have been turned down. George Meredith rejected Mrs. Henry Wood's- work and even "Tarzan of the •Apes'.' dragged wearily from publisher to publisher, But one is keeping within tolerably accurate limit if one says that "best-sellers" divide themselves into stimulants and sedatives. That is to say ; they either put into words feelings which make, the ordinary person say, "That is exactly what I have always felt," thus stimulating discussion, or they act as a sedative by providing an escape from everyday monotony. For example, Sir Phillip Gibbs's "The Middle'of the Road," which had a big sale, and the record-breaking "If Winter Comes," both gave expression to the submerged reaction . against war mentality which ' came with the Armistice—both these books were successful. stimulants. A good;example of the sedative class is "The Blue Lagoon," in which' Mr. Stacpoole creates a world vastly different in every detail from the ordinary Englishman's workday drabness. ° The bulk of novel readers are women, and, in consequence, a "love" interest is sure to make a strong appeal. The Hulls, Delia, and Glyns of the literary world will never lack a. public. Again, some books belong to the 'bread-winner" rather than the. "bestseller ' ..class, that is, they go on sellin" steadily year after year. The sales of ■Kiplmg, Dickens,, and Stevenson are perennial. Individual books by less well-known people sometimes bring in a constant stream of royalties—"Kimono " by John Paris, Michael Fairless's "RoadMender, ' and "Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard," by Eleanor Farjeon being examples of this typo.