MANY DEMANDS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23081, 6 January 1937, Page 10

MANY DEMANDS

A PUBLISHER’S LIFE GAUGING THE PUBLIC TASTE Almost everyone knows a publisher, or someone in a publishing office, or an author’s friend, yet it is surprising how little people know about the publishing business and how many odd things they'imagine (writes Stanley M. Rinehart, president of the National Association of Book Publishers of the United States, in the New York Times). I even know several authors who look upon it as a mysterious rite by which their manuscripts are transformed from paper into gold notes—a good deal of paper into each note, to be sure!—and who pop in and out of their publisher’s office with a heart-warming combination of speed and confidence. On the other hand, the general idea about publishing is shown by something like this:

The telephone rings on the publisher’s desk—any publisher’s desk. A voice perhaps vaguely familiar says, “Well, hello! This is Bill (or Harry or Charles), I haven’t seen you since reunion. How’s the boy? Fine! Well, say, I have a favour to ask you as a publisher. A friend of mine (or my wife’s or my maiden aunt’s) has just written something that sounds pretty good and he (or she) doesn’t know how to go about submitting it to a publisher. So I said I knew you and that I’d ask you as a favour to look at it personally and not just have it go through the ordinary readers. Of course, Jane, that’s the author (or Frank), says to tell you it’s not in final shape yet, and if you like the main idea she’ll put on a new end ing and get it retyped and think up a new title. Can I send it over as it is to-day? And shall I telephone you day after to-morrow? ” There’s an idea in the minds of many would-be writers and the public generally that publishers are surrounded by staffs of hard-faced manuscript readers whose sole function is to keep the work of budding genius away from their superiors. Nothing could be further from the truth. Each publisher has one or two readers, generally young and extremely optimistic women, who spend their time looking for something of even passable merit among the 10 or 15 manuscripts which arrive each day. And so many of these manuscripts are so obviously impossible that they are quite likely to show unwarranted enthusiasm for a manuscript of the most mediocre quality. So when the publisher hangs up the telephone he generally sends for this estimable young person ana says, " Joe Smith is sending me a manuscript to-day. Look it over, and if it has any possibilities, put it with the other manuscripts you want me to take home to-night.” A publisher, to be good at his job, must be an editor, a merchant, an advertising mah, a diplomat, and a banker. Joe’s wife’s friend’s manuscript may by some remote accident have the germ o| an idea which will interest the public. A remote chance, for even one acceptance out of a hundred manuscripts is a high average, but the chance is there. The idea buried in 300 typewritten pages must be excavated, hours spent with the author in advising and revising. How does a publisher select books for his list? In my opinion the only rule is to publish what you think is the best available book of its kind. The chances are that, if your choice appeals to a good section of the public taste, there will be enough reasonably successful books on your list to offset the bad guesses. No publisher can ask more than that! And for any publisher to count on more than a general hunch as to what the public will want the following year is absolutely futile. Not so long ago a publisher friend of mine was making a speech before a rather large crowd, and at the end, at question time —that Valhalla of the barbarians—a young man rose with a not unusual question. “ How,” he asked, “ can you reconcile your ideals and your publishing? What, for instance, would you do if the works of Mr —— were offered to you? ” (mentioning the name of a successful author whose work is respectable in every sense and whose only apparent stigma in the mind of the questioner is that he might be classed as “ popular”). My publisher friend forgot his audience and swore loudly, but finally regained voice enough to say that, if he had not accepted Mr ’s' work, it would only have been because he might not have recognised its worth. A publisher must issue widely diverse lists of books, without patronising the “ popular.” Only a good proportion of successful books made it possible for him to afford the beginners, who are by and large unprofitable. No one would have any sympathy with any firm which put out only the precious manuscripts or the scarce literary gem (if it were possible to agree upon that rarity), unless it was able to maintain its staff and pay its bills. In other words, each publishing house must issue from three to fifteen reasonably successful books each month in order to continue in the general publishing field. The relationship of author and publisher is at its best a partnership. Many successful writers depend upon their publishers for advice concerning the subject on which they should write, for detailed criticism, for creating them as public personages; and they depend on them, too, for financing in times of trouble, for help in getting married or divorced, for steamship tickets and even minding the child. (I once entertained a little demon on a Cunard pier for three frightful hours.) The publisher pays the author a royalty on each book sold, usually a percentage of the selling price. But the firm about to issue the book has only begun its function when the manuscript has been at last revised and is ready for the printer. What size, shape, number of pages? How many illustrations, what kind of jacket, what price? Let’s get sample pages, several rough sketches from an artist. April is a good month for this book, so let’s put it on the April schedule. The salesmen must be supplied with samples and full information. Selling, advertising, publicity and manufacturing go on simultaneously. It takes from five to eight weeks to make a book of average size. The rule of thumb,

which has many exceptions, is one week each to set in type, to divide the type into pages, to make electrotype plates, to print, and to bind a volume. The author has to read type proofs at least once, usually just after the type has been set, and before it is made up into page lengths. Sometimes he has to read the pages, too, usually because he has rewritten the book in the margins of his first proof, one extravagance for which he must himself pay the cost! And often, when it is important to issue a book quickly, the proof-reading (jlay finds the author away on a visit, or nursing influenza, or hidden 14 miles from the nearest post office. At last the book is ready, looking very smart (or so the publisher thinks) and very bright in its unspotted cover. The staff is enthusiastic. Miraculously, the author appears to claim his six free copies and looking at once proud and hurt. “ It’s nice,” he says doubtfully. “Of course, I thought the cloth binding was to be red. You know how I hate blue. I think I said I’d like red last spring. And the girl on the jacket, don’t you think she’s just a bit frivolous-looking for the heroine? You know Maizie had an undertone of seriousness in spite of her way of life. However, that’s that, and I really don’t mind your calling me a brilliant story-teller in the blurb, although my last book was compared to the genius of Mark Twain, as you very well remember. Now let’s talk about advertising.” ... Yes, the publisher must be a diplomat as well as a merchant, realising as he does that a writer naturally hopes to see his book among the best sellers, that he will often be held responsible for its failure to reach that goal, and that sound success for an author must be built slowly and book by book. Meteoric best sellers are the usual combination of exceptional ability producing exactly the right book at the time the public want it. Even taking these occasional huge sales into account, the average sale of a novel in the United States has been estimated at something under 2500 copies.

Are publishers infallible? I seem to have indicated that they are, but certainly they are not. There are legendary stories of the number of publishers who rejected “The Old Wives’ Tale ” and “ Of Human Bondage.” We ourselves refused the first draft of “ The Lives of a Bengal Lancer ” because we had already contracted for another and unsuccessful story of India. Publishers make great and sometimes fantastic demands on their authors. Like editors of magazines, they are inclined to ask for “ another just like the last.” And our authors, out of friendliness and confidence have written what we asked, have bought us tickets (occasionally), minded our children, and seen us through our tough spots. Publishing is a gamble, both for publisher and author. The former gambles his financial investment in the book, the latter his year or more of time devoted to writing it. And I am sure the publisher himself is sometimes responsible for the failure of a good book, difficult as it is to rationalise the reasons for success or failure. He can only apply the best ideas of manufacture, advertising, and selling to it as he sees them, and hope that he has presented it to the public in its most favourable light. The publishing office of to-day is no den of greybeards solemnly reading and conferring. William M‘Fee, who claims not to hear very well, dropped into a publisher’s office not so very long ago. and after listening a moment exploded, “ My God, this place sounds like a boiler factory! ”