Few persons have any constructive faculty. This is the sad fact that comes home at last to a man who has read novels in manuscript for many years. A publisher comes to look for construction in a novel before he looks for style or literary quality.
This confession is enough to provoke the literary journals to condemn the publishers as mere mercenary dealers in sensational books. Yet, while a book that is well constructed may not be “literature,” very few books have a serious chance to become literature unless they have good construction.
I, for one, and I know no publisher who holds a different opinion, care nothing for the judgment of the professional literary class. Their judgment of a novel, for instance, is of little value or instruction. It may be right--often it is. It may be wrong. But whether right or wrong (and there is no way that I know to determine finally whether any judgment be right or wrong) it is of no practical value. A literary judgment of a new novel cannot affect the judgment that men will form of it ten years hence. Therefore it is of no permanent value. Neither can it affect the sales of a new novel. It is therefore of no practical importance for the moment. I look upon reviews of novels as so much publicity--they have value, as they tell the public that the book is published and can be bought, and as they tell something about it which may prod the reader’s curiosity. Further than this they are of no account. Not one of the three publishers whose personal habits I know as a rule takes the trouble to read the reviews of novels of his own publishing.
Novel making, then, is an industry, and the people who make them best concern themselves very little about what is usually meant by “literary values,” and very little about their popularity. The writers who deliberately set out to write novels of great popularity have almost always missed it. The industry is an art, also, but it is not an art of mere fine writing. It is chiefly an art of construction--an art of putting things in due proportion. This assumes, of course, that the novelist has things to put.
The truth is, the delicate and difficult art of finding out just what the public cares for--the public of this year or the public of ten years hence--has not been mastered by many men, whether writers or publishers. If you find out what the great public of today wants, you are a sensationalist. If you find out what the great public of ten or twenty years hence will want, you are a maker or a publisher of literature. And the public of the future is pretty sure to want something different from the public of today.