Publishing house

“ No book on which serious work has been done ought to be rejected or accepted without the benefit of the independent reports of two or three sensible persons who have carefully read it, and without the discussions of these reports by three or four other persons of experience and judgment. And in at least three American88 publishing houses every manuscript of any value or promise runs a course of hopeful consideration such as this; for the publisher wants good new books, he wants good new writers; and he wants them badly. Half a dozen popular writers will build a publishing house. ”

“ And here should be introduced a word in general on the appearance of the printed matter that is sent out by a publishing house. It must be good printing. It must be attractive printing. It is the indication to the people whose eyes it meets of the work of the house it advertises. Few people want to buy badly made books; and, unconsciously, if a circular or catalogue is commonplace and badly printed, those qualities will be attached to the book advertised. ”

“ The methods employed by the various publishing-houses in keeping and rendering their accounts with authors vary with each house, but all publishers are alike to the extent of realizing that this end of the business must be absolutely above suspicion. ”

“ The publications of the establishment are as numerous as those of a great publishing house, and as a matter of fact, they are all given away; although there is a provision for their sale at cost price, I doubt if a thousand dollars’ worth has been sold in five years. There are three series, the aspect of which must be familiar to every observing person who has ever spent a day among the shelves in any American library of respectable standing. ”

“ Even when I gave him my manuscript to publish, and we began to talk terms, I endeavoured not to peer into his heart. He gave me good terms however. He explained that his idea of a publishing house was a sort of a companionable enterprise, and that authors and publishers ought to be friends. They at least ought to try.
I carefully looked over his list to see who his author-friends were, and picked out one or two pretty rum ones and asked him about them. He admitted with composure that of course every man made mistakes. ”

“ He thinks he is Somebody, and attempts to prove it by kicking all the old contributors out of the office and forwarding invitations for manuscripts to every member of the Class of '10.
There is no writer of experience who has failed to meet this sort of editor. For years a publishing house may have steadily increased in power and prestige through the loyalty and labor of the old contributor, only to give some darling of the campus a desk and the authority to begin oslerizing faithfulness and ability. ”

“ Government and party control of all printing and publishing activities is centered in the Council on Socialist Culture and Education. This party-state organization formulates policy guidelines for the publishing industry and utilizes other government-controlled or government-owned agencies, such as the General Directorate for the Press and Printing, the various publishing houses, and book distribution centers to supervise and coordinate day-to-day operations. ”

“ Those in authority in publishing-houses and elsewhere should compel reporters, editors, printers, proofreaders, and others whose duty it is to know style to master the office code. In many instances the carelessness of writers adds to the cost of production in every other department of publishing. ”

“ As most of the publishing houses seem to have changed into mere job-printing offices, publishing nothing for which they are not paid in advance, or which they cannot pick up for nothing, there seems small encouragement for verse-writers who are not prepared to hire their books printed. ”

“ Every publisher’s experience is the same—if he be a real publisher and will long remain a real publisher. Else he would be only a printer and a salesman, and mere printers and salesmen have not often built publishing houses. For publishing houses have this distinction over most other commercial institutions—they rest on the friendship of the most interesting persons in the world, the writers of good books. ”

“ The contracts of various publishing-houses differ in their clauses covering "author's alterations," which include all changes made from the original manuscript as delivered to the printer. Some publishers allow a flat sum of $25 [5] ; others allow 10% of the printer's bill for composition and electrotyping. The average author cannot understand the expense of making changes after the manuscript has been put in type, and this point is one of the 16most disagreeable features which creep into the relations between author and publisher. ”

“ There are also extant a great many valuable periodical, magazine and newspaper articles which set forth in some detail accounts of the founders of other nineteenth century publishing houses, which accounts, together with what has appeared in book form, make a rather inchoate but highly valuable mass of data that could and should be compiled and published as soon as a scholarly man of historical habit can be found to edit and prepare it for the press. ”

“ The truth is, publishing is too important a profession and our publishing houses are too important as institutions to be at the mercy of present conditions. The making of schoolbooks and the vending of standard old books in sets, which are useful vocations, but are not publishing proper, are now done best by firms and companies that do nothing else. Hence publishing proper—the bringing out of new books—must find a safer basis than the present conventional profit. ”

“ As nearly as I can make out the publishing houses in the United States that are conducted as dignified institutions are conducted with as little degrading commercialism as the old houses whose history has become a part of English literature, and I believe that they are conducted with more ability. ”

“ Owing to his constant contact with authors, he was in a peculiarly fortunate position to know their plans in advance of execution, and he was beginning to learn the ins and outs of the book-publishing world. He canvassed the newspapers subscribing to his syndicate features, but found a disinclination to give space to literary news. To the average editor, purely literary features held less of an appeal than did the features for women. Fewer persons were interested in books, they declared; besides, the publishing houses were not so liberal advertisers as the department stores. ”

“ Other things being equal, choose a publisher who is located in the great book and literary centre of the country. No doubt the cost of printing and publishing is a trifle more in a large city, where rents are high, than in country or semi-country places. ”

“ Their wonderful march to their eminent and leading position as publishers has given an excellent example to the country in refining and solidifying the common rules of business in their own field, and elevating and dignifying a branch of trade than which not one is clothed with nobler and purer associations. From this house, also, go forth a quarterly, two monthlies, and a weekly magazine, any one of which would add lustre to the repute of the publishers. None but sound and sweet literature comes from hence. ”

“ It is not necessary to remind you that publishers may to-day furnish a duplicate set of plates to any concern on earth desiring to reproduce one of their books, and that the book may be reprinted by the purchaser without the bother and expense of resetting the type; but the printer of the early days was not so fortunate, for if a concern in New York wished to reprint and sell a book originally printed in Boston, he was obliged to reset it, taking as copy the Boston production. ”

“ Henry’s complaints concerning futile and troublesome correspondence might, of course, be repeated in many a publishing office to-day, but the modern publisher is helped out of the difficulty to some extent by his stenographers and typewriters. It remains a marvel how it was possible, without any time-saving appliances, for the publishers of the fifteenth century to conduct a complicated business, to give personal labour to preparing for the press works calling for original scholarship and detailed labour, and to carry on, in autographic letters, literary and theological correspondence. ”

“ The names of Members and Members-elect of both Houses of the Congress, including those of the Vice President and Speaker, will be printed in caps and small caps if mention is made of them, except in extract matter.
Deceased Members' names will be set in caps and small caps in eulogies only on the first day the House or Senate is in session following the death of a Member, in a speech carrying date when the Member was eulogized, or on memorial day in the Senate and House. Eulogy day in one House will be treated the same in the other. ”

“ If a publisher has an edition of five, ten or one hundred thousand of a book to be delivered in piece, or single copies, an express company representative will see him at once—often see him before the book is from the press. ”

“ Style and format of congressional reports Below are rules that should be followed for the makeup of congressional numbered reports. In either Senate or House reports, follow bill style in extracts from bills. Report numbers run consecutively from first to second session:
1. All excerpts to be set in 10-point type, cut in 2 ems on each side, except as noted in paragraph 3 below. For ellipses in cut-in matter, lines of five stars are used. ”

“ They will endeavour to shape great publishing trusts and associations that will have the same relation to the publishing office of to-day that a medical association has to a patent-medicine dealer. They will not only publish, but sell; their efficient book-shops, their efficient system of book-distribution will replace the present haphazard dealings of quite illiterate persons under whose shadow people in the provinces live. ”

“ The early separation of publishing from bookselling is touched upon, and the emergence of publishers as a separate class is outlined. The transitory phenomenon of the man of letters assisting the publisher in an advisory capacity as to the suitability of manuscripts submitted for publication is an interesting chapter in the expansion of the publishing business. Publishing being today largely a commercial affair, the literary reader has in the main been supplanted by the man of business with an aptitude for estimating how many copies of a given book can be sold. ”

“ The Senate having tried Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, upon articles of impeachment exhibited against him by the House of Representatives, and two-thirds of the Senators present not having found him guilty of the charges contained in the second, third, and eleventh articles of impeachment, it is therefore Ordered and adjudged. ”

“ The cheapened process of book publication on a large scale, and the investment of large sums of money in the publishing business, with its mechanics of sale management as well as printing, has made possible an enormous output of literature on all subjects and has widened the range of general information in possession of the public. The whole system of modern life would be impossible without the press. ”

“ We decided that we would never again place ourselves at a publisher's mercy, but would ensure the defence of all we published by publishing everything ourselves; we resolved to become printers and publishers, and to take any small place we could find and open it as a Freethought shop. I undertook the sub-editorship of the National Reformer, and the weekly Summary of News, which had hitherto been done by Mr. Watts, was placed in the hands of Mr. Bradlaugh's daughters. The next thing to do was to find a publishing office. Somewhere within reach of Fleet Street the office must be ”

“ GPO recognizes that a Federal author today often begins the content creation process at a personal computer, and frequently publishes the final document on the Web, without creating a print version that will make its way to a user's hands or a library's shelves. Many Government publications are now born digital and published to the Web, with few if any copies printed for traditional public access via bookstores or libraries. ”

“ Publishers perform necessary labour that must be compensated and any new system of dissemination, such as open access, will require an entity to perform this labour, even if that labour takes a different form at different levels of compensation. One may be opposed to specific practices of extant publishers, or particular hypothetical publishing enterprises, but it is not possible to desire the functions of filtering, framing and amplification without there being a publisher, even if this publisher is also the author. ”

“ It is generally understood that the name of an Established Publisher operates not only as a Recommendation to those Works to which it is Prefixed, but also tends to make them known through Extensive Connexions already formed. It also tends to associate them with other Popular Works issuing from the same Establishment. ”

“ The Publisher and his wife live a few doors away, where they are generously accumulating fresh associations and memories for our successors in the Quarter. To keep open house for the literary men and women of the time is a fashion among publishers that did not go [Pg 363] out with the Dillys and the Dodsleys, and an occasional Boswell would find a note-book handy behind the windows that open upon the river from the Publisher's chambers. ”