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signed he went into business for himself, becoming a member of the firm of Moffatt, Yard, & Co., of which he was vice-president and editor-in-chief. Recently and until he joined the Century he was a member of the staff of the New York Times. Mr. Yard is prominent in the Princeton Alumni Association, and was the founder of the Montclair Princeton Alumni Association. He is the second president of the Federation of New Jersey Princeton Clubs. Mr. Yard has also been associated with the National Citizens' League for the Promotion of Sound Banking, and was secretary in charge of organization. He has contributed many articles to magazines, and is the author of a book on publishing, which will be issued in the fall by the Houghton Mifflin Company, of Boston, under the title of "The Publisher." New York Times.

CURRENT LITERARY TOPICS.

The Magazine Business.- Robert Sterling Yard's accession to the editorship of the Century follows a change of policy which has been apparent to its readers for some time and which Mr. Yard's varied newspaper service should enable him to carry on with vigor and success. The business of magazine publishing has changed greatly during this century. The ten and fifteencent magazines, which compete with the Sunday newspapers, have increased rapidly in circulation and influence. Whereas the old type of literary magazine was content to appeal to the highly educated minority, the new magazines appeal to the majority. and the bigger the majority the better they like it. Breadth of appeal can never be too fine in its quality, but circulation, advertis ing, and prosperity followed the newer methods so rapidly that the field has become much overworked, as a glance at any subway news-stand will show. This success has also affected the attitude of the highpriced magazines. Timeliness, news value, and the interest in the name signed to an article count for far more than they did a dozen or fifteen years ago. Of course, a

magazine with the artistic and other resources of the Century can do this sort of thing a great deal better than the fifteencent magazines can do it, and some recent numbers of that publication have indicated that it intended to beat the fifteen-centers in their own field.

Thus the progress of democracy marks the magazines as it does every other field of business. To-day success depends less pon distinction than upon numbers, and success is essential in the magazine business as in every other. There are still one or two magazines which eschew pictures, and are content with the following of the intellectual elect. To them pre-eminently applies Mark Twain's aphorism, "Be good and you'll be lonesome." Most magazines prefer to swim in the strongest current, and the new editor of the Century is a trained and skillful swimmer. Brooklyn Eagle.

How H. G. Wells Deals With Publishers.A short and sharp way with publishers and literary agents is recommended by H. G. Wells in a recent letter to the London Author. Mr. Wells says: "I never pay for advertisement or corrections, never allow an agency clause in my agreements (I generally don't do business through agents), always take twenty-five per cent. upon a 6s. book, always exact a big check on account of royalties (rather larger than what is caused by the certain sales), always reserve the right to publish a cheap edition at less than 13d. at the end of two years, and never suffer a 13 as 12 clause. I draw up my own agreements with Messrs. Macmillan, who also, as a matter of courtesy and subject, of course, to a con siderate use of the privilege give me unlimited free copies. If an author is really worth while publishing, he can get these terms from any decent publishing house, and I wish we could make some agreement among authors to hold the publishers generally at this level. In the past I was not so wise as I am now; I left nearly all my business to an agent. I am still encumbered with his slovenly and disadvantageous agreements. Now I do business with an agent when it suits me. None of

them is good all round, and none can be trusted to handle the whole of an author's affairs. One agent is rather good with short stories, another is brilliant at a serialization, another who goes about upsetting authors with imperfectly substantiated offers of large sums in order to get hold of their business is a dangerous nuisance. The ideal thing for an author to do is to fix up a standing agreement on the lines I have given above with a big honest solvent firm, give his books to a capable agent to serialize and think no more of these things."

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The Recipe for Canadian Stories. "A. C. J.," who says he is a Canadian who has published novels in New York, tells the London Mail how stories about Canada are written. He writes:

"The Canadian author's first attempt is with the New York magazines. These are ready to take Canadian stories, provided they are constructed on certain lines. They must preferably be thrilling tales of mines and lumber-camps. Every character must speak a dialect of sorts, save the hero, generally a mining engineer, always the son of an American millionaire, who must use the latest slang. He always marries the daughter of the wilderness. No Canadian in the story must be anything save a hewer of wood and a drawer of water.

"Our own Canadian market is still too small to be taken into independent account. To suit the English taste the Canadian story must be placed in the new Western provinces. There must be English settlers, aristocratic remittance men, or mounted police, the whole seasoned with a plentiful dash of Imperial sentiment."

Highest Price for a Poem.- What is the highest price ever paid by a publisher for a poem? It would be interesting to know whether any advance has ever been made on the £3,000 that Scott received for "Rokeby."

Stephen Gwynn, in his Life of Moore, tells us that Murray offered 2,000 guineas for the copyright of "Lalla Rookh," "but Moore's friends thought he should have

more, and going to Longman they claimed that Mr. Moore should receive no less than the highest price ever paid for a poem. 'That,' said Longman, was £3,000 paid for "Rokeby."'

"On this basis they treated, and Longman was inclined to stipulate for a preliminary perusal. Moore, however, refused, and the agreement was finally worded: That upon your giving into our hands a poem of the length of "Rokeby" you shall receive from us a sum of £3,000.'"

The highest price ever paid for poetry was £375 a line, James Smith, of "Rejected Addresses" fame, being the fortunate recipient. One evening at dinner he met Richard Strachan, the King's printer, who, although badly crippled with gout, conversed so brilliantly that Smith sent him the following tribute :

Your lower limbs seemed far from stout
When last I saw you walk.

The cause I presently found out
When you began to talk.

The power that props the body's strength,
In due proportion spread,

In you mounts upward, and the strength
All settles in the head.

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On receiving this Strachan added a codicil to his will, leaving the author £3,000 as a reward for his poem. London Chronicle. Unnecessary Phrases. - Why dilate when prefacing remarks with: 'It is needless to say." "It is unnecessary to add." "It goes without saying." "To make a long story short." "To sum up the whole affair in one word." "No words of mine are necessary." Town Topics.

Why So Few Good Forks?-The reason why so few good books are written is that SO few people that can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum. Walter Bagehot, in Literary Studies.

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are absolutely distinct arts, although it is quite possible, of course, to cut a novel into lengths and use it as a serial, and quite easy to print a serial in one volume and sell it as a novel. The story that was written for a book and the story that was written for a serial retain their characteristics whateyer the form in which they appear. In the one, you work up slowly and with increasing interest to a culminating situation. In the other, you begin, if possible, with the culminating situation, and having secured that the first chapter shall be the most interesting in the story, aim henceforth at dividing the interest as equally as possible among the others. In the novel, you may describe life as it presents itself to you. In the serial, you are restricted by the knowledge that your presentation must not seriously differ from the views of life taken by a particular set of readers represented by the regular subscribers to the magazine for which your story is written. For a novel, the writer takes sole responsibility; for a serial, he shares it with an editor, and must necessarily make concessions to conventional views. Herbert Flowerdew, in the Nineteenth Century.

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Marketing a Novel. The production of a book of fiction involves many personalities. First, the author, who conceives and writes the story; second, the publisher, who selects the story from among many manu-, scripts and decides to stake a portion of his capital and energy in making it into a book; third, the artist, whose talents and imagination must be devoted for perhaps several months to the task of visualizing characters and situations so that the man who runs may be attracted to read; fourth, the printer, who, following the specifications of the publisher, converts the manuscript into type, and the type into electrotype plates, and on his presses prints the sheets that are to be the bases of the book; fifth, the engraver, who places his technical skill at the disposal of the artist and publisher in reproducing the illustrations in beautiful multicolor plates or simple black and white halftones, as the case may demand; sixth,

the paper maker, who must have his product finished and in the printer's hands when the book is ready to print; seventh, the binder, who takes the printed sheets and sews and stitches and trims them and incases them in the permanent cloth cover.

These and others are concerned in the making of the book. Its sale and distribution require the labor of another set of craftsmen.

The finished typewritten manuscript is, therefore, but the beginning. The author has done his part. The labor of those who must contribute to the book's success is just opening up, and in fact the publisher's work began before the manuscript was submitted.

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First of all, the publisher must read hundreds of manuscripts. It is of the routine labors of his day's (and night's) work. From a mass of a hundred manuscripts he selects one that he believes has "the punch" and may become a good "seller."

For the publication of fiction no longer is considered from the literary standpoint; it is published from the viewpoint of dollars and cents, what it will make for the author and what it will net the publisher. It has developed into a commercial proposition pure and simple - the merchandising of literature.

The recording, reading, considering, packing, and returning of unavailable manuscripts alone involve work on the part of the publisher and his assistants which represent a large actual loss of time and money. But it is all a part of the game, for the publisher who lands one good seller out of a hundred manuscripts counts himself fortunate.

I am constantly reading manuscripts at all manner of odd times outside of my business hours. I would n't, under any circumstances, publish a volume of fiction unless I personally had read it through. I think most successful publishers follow the same rule.

That means that the manuscripts I read have been "sifted" by regular "Readers," and those that have any promise at all laid

aside for me. It is done on somewhat the same principle that a man follows in buying horses others may recommend, but he must examine the animal himself and try him out before he invests his money in him. The manuscript accepted for publication, the next point to be determined is, what kind of a book shall be made of it? This means the selection of type, the size of the volume, the choice of artist to illustrate it, and so on.

Book manufacturing details are usually worked out carefully and nothing is left to chance. The number of words is estimated, the size of type is decided upon this being regulated by the number of words the manuscript contains and the number of pages the book is to have-the kind of paper, the style of illustration, the scheme for cover design and paper "jacket," and the size of the edition.

Nowadays, as I have said, fiction is treated from a merchandise standpoint. A story that can be made into a book of four hundred pages can be retailed for about $1.25; a book of five hundred pages for $1.35.

The number of copies ordered for the first edition varies, of course, according to the prominence of the author. My experience is that a minimum first edition of at least 3,500 copies is necessary, or the cost per copy will be too high to yield any profit.

The manufacturing cost naturally is affected by the number of copies printed, because the cost of the "plant "-typesetting, the making of electrotype plates, the artist's fee, the engraving, and the other items in getting the book ready to print is just the same whether 1,000 or 10,000 copies of the book are printed.

A 400-page book consumes about a pound and a quarter of paper. Our fiction is printed on sheets of paper measuring 301⁄2 by 41 inches. A sheet that size will print sixty-four pages of the book, 32 pages on each side, giving a volume 54 by 734 inches, which now is the popular fiction size.

The revision of a manuscript and the reading of the printers' proofs often involve

a heavy labor. I have known cases where as many as a thousand changes of individual words and phrases in a single manuscript have been made after its acceptance. As a rule, three proofs of the type are pulled. One of these is read by the printers to see that it conforms to the manuscript copy, another set is read by the author himself in order that he may improve the work if possible, and the third set is read in the publisher's office, the final changes made as necessary. All these changes cost money, and usually the publisher has to defray this expense himself.

I have mentioned the paper "jacket," or wrapper. This theoretically is for the purpose of protecting the cloth cover, but really is treated purely from the advertising standpoint — that is, it is artistically printed and decorated attractively in order to catch the eye of the buyer looking over a table of new novels.

These are some of the more essential details and problems involved in producing a volume of fiction. The author has, to be sure, made the volume possible, but his share in its production is not so burdensome as that of the publisher nor does he risk so much. The publisher risks his capital and his experience and energy, and for a time he must live that book until he can feel that it is going to repay his investment by its sale.

The publisher, of course, has to attend to all the details of selling. Books are sold by means of advance samples which are carried by traveling representatives direct to the book trade. For the use of his own traveling representatives and the travelers of the book jobbing houses the publisher has to have made up at considerable expense a number of " dummy" books-showing the cover, properly die stamped, a sample picture, and a few sample pages of the contents and this often months before the actual printing of the book has begun.

The review copies for the newspapers and periodicals must be distributed shortly before the book is published. This work falls to the lot of the publisher.

The matter of advertising is and always

will be the big problem with the publisher. He must decide in advance how much he is warranted in spending in promotion and publicity, and he must decide how and where to spend it. Cosmopolitan newspapers of wide circulation in the territory in which they are published are the mediums relied upon to attract the buyer personally.

The publisher must have a pretty good idea of the various proportions of the different items of expense in publishing a book of fiction. For instance, if a volume wholesales at seventy-five cents the publisher's estimates always are based on the wholesale price of a book, not on the retail price he must know how much of that amount should go for manufacture, how much for advertising, how much to general overhead expense - in other words, the book's share of the firm's expense of doing business how much to the author and how much should be left for himself.

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An author receives anywhere from ten to twenty per cent. of the retail price, and the usual royalty is ten per cent. up to five thousand copies and then twelve and onehalf per cent.

To sum up, the successful publisher must be something of a Jack-of-all-trades. He must have literary and artistic instincts sufficient to enable him to know the real from the false; he must know something of the mechanical processes by which a book is made printing, engraving, paper making, binding; he must have the ability to invent advertising, he must have the selling ability; and, last and not least, he must have the courage to risk money on a gamble, for the publishing of a popular fiction nowadays is a great deal of a gamble. -F. G. Browne, in the Chicago Tribune.

Journalist Novelists.- John Lane says in the Bodleian: "I am not inclined to say that the journalist makes, as a rule, a good novelist. He is handicapped by his journalistic instincts. He knows too much. The ideal novelist is the man who has a broad knowledge of life and the power of expressing it, but is always and primarily trying to amuse. The journalist is always and primarily crammed full of copy, of which he is anxious to unburden himself.

He is apt to leave little or nothing to the imagination, and his book, as viewed from the standpoint of good fiction, suffers accordingly. Probably the most perfect of journalist-novelists is Rudyard Kipling. He has been referred to as a 'glorified journalist.' That is, in my opinion, a libel. I consider Mr. Kipling to be a man who has given a minute study to humanity, who has, in short, viewed life and poetry under a microscope. Journalism is a profession which serves to feed the novelist. A journalist who runs away from his profession for all time and takes up fiction carries with him an excellent stock-in-trade. To him, as notable precedents have proved, to mention only the name of J. M. Barrie, may come some considerable measure of success. On the other hand, the novelist does not make a successful journalist. I know, in fact, of no case worth quoting. Novelists of repute make too much profit to abandon what is practically a bed of roses for a thorny career in the newspaper world. If there are any professions from which the ranks of novelists are best recruited they are those of the doctor and lawyer. Of the former we have notable instances in Sir A. Conan Doyle, Weir Mitchell, and Benjamin Ward Richardson; of the latter such names as Meredith, Watts-Dunton, and Arnold Bennett suffice as examples."

LITERARY ARTICLES IN PERIODICALS.

[Readers who send to the publishers of the periodicals indexed for copies of the periodicals containing the articles mentioned in the following reference list will confer a favor if they will mention THE WRITER.]

A PAPER OF PUNS. Brander Matthews. Century for June.

NEWSPAPER INVASION OF PRIVACY. Topics of the Tim, Century for June.

ON THE LADY AND HER Book. Helen Minturn Seymour. Open Letters, Century for June.

ON THE USE OF HYPERBOLE IN ADVERTISING. Agnes Repplier. Open Letters, Century for June. LINGUISTIC CAUSES OF AMERICANISMS. Thomas R. Lounsbury. Harper's Magazine for June. SOME EARLY MEMORIES. Henry Cabot Lodge. Scribner's for June.

LETTERS AND JOURNALS OF CHARLES ELIOT NOR. TON. Scribner's for June.

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