Then we have to correspond with the author or have interviews with h--er. All this takes time, and the cost of this service rolls up. Somebody must next go over the manuscript to prepare it for the printer--to make sure that the heroine’s name is spelt the same way all through and so forth and so forth. With the processes of manufacture I need not weary you. Only I must say that a bad manuscript can be put into legible type, and that type cast into solid metal blocks ready for the press with a rapidity and cheapness that rank among the mechanical wonders of the world.
By this time the artist has appeared, if the novel is to be illustrated. Book salesmen will tell you that pictures help to sell novels, and they ought to know. But I venture to say that you haven’t seen three new novels in ten years whose illustrations conveyed anything but confusion to your mind. The conventional illustration of the conventional novel marks the lowest degradation of the present-day publisher. We confess by these things that we are without character or conviction. But the artist has the benefit of the commercial doubt on his side. He has also the vanity of the author. And he gets his fee--200, 300 or 500 good dollars or more--and the publisher pays the bill. Another artist makes a design for the cover.
Paper, printing, binding--all these are commonplaces, worthy of mention here only because they roll up the cost. But there are other steps in the book’s journey that the public knows less about. For instance, as soon as the first chapter has been put into type and a cover made, “dummies” of the book are got ready. A “dummy” of a book is a sort of model, or sample, of it. The cover is the cover that will appear on the finished novel; the titlepage is the novel’s titlepage; and the first chapter is as it will be when the book is published. But the rest is blank paper. This “dummy” shows the physical size and appearance of the book.
The travelling salesmen take these dummies and begin their work. They go to all the jobbers and book dealers, explaining to them the charming qualities of this newly discovered novelist, and taking orders for the books. By the time they come home and their advance orders are added up, the book is ready to go to press; and the publisher knows what his “first sale” will be. Meantime (not to lose the thread of my story) all this travelling and soliciting of orders have cost a good deal of money. The public has not yet seen a copy of the book nor even so much as heard of it nor of the “talented young author.”