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Preface to Authors
From The
Truth About Publishing, by Sir Stanley Unwin, first published
1926
(This classic book on
publishing was written more than 90 years ago by the famous
publisher from George Allen & Unwin. Though much of the book is
out of date in today’s world of electronic communications and
production, it still contains a good deal of pertinent horse-sense.)
Publishers are not
necessarily either philanthropists or rogues. Likewise they are
usually neither lordly magnates nor cringing beggars. As a working
hypothesis, regard them as ordinary human beings trying to earn
their living at an unusually difficult occupation. (It is easy to
become a publisher, but difficult to remain one; the mortality in
infancy is higher than in any other trade or profession.)
Remember that – pretty
ladies sometimes excepted and they seldom produce the best MS. – the
publisher is not interested in you until he is interested in, your
work. Let your manuscript therefore be your ambassador and do not
mar its chances by insisting upon a quite unnecessary interview. The
publisher will request you to call fast enough if he finds your work
attractive.
Your manuscript is
doubtless a masterpiece, but do not suggest that to the publisher,
because all the most hopeless manuscripts that have come his way
have probably been so described by their authors. The works of
genius are apt to arrive unheralded, and it is for those that the
publisher is looking.
Your manuscript is your
baby, maybe your only child, but the publisher finds a dozen or so
new babies on his doorstep every morning and has several thousand
older children over‑running
his warehouse and his entire establishment, all of them calling
simultaneously for his undivided attention.
With the best will in
the world, therefore, there is a definite limit to the time he can
spend on yours. Every moment of the publisher's time you waste on
needless interviews and distracting telephone calls may he a moment
less for the more important task of attending to your offspring.
If you want your
manuscript to make a good impression, bestow some care upon it and
don't ask the publisher. to look at it in instalments. Outward
appearances do not matter, but slovenliness and inconsistency do.
The fact that twice running in the same way; that a word capitalized
on one page is not capitalized on the next., that the first and
third chapters have headings, but the second none; that quotations
are inaccurately given; that, in brief, the author has skimped his
job, makes the worst possible impression upon the publisher as well
as upon the publisher's reader. A little extra time spent on the
preparation of the MS. is worth more to the author than the longest
interview with a publisher, or any letter of introduction.
Bear in mind that in
common with all human beings, publishers are fallible. They all, I
imagine, wish they were not, but they all know (and admit) that they
are. "Publishing fallibility" is too expensive an item in his
trading account for any publisher to be in danger of overlooking it.
If a publisher declines your manuscript, remember it is merely the
decision of one fallible human being, and try another. Don't try to
bully the first publisher into telling you why he declined it. He
would (in most cases) be a fool to tell you, because, despite fervid
assurances to the contrary, not one author in a hundred wants aught
but praise of his offspring.
If a publisher accepts
your manuscript, remember that in the long run it is the public
which decides what the reward of authorship shall be; that the
public is a fickle paymaster, and that if it decides to reward
handsomely some disher‑up
of scandal, and to grant the learned historian or philosopher
nothing, the publisher is not to blame. If the public will not buy
your book the publisher cannot make money either for you or himself.
The source of profit, strange as it is to be compelled to reiterate
the fact, is the difference between what a book costs to manufacture
and what the booksellers pay the publisher for it. A profit cannot
be made out of selling a book for what it costs to produce. It is
astonishing how many authors think that it can; who assume, in fact,
that the laws of arithmetic do not apply to publishers.
All that glitters is
not gold. The most effective advertiser is not usually the most
showy, just as the most efficient doctor is not often the one with
the largest doorplate. The widespread distribution of a book in
every corner of the globe does not begin and end with advertisements
in two Sunday papers. It is a process laboriously built up brick by
brick. It is one thing to be able to sell a book for ten or twelve
weeks – quite another to do so for ten or twelve years. These are
points to bear in mind when choosing your publisher, but there are
others. Does he really know his job? If he does, trust him to get on
with it; if he does not, do. not go to him. Is he financially sound
– beyond a peradventure? If he is, the hardest bargain he may drive
is likely to prove more profitable to you than the most alluring
contract with an insolvent firm. A 10 per cent. royalty that arrives
the day it is due is better than a 20 per cent. royalty that is
never forthcoming.
The most stable firms
are usually those which have a strong back list of publications with
a continuous. and profitable sale and who therefore have no need to
gamble to secure new business.
Having chosen your
publisher, co‑operate
with him, but do not start out to teach him his job. It is not co‑operating,
but positively hindering him, to ring him up on the telephone, when
a post card or a letter would be equally or probably more effective.
Never bother the head of a firm with a departmental job. Publishers
are not usually either expert shorthand‑typists
or telephone operators, but never a day goes by when authors do not
(quite needlessly) try to use them as such. If lengthy instructions
must be given over the telephone (they should in any case be
confirmed in writing), it would seem more rational to ask a
shorthand‑typist
to take them down than to expect the head of the firm laboriously to
do so in longhand, and it is much quicker to telephone the
department concerned than to insist upon speaking to the head of the
firm and asking him to telephone to the department for the
information desired.
Just as you can take a
horse to the water but cannot make it drink, a publisher can take a
new book to a bookseller, but cannot make him buy. Over ten
thousand new books are published every year, and booksellers can of
necessity only stock a selection of them. Because your friends
affect surprise that your book is not in stock at the local
newsagent there is no need for you to do so.
The fact that a best
seller or a cheap reprint is on a railway bookstall is no reason why
your book should be. It will not become a best seller just because
it is put on a bookstall; it is much more likely to become soiled
stock. The railway bookstall proprietors, who see all the new books,
know better than anyone else what they can and cannot sell, and if
they decide against yours, the chances are at least a hundred to one
upon their being right.
Every new book issued
by a well‑established
publisher is shown before publication to the London booksellers and
either before publication or shortly thereafter to all the principal
booksellers in the provinces. The fact that the particular
bookseller’s assistant you interviewed had never heard of your book
is no evidence that your publisher was negligent. On the contrary,
it may merely mean that on the one hand when the book was
"subscribed" the bookseller declined it, or on the other that the
assistant is not following the lists of new publications in the book
trade papers as carefully as he might.
But any bookseller or
bookstall ought to be able to execute an order for your book
promptly, and if any difficulty is experienced your publisher should
be immediately advised. Despite all impressions to the contrary,
the selling of new books is seldom a lucrative business; too few
people buy them. Possibly you have observed that even your own
friends and acquaintances unblushingly try to “cadge” copies of your
books. Pocket your pride (or your snobbery!) and tell them boldly
that if they don’t think the book worth buying, you would rather
they did not read it; and do your part in educating the public into
a deeper appreciation of books by joining the National Book League
and working for it.
In writing this book it
has been my endeavour to examine controversial questions as
impartially as possible, and always with the hope of finding common
ground, rather than points of disagreement.
The growing
commercialization of literature – inevitable though it may be –
does not tend to promote more harmonious relations between authors
and publishers. It is based on the assumption that manuscripts and
books are mere commodities; dead, not living things. Such an
assumption ignores the peculiar and indeed parental relationship of
the author to his work, the realization of which is the beginning of
wisdom in a publisher.
I hope that in my zeal
to explain the publisher's difficulties 1 have not shown any lack of
sympathy with authors. 1 can truthfully say that this book would
have been a good deal easier to write had 1 not seen their point of
view so clearly.
It was primarily in the
hope of helping inexperienced writers to understand some of the
technicalities of publishing and thereby to assist. them that I
allowed myself to be persuaded by several of their number to provide
this brief account of book publishing.
If 1 have succeeded in
making the path of the beginner a little smoother, and contributed
in any way towards the promotion of pleasanter and more intelligent
relations between authors and publishers, I shall be well rewarded.
Two last points: If a
publisher has had enough faith in you to go on losing money over the
publication of your early and possibly immature work, it is not
cricket either to take your first readily saleable MS. elsewhere
without submitting it to him or to expect him to bid for it in
competition with others who have not spent a penny in helping to
establish your reputation. It is even more unsporting to ask a
literary agent to kick away on your behalf the ladder which has
enabled you to climb.
Finally, read your
contract and remember that your publisher is just as much entitled
to expect you to honour your signature as you are to insist upon his
honouring his.
PREFACE TO FIFTH
EDITION
Because I have drawn attention to various ways in which some authors
prejudice their own interests with their publishers, I am told that
my composite portrait of an author is "not attractive." If it was
not realised that I was addressing a plea to the particular species
I described, then I must agree with my critics. May I therefore
record – which 1 deemed unnecessary at the time – that there are
many authors who commit none of the nuisances to which I referred;
that there are some who are almost angelic; and then add – perhaps a
trifle maliciously – that it is the black sheep in a flock upon
which the eye most frequently alights?
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