Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1911-04-30
Author May Be Mother of Child, But Not Father
 Who Supports It
.THE BEST SELLERS"
Says Many Interesting Things About Work of Middleman Between
 Novelist and Reader.
(By Josephine Meighan.)

(By Josephine Meighan.)
 A bargain-hunting book lover at- tended a sale of Shakespeare in the book department of one of the big shops the other day.
 T can't find Macbeth" he com plained to the girl in charge.
 "Hey, Gussie," called the girl to confrere at another counter, "isn't Macbeth, in this sale?"
 Macbeth ain't' book" sniffed the other girl. 'Tt's lamp chimney!"
 Now, if this could happen to Shake speare. can one wonder at what hap pens to Jones?
 Good wine needs no bush, but a good writer needs publisher, and bad writer might as we'll string him. self chain of millstones as expect to be 'best seller without hust- ling publisher to boost his, master pieces for him.
 Publishers are behind the times most of them," said H. K. Fly, the other day as he sat in his airy office whose windows open over the garden of the Little Church Around the Cor ner 'They have as a body made less progress than any other business men. They are conservative and employ the same methods today that they employed fifty years ago. don't believe in the "good old ways" myself. I know from experience that the writers of books are not the men who can always make people buy boks, and it is only the very ex- ceptional book that the public will discover and buy without having had Its attention called to it first.
 Need of Boosting.
 "A really stupid book, of course, won't go far, no matter how strenu- ously it is god fathered. but book with moderate merit properly pushed will have, good sale, and good book ingeniously engineered will have ten times as great a sale as if it had not been intrpduced with fan fare of trumpets.
 "The author and the publisher stand in much the same relation to the book as mother and father stand toward the child The author brings 1t into the world, but the pub fisher has to get out and hustle and find it food and clothes, cover and friends, and support. It's very fine thing tO be written or born, but it is also important to be properly launch ed in the world, and the book badly started is handicapped even as the child badly clothed and trained k handicapped, The genius and thu masterpiece are the exceptions among chilren and books"
 MT. Fly, who is keen faced young man with the quiet manner that ok ten veils electric energy. smiled a his own happy analogy.
 T read in The Globe about 'bes seller who said the other day tha b,000.000 copies of his books hat been sold," he continued. "He seem ed to think that his stories had hat everything toA do with these enor. nous sales. As matter of fact that man Is very fortunate in his pub lishers. The first book he wrote 1. the best thing he has ever done, bu 1t didn't sell we'll. It was published by conservative publisher. The sec ond, and all his subsequent books were brought out by a man witt modern methods-huxe sales have followed I could recall man, similar instances.
 The Novelixed Play.
 T have made rather speciality O publishing the novelized play. w, brought cut the novelized version O the play of Madame K, and we ad vertised it largely. One 'ad' an nounced that full account wa given in the book of what becam of Madame X.. during the twent years that she dropped out of tn play. didn't know there were 6 many curious people in the worlt Readers and play-goers simply ros to that bait and gobbled 1t. book an alh We had had three chapters writ ten telling how the cast off wife ha gone south and fallen little by littl from her position df dignity to ths of the storm beaten. drug soake creature that she appears in tn third act of the play. That book sol to the tune of 1000 copies in Phil, delphia alohe during the six weei