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I have waited to answer your
letter because there are several things I want to take up
seriously with you, and yet I do not exactly want to risk a talk with you,
because you can frequently persuade me against my better
While you were away MacMillan's sent for me to see whether I would let them
have and a Western story to go in a series
of American novels they are bringing out. I said, unwisely, that I was not
free to do so. During the last few years I have met several propositions
from other publishers in the same way. I hate the bother of changes, and
business transactions are never a pleasure to me. I have avoided talking to
publishers because it made me restless and discontented, and because my
relations with you, personally have always been so pleasant, even in
business. But this bill for proof corrections has brought things to a head
with me. I do not think it a just charge. I kept duplicata charge from the
printer, but it seems that a publisher usually pays this charge for a book
he wants and is glad to handle.
MacMillans, whose books are well printed, tell me that the cost of
composition on a long novel for and we have author's corrections
amounting to $244.00. Is it possible that it took one man thirty working
days to make my corrections? You may tell me that the Riverside compositors charge more per hour, but
why, after all, should your authors be charged more than MacMillans'?
Within the last few weeks, three and in addition to increase in royalties and
$100.00 $1000.00 to $1500.00 cash
advance on delivery of copy, they offer to give the book and me much better
advertising than I have hitherto had. One firm has outlined an advertising scheme which seems to me
excellent. They believe that the aim of of may work out well for them as a
business policy, but I do not think it works out well for me. I think that the recognition of the public and
reviewers has outstripped that of my publishers. This has been borne in upon
me by a hundred little and big things until it has become a conviction. The
publishers have made no use of this growing appreciation, and take no
account of any evidence of it except the evidence of sales, which, with work
like mine, is not indicative of the real
I want to say a word about reviews. I know it is your theory that reviews do
not sell a book. But some publishers do make them sell books. Several men
have told me here that they believed that
the
people who help to make opinion. I believe the New Republic never received
copy of
One of the cleverest reviewers in New York telephoned me not long ago to
discuss true; glance, if you will, at that the jacket on that book; if ever there
was a timid, perfunctory endorsement! "We unhesitatingly recommend etc"! No use has been made of ones was lost in a special publication,
bo book. That excellent page advertisement devoted to the best
foreign and American notices of my books, was printed in sentences which said
the books had the qualities
I think "Java Head" has been splendidly advertised, with real enthusiasm and
fire. You may tell me that it has not done a great deal for the sale of this
particular book, but I know it has done a great deal for
This brings me to the real point of my dissatisfaction about advertising. My
present publishers print my books and give them a formal introduction to the
public. At least one of the
publishers with whom I have been talking here believes in my books, and he
wants my kind of work enough to spend money in pushing it, to lose money for
the first year or two in pushing it. You know that has to be done to place
an author of any marked originality. You know that Condar even
I know that you like to publish my books, but I am not assured that the other members of your firm do.
If they do not, they will never do more than print them
Do Houghton Mifflin want to publish me enough to put some money them
in of advertising as have been given to "Java
Head", for instance. That book is still being advertised, by the way, while
Antonia was long ago do dropped out of Houghton Mifflin's ads.
Is not the Houghton Mifflin mind and heart entirely fixed upon a different sort of novel?
Frankly, I despair of any future with them. I see they have now on hand eight copies of
Books like mine require a special kind of publicity work. The New York publisher with whom I have talked most will give them that, and he will let me cooperate with his publicity department. I must give him his answer very soon.
I don't like to have my books come out in two groups, from two publishersto