Publishing industry

“ One aspect of the publishing business which has become increasingly prominent during the last fifteen years cannot be overlooked, for it is certain to affect seriously the production of literature as to quality, and its distribution. Capital has discovered that literature is a product out of which money can be made, in the same way that it can be made in cotton, wheat, or iron. Never before in history has so much money been invested in publishing, with the single purpose of creating and supplying the market with manufactured goods. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They may be perfectly certain that a manuscript which respectable firms refuse to publish at their own risk and expense is not worth publishing at all, and they may just as well put their bank-notes upon the fire as pay them to a publisher for producing their works. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a very pretty thing to be a poet-publisher—in the newspapers, but if the poet's imagination happens to get loose among the publisher's facts, it makes sad work, and it is not merry work when the publisher crops out in the poet's verses.
What then remains? It has been proposed that authors combine and form a publishing-house by themselves, publishing their own books and receiving their own profits. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every one must be judged by itself. Five successful books are no absolute guaranty that the sixth will not be worthless.
It seems to me, also, that there is no business in which so few checks exist as in that of publishing. An author, we will say, agrees to receive ten per cent. on the retail price of all copies of his works that are sold, but he has literally nothing but the publisher's word by which to know how many copies are sold. ”

“ Actually, most of the material that is selected for publication today is chosen precisely because it is temporary in value and appeal. Publishing, of course, is a difficult business and every book, in a sense, is a long shot, more likely to fail than to succeed in turning a profit. Most publishing houses have been built on the proposition that the successes must help subsidize the failures, but that this is the only way that the new and unknown talent, which will create the future of literature, can be developed. ”

“ What do I pay them ninety per cent. for, I should like to know, if not that? Publishing is their business. That they have done more than another publisher would, I deny. They have simply transacted their business in the way they deemed most profitable to themselves. I deny147 that they have done anything for me out of the usual course of trade.
“About the advertising, I am indeed not fully persuaded.... Possibly the books have had their day and would have fallen off any way. A fortnight or so ago, perhaps more, Mr. Smith applied to me to write for his paper. I named my price. ”

“ I will not leave this portion of the topic without saying that a perfectly harmonious relation between authors and publishers is most earnestly to be desired, nor without the frank acknowledgment that, in literary tradition and in the present experience, many of the most noble friendships and the most generous and helpful relations have subsisted, as they ought always to subsist, between the producers and the distributors of literature, especially when the publisher has a love for literature, and the author is a reasonable being and takes pains to inform himself about the publishing business. ”

“ It is this terrible uncertainty as to the value of the commodity purchased, which renders publishing a business so difficult, precarious, and unprofitable; and the higher the character of the literature, the greater the difficulty becomes. Publishers who confine themselves chiefly to works of utility and necessity, or to works professional and sectarian, have an easy task to perform, compared with that of a publisher who aims to supply the public with pure science and high literature. ”

“ The publishing trade, I understand, continues to be much depressed, and authors are driven to solicit or invite subscriptions, as being in many cases the only means for giving their works to the world. ”

“ I believe that, in the course of time, the general laws of trade would and ought to so regulate the arrangements for supplying the American public with books that, if there were no restriction as to the nationality of the publisher or as to the importation of printed volumes, the author would select the publishing agent, English or American, who could serve him to best advantage; and that that agent would be found to be the man who would prepare for the largest possible circle of American readers the editions best suited to their wants. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The worst evil of the publishing trade at the present day is that if one publisher strikes out a new line, whether in the form of his books, or the prices at which they are issued, or by bringing into notice some hitherto neglected author or subject, one or more of his competitors immediately tries to put similar editions on the market, and to offer purchasers a little more for their money. ”

“ Nevertheless, somewhere about the opening of our own day an iron-bound tradition became erected in the publishing business, at least in the United States, that books of essays would not sell; could not be made to sell even sufficiently to avoid a considerable loss on the investment of manufacture; in fact, were quite impossible as a publishing venture. No matter how much a publisher himself, or his manuscript reader, might enjoy a collection [Pg 17] of essays that chanced to turn up in his shop, his conviction as to its unmarketability as a book was not altered—not even stirred. ”

“ Precisely similar complaints are frequent enough to-day when all new books are issued under the protection of domestic copyright and under publishing agreements, and while sometimes an indication that the publisher has managed to secure more than his share of the proceeds of literary labor, they are much more frequently simply the expression of the difference between the author’s large expectations concerning the public demand for his books and the actual extent of such demand. ”

“ At this stage in the history of book-production, the “producers,” the men who brought into existence the current literature of the time, and who, having planned [16] and initiated the undertakings, taken the risks, met the outlay, and provided the labour (in many cases with their own heads and hands) , claimed the ownership of the works produced, were the publishers. The literature with which the publishing of printed books was entered upon was comprised, with a few rare exceptions, of editions of old-time classics, prepared to meet the requirements of the scholars of the day. ”

“ In order to meet this criterion, arrangements must be in place to enable publishers (whether they are in the commercial or the not-for-profit sector) to meet the legitimate costs of peer review, production, and marketing, as well as high standards of presentation, discoverability and navigation, together with the kinds of linking and enrichment of texts (‘semantic publishing’) that researchers and other readers increasingly expect. Publishers also need to generate surpluses for investment in innovation and new services ”

“ An author who was voluminous and who had not been able to secure a publisher, might even, as the wags suggested, find it convenient to be burned upon a pile of his own manuscripts. It is evident that in these earlier days of publishing it was no easier than at present for authors or publishers to calculate with accuracy the extent of the public interest in their productions, while it is also probable that then as now an author would rather pay for the making of an abundant supply than incur the dreadful risk of not having enough copies to meet the immediate demand. ”

“ The consolidation of capital in great publishing establishments has its advantages and its disadvantages. It increases vastly the yearly output of books. The presses must be kept running, printers, papermakers, and machinists are interested in this. The maw of the press must be fed. The capital must earn its money. One advantage of this is that when new and usable material is not forthcoming, the “standards” and the best literature must be reproduced in countless editions, and the best literature is broadcast over the world at prices to suit all purses, even the leanest. ”

“ Electronic publishing allowed some academic publishers to keep running their business, with lower costs and quick access. This way, small publishers went on publishing specialized books, for which the printing in a small number of copies had become more and more difficult over the years due to budgetary reasons. ”

“ WORKS FOR AUTHORS.
Having been for many years engaged in conducting an extensive Publishing Business comprising the productions of the most Popular Writers, the Publishers of this little Work beg leave respectfully to state that they have, in consequence of repeated applications, now devoted a branch of their Establishment to conducting the
PUBLICATION OF
WORKS FOR AUTHORS, securing to them the direction and controul, as well as the entire proceeds and property of their Publications. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Embarking in the business of publishing, like embarking in any other business, is determined partly by the relative attractiveness of the occupation and partly by the promised returns of capital. There is no reason to think that the occupation of publishing differs widely from other occupations in attractiveness ”

“ They are the "natural resources" which simplified the problems of our early years and made possible our rapid development and growth, until today, by the application of the same editorial standards and marketing methods, in broader fields, we are able to offer to the author of technical books a highly developed machinery of publication and distribution. ”

“ And you think that the publishers are in business for the developing of talent, and for the glory of literature! And that they care about whether a man of Genius dies in the streets, or not! Why, have I not heard them tell me, with their own lips, that “a publisher who published books that the trade did not want would be driven out of business in a year”? ”

“ Signs were not wanting at the moment that, ambitious and enlightened as were many of the young firm's publishing enterprises, they suffered in practical realisation from a lack of strict business method which it was needful to supply, if the publishing department was to achieve absolute success. The heads of the firm were too busily absorbed in their rapidly growing Indian business to give close attention to the publishing branch ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”