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(numerous excisions omitted)

An author is usually a man with small capital or none; it takes him a long time to perfect his work during which he must live and pay his way; his resources are apt to be exhausted, the small bills to be coming round, and growing big; and it is then, if there were no publisher, that he would have to meet a fresh and far heavier expence [sic] for printing, binding, advertising, and settle down (if his creditors allowed) to a fresh period of writing and accumulating bills. If his creditors proved impatient, he would pass through the court, his book would leave his hands before it could possibly begin to pay; and he might sit down to begin another work (if he were so inclined) on the compact capital of a bankruptcy certificate. From all this, the publisher saves him; he makes the trade possible for poor men, he relieves the rich of worry, care and risk. All, no doubt, for a consideration. No one supposes the publisher to be a philanthropist; he has a domestic corner of his own, where little publishers bleat daily for sustenance; and he knows, as well as any author, the phenomenon of the little bill.

It is contended, however, that the consideration is too great. The author, it is said, creates the work, his is the sole credit, and he has the least of the return. His is the sole credit; true enough; and observe, he only gets it. But as for the returns, there is more to be said. Some books are successes, for which the publisher has paid very little; and then I am sorry for the author. Some are failures, for which the author has been well paid; and then I am sorry for the publisher. Some being nothing to either, when we may be allowed to pity both. The trade is a two-sided lottery, and the profit is distributed at random; but what authors are too ready to forget, the loss is still the publisher's, and not only the loss upon one book, but that on his whole business. His position must not be judged as that of a person in any single transaction. He is more than a person, he represents a certain capital invested; if the capital draw more or less than even shares with the author, over the publication of (say) a Pickwick, what is that to the question? The publishers trade is not to publish Pickwick's and She's and Robert Elsmere's; his trade is to keep an open shop, and be ready to make an advance to any young gentleman who appears with a manuscript of promise. It is by this trade as a whole that he must be judged. The only criterion is to take his profit and loss year in, year out, and to inquire whether the return on the capital is vastly greater than in other forms of trade. I have never heard this contention even advanced; and that being so, I will, until further information, allow his trade to be fair; and his percentages, his bookkeeping, and the whole of his mysterious methods to represent a roughly just division with authors as a whole.

This is far from saying that anyone ought to rejoice in these methods in themselves. They are on the other hand, profoundly annoying and unnecessary, and cast over transactions, very likely as honest as the day, a grave shadow of suspicion. Under any press of bargain, the author is simply partner with his publisher. And where in the world will you behold so pitiful a spectacle as this author-partner, who knows nothing whatever of the means, the processes or the profits of the business by which he lives, who takes what is given him blindfold, who should be

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called not merely a sleeping but rather an insane or infant partner, from whom figures are kept like edge tools from children? Lately, Mr. Besant took up the cudgels; and some firms (all honour to them) began to send us returns. I like to get them, they please my vanity, they are marks of consideration, I can feel I am getting out of infancy and my guardian even consents to reason with me. But at the same time I smile at what I cannot but think the simplicity in Mr. Besant. The late lamented Bully Hayes, the pirate of the Pacific, used to visit islands (where he was sure that nobody could read) the bearer of a letter, which he would obligingly read out himself to the local trader; and that innocent was usually convinced and handed out his oil. I have no curiosity to hear such letters read to me, for I have no idea whether they are read as they are written. I have no curiosity to receive extracts from my publishers' books, or even turn the books themselves; for I have no guess whether they mean what they profess to mean.

To the point, a young author once visited his publisher. It was a Saturday and the young author's little volume had been out a week; timidly he inquired, how the publisher was satisfied - "Delighted, my dear boy - we are delighted," was the reply, "But you had better see for yourself." And so - just what Mr. Besant would like, the books were produced; and the young author saw his own eyes [sic], the total of n copies. He went away both sad and puzzled; and, because n being a very small number, he saw little hope of ever entering upon his postponed royalties; and puzzled, since n being such a very small number, he could not conceive why the publisher should be so delighted, His way led him past a bookseller's, with whom he dealt; and he inquired, and found that a number of copies which we may represent by x had been sold over the counter. Now x was so great a factor of n, that the young author's wonder rather increased; and early the next Monday, chancing to be in another city, he repeated his question of another bookseller. There he found that y had been sold; and x arithmetical calculation, yielded the formula $x+y>n$. I do not know if the author was delighted, my dear boy; but he was extremely perplexed. Had the formula given $x+y=n$, the case would have been peculiar. He would then have had to face the coincidence that only two booksellers in England had sold any copies of his work, and these two, in two different cities, the men with whom he dealt: the whole remaining forces of the booktrade remaining sternly neuter. And even that hypothesis would have left one element unexplained: the delight of the publisher. But $x+y$ was greater than n; hot by much indeed, but by some copies; two, I believe, and where had those two copies come from. Perhaps the binder was unfaithful; or possibly the printer; and the circumstance, which would doubtless damp the publisher's delight, had not yet been discovered. Or perhaps the books were kept on a symbolic system, such that n copies sold meant something different from the sale of n copies - meant, for instance, (as a guess) that the net profit on the number of copies really sold would equate the gross profit on the sale of n copies.

I cannot tell if the young author was right in his deductions; but I know one circumstance that seems to point in that direction. The publishing trade does not stand alone; it is one of three or four interdependent trades: the author, the publisher, the printer, the book seller, the paper maker, all hang together; they are fleas upon each others backs; only the author comes first and is kept outside the ring, *n* and the bookseller comes last, and (I rather

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believe) has the heavy end of the stick. Now suppose the publisher to give me not my returns but vouchers. One of these will be a receipted bill from a printer; which will legally establish the fact that the publisher has paid over to the printer, on account of our joint venture, the sum of X pounds. I know that the publisher has many other such vouchers, which will be handed round to my brother authors and fill them (as mine fills me) with a sense that all is for the best. Each of these bills is receipted as paid in full; suppose we had them all together, and added the totals, we should find the publisher had paid over to the printer, in the course of a year, the sum of n pounds altogether. Now here fomes in a habit of the printing trade in England, or in certain parts of it. A printer when he does steady pieces of work for such an employer as (for instance) a lawyer, sends in at the end of the year a whole series of separate bills for each job charged in full, and for a second bill reduced by (according to the firm) by anything from 10 to 30 per cent. It is only this last that is paid; but all are solemnly receipted. In other words, the lawyer pays from 70 to 90 per cent, and receives legal vouchers for 100. This is just what I believe of the publisher; he has vouchers for n pounds; I believe he has not paid more than 75 per cent of n; I see with my eyes that he debits me with my share in full; I believe he does the same to all my brother authors; and if that be so it is clear he has put 25 per cent of n clandestinely into his pocket.

Not dishonestly, mind, as not so in the essence. The supposition is that his profit on the whole is just; the complaint, that these clandestine items are irritating, needless, and in all likelihood formally illegal. In other words, if this is the way the publisher's business is done, it is not a good way to do business. The chance discovery of some such petty misstatement is at the bottom of one half of the complaints of authors; and if the same came out before a court of law it might be found illegal with such deplorable results. Doubtless the system arose naturally; it was forced on by the greed of authors, and by their habit of regarding their own particular transaction as the revenue of the publisher's profit, whereas the publisher sees in it only a single off-set in a large field of profit and loss. More and more the publisher came to shield his operations in shadow; more and more to collect misleading vouchers. And the result if I am at all right is a bad set of trade customs, and a dangerous habit of mind in the publisher himself. I will give an example of what I mean; It is possible that there is nothing illegal in the system of printers' vouchers; it is likely that there is nothing illegal in the system of cross advertisements, with cross cheques and cross receipts, which exists and which alone explains the multiplicity of magazines in England. But I have known this same system of calling operations by other names to lead a respectable publisher into an act that was certainly illegal; I have known him (that is) to of a book, subject to a royalty, to sell the advance sheets in America, and not to account for the proceeds of the sale. We can explain his action thus: he had always meant to reserve this sale of the sheets, he had neglected to compass this in the bargain, and he was so used to a system of working in the dark with a hoodwinked author, that he here stepped across the boundary into actual illegality and did not perceive the difference. And observe: mostly likely it was quite just: he had always meant to do it, the act was needful to put him in a fair position; and perhaps when

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all was done he lost upon the venture, and the author gained.

Of course this is all guesswork, which is not my fault, but the fault of publishers. After 17 years of active authorship, I ought to be far beyond guessing as to the actions of my partners. If my guessing is all wrong, it is therefore no fault of mine. If my guessing is right for some, the rest should clear their feet. If it be right for all, I suggest in our common interest the method should be changed. I do not think in the least they take an unfair advantage; I think they take a fair share in mysterious and stealthy ways; and I hope the time has now come when they can afford to be more open, open altogether? I am the first to admit the difficulty. The author will always continue to regard his venture of itself, the publisher must always continue to think of it as one of many; and the two points of view are hard to bring in focus. A Pacific island king is in the habit of telling traders, "You cheat me a littl', no cheat too much." I feel inclined to parody him, and say, "I believe you must contrive to keep us in blindness, for in the essence of the matter your view of the business is more just than ours; but deceive us not so openly, for we are human and we rage when we find ourselves deceived - even for our own good."

It may be asked, why does the publisher require to deceive the authors? why should he not refrain from publishing doubtful and desperate books, and combine his capital on those in which the profit and loss are fairly certain? For these reasons, 1st to "turn over" his capital. 2nd Because the printer and the paper maker jog him up, in order that they may keep their hands employed and their mills and presses going. 3rd Because it is by this class of books that the big hauls are made and the rising author lassoed and attached. This is the sportsmanlike side of the trade. And it is the one of all others of which the author must not complain, for it is his door of entry.

A smallish class of authors live by their books and help the publisher to live by his capital: another and far larger class may be called the detrimentals. They do not live by their books; the publication of which is a source of some meagre profit, or perhaps none to themselves, and of loss to the publisher and the established author. To the publisher because he does not recover his outlay; to the established author, because there is only a certain sum of money on the market to buy books at all, and every detrimental diverts a small proportion; nothing in itself but (the detrimentals being many) formidable in the sum. I was myself a detrimental for many years; and am grateful to the publishers for their long suffering hopefulness; or perhaps I might now be a billiard marker. When I hear Mr. Besant come forward with a scheme for the cooperative publication of books by a body of authors, I cannot but recall my years as a detrimental. There is no likelihood that authors (who have something else to do) could manage this branch of business better, or even so well as a publisher; there would therefore be profit and loss; the loss side of the affair will strike rudely on the authors, so long accustomed to the cushion of the publisher, the detrimental list will be steadily cut down; the established authors will make war upon them root and branch; and we should soon have such a bear garden as the world can scarcely imagine. The royal academicians, the hanging committee of the salon are, are complained upon hard enough; it will be nothing to what we shall hear of the Cooperative Authors. The painter is tempted to keep his young rivals off the line, fearing a loss which he can never compute. But the author can compute the

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loss; he sees it in black and white upon the balance sheet.

What: he cries, does he toil his days producing really saleable works, and curtail his spare hours to run the publishing business, only to find at the year's end that the profits have been reduced by £40 for Brown's novel, and £60 for Jones' poems, and £10 for Robinson's travels in Kurdistan? How will it fare with Brown, Jones and Robinson? And what kind of undignified spectacle should the effete old established authors present to the world, as they held the doors of their monopoly? And what a picture of legitimate anger would be shown by young talent as it beat upon the ungenerous portals? If we are artists and scholars, let that be enough; let us not, for the hope of greater hire, enter upon an arena for which we have no preparation, and where we shall be tempted to display the worst defects of man end, when age comes, of age.

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