The American authors are mainly collected in New York, where the great publishing houses are located, and are a fine representative class of men and women, of whom I have met a number, such as Howells, the author and editor, and Mark Twain, the latter the most brilliant litterateur in the United States. This will be discovered when he dies and is safe beyond receiving all possible benefits from such recognition. Many men in America make reputations as humorists, and find it impossible to divest their more serious writings from this "taint," if so it may be called. They are not taken seriously when they seriously desire it; a fact I fully appreciate, as I am taken as a joke, my "pigtail," my "shoes," my "clothes," my way of speaking, all being objects of joking.
The literary men have several clubs in New York, where they can be found, and many have marked peculiarities, which are interesting to a foreigner. Several artists affect a peculiar style of dress to advertise their wares. One, it is said, lived in a tree at Washington. It is not so much with the authors as with the methods of making books that I think you will be interested. I met a rising young author at a dinner in Washington who confided to me that the "book business" was really ruined in America by reason of the mad craze of nearly all Americans to become writers. He said that he as an editor had been offered money to publish a novel by a society woman who desired to pose as an authoress. This author said that there were in America a dozen or more of the finest and most honorable publishing houses in the world, but there were many more in the various cities which virtually preyed upon this "literary disease" of the people. No country in the world, said my acquaintance, produces so many books every year as America; so many, in fact, that the shops groan with them and the forests of America threaten to give out, and the supply virtually clogs and ruins the market. So crazy are the people to be authors and see themselves in print that they will go to any length to accomplish authorship.
He cited a case of a carpenter, a man of no education, who was seized with the desire to write a book, which he did. It was sent to all the leading publishers, and promptly returned; then he began the rounds of the second-class houses, of which there are legion. One of the latter wrote him that they published on the "cooperative" plan, and would pay _half_ the expenses of publishing if he would pay the other half. Of course _his_ share paid for the entire edition and gave the clever "cooperative" publisher a profit, whether the edition sold or not. And my informant said that at least twenty firms were publishing books for such authors, and encouraging people to produce manuscripts that were so much "dead wood" in the real literary field. He later sent me the prospectus of several such houses which would take any manuscript, if the author would pay for the publishing, revise it and send it forth. I was assured that thousands of books are produced yearly by these houses, who are really "printers," who advertise in various ways and encourage would-be authors, the idea being to get their money, a species of literary "graft," according to my literary informant, who assured me I must not confuse such parasites with the large publishers of America, who will not produce a book unless their skilled readers consider it a credit to them and to the country, a high standard which I believe is maintained.