* * * * *

I quote this, the very essence of the work, in order to choke off the feeble, the kind, and the altruistic.  I would not hawk this book.  If I had foreknown what it was I would never have mentioned it.  I would have mentioned it to none, sure that, by the strange force of gravity which inevitably draws together a book and its fit reader, the novel would in the end reach the only audience worthy of it.  I say no more about it.

PUBLISHERS AND AUTHORS

[10 Mar. ’10]

Authentic documents are always precious to the student, and here is one which strikes me as precious beyond the ordinary.  It is a letter received from a well-known publisher by a correspondent of mine who is a journalist: 

“I am awfully sorry that we cannot take your novel, which is immensely clever, and which interested my partner more than anything he has read in a good while.  He agrees with me, however, that it has not got the qualities that make for a sale, and you know that this is the great desideratum with the publisher.  Now don’t get peevish, and send us nothing else.  I know you have a lot of talent, and your difficulty is in applying this talent to really practical problems rather than to the more attractive products of the imagination.  Get down to facts, my son, and study your market.  Find out what the people like to read and then write a story along those lines.  This will bring you success, for you have a talent for success.  Above all things, don’t follow the lead of our headstrong friend who insists upon doing exactly what you have done in this novel, namely, neglecting the practical market and working out the fanciful dictates of imagination.  Remember that novel-writing is as much of a business as making calico.  If you write the novels that people want, you are going to sell them in bales.  When you have made your name and your market, then you can afford to let your imagination run riot, and then people will look at you admiringly, and say, ’I don’t understand this genius at all, but isn’t he great?’ Do you see the point?  You must do this AFTER you have won your market, not before, and you can only win your market in the first place by writing what folks want to buy.—­Sincerely yours—­”

* * * * *

The writer is American.  But the attitude of the average pushing English publisher could not have been more accurately expressed than in this letter sent by one New Yorker to another.  The only thing that puzzles me is why the man originally chose books instead of calico.  He would have sold more bales and made more money in calico.  He would have understood calico better.  In my opinion many publishers would have understood calico better than books.  There are two things which a publisher ought to know about novel-producers—­things which do not, curiously enough, apply to calico-producers, and which few publishers