Another reason for greater emphasis on the financial side of literary production is the enormously increased expense of conducting a general publishing house. The mere manufacture of books is perhaps a trifle cheaper than it used to be, but every other item of expense has been increased enormously within a generation. It costs more to sell books than it ever cost before. Advertising rates have been doubled or trebled, and more advertising must be done. Even a small general publishing house must spend as much as $30,000 or $50,000 a year in general advertising. There are many houses that each spend a great deal more than this every year.
The author, too, it must be remembered, has become commercial. He demands and he receives a larger share of the gross receipts from his book than authors ever dreamed of receiving in the days of the old-time publisher. All the other expenses of selling books have increased. There was a time when publishing houses needed no travelling salesmen. Now every house of any importance has at least two. They go everywhere, with “dummies” and prospectuses of books long before they are ready for the market. Other items of “general expense” besides advertising and salesmen and ever-increasing rent, are the ever-growing demands of the trade for posters and circulars; correspondence grows more and more; more and more are special “window displays” required, for which the publisher pays. All the while, too, books are sold on long time. As a rule they are not paid for by many dealers till six months after they are manufactured.
All these modern commercial methods have added to the publisher’s expense or risk; and for these reasons his business has become more like any other manufacturing business than it once seemed to be--perhaps more than it once was. Of course there are publishers--there always were such--who look only to their ledgers as a measure of their success. These are they who have really demoralized the profession, and the whole publishing craft has suffered by their methods.
It was once a matter of honor that one publisher should respect the relation established between another publisher and a writer, as a physician respects the relation established between another physician and a patient. Three or four of the best publishing houses still live and work by this code. And they have the respect of all the book world. Authors and readers, who do not know definitely why they hold them in esteem, discern a high sense of honor and conduct in them. Character makes its way from any man who has it down a long line--everybody who touches a sterling character comes at last to feel it both in conduct and in product. The very best traditions of publishing are yet a part of the practice of the best American publishing houses, which are conducted by men of real character.