THE BUILDING OF A BOOK
A SERIES OF PRACTICAL ARTICLES
WRITTEN BY EXPERTS IN THE VARIOUS
DEPARTMENTS OF BOOK MAKING AND DISTRIBUTING
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY THEODORE L. DE VINNE
EDITED BY
FREDERICK H. HITCHCOCK
THE GRAFTON PRESS
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Copyright, 1906,
By THE GRAFTON PRESS.
Published December, 1906.
Dedicated
TO READERS AND LOVERS
OF BOOKS THROUGHOUT
THE COUNTRY
FOREWORD
"The Building of a Book" had its origin in the wish to give practical, non-technical information to readers and lovers of books. I hope it will also be interesting and valuable to those persons who are actually engaged in book making and selling.
All of the contributors are experts in their respective departments, and hence write with authority. I am exceedingly grateful to them for their very generous efforts to make the book a success.
THE EDITOR.
ARTICLES AND CONTRIBUTORS
- Introduction
By Theodore L. De Vinne, of Theodore L. De Vinne & Company, Printers, New York. - The Author
By George W. Cable, Author of "Grandissimes," "The Cavalier," and other books. Resident of Northampton, Massachusetts. - The Literary Agent
By Paul R. Reynolds, Literary Agent, New York, representing several English publishing houses and American authors. - The Literary Adviser
By Francis W. Halsey, formerly Editor of the New York Times Saturday Review of Books, and literary adviser for D. Appleton & Company. Now literary adviser for Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York. - The Manufacturing Department
By Lawton L. Walton, in charge of the manufacturing department of The Macmillan Company, Publishers, New York. - The Making of Type
By L. Boyd Benton, Mechanical Manager of the Jersey City factory of the American Type Founders' Company. - Hand Composition and Electrotyping
By J. Stearns Cushing, of J. S. Cushing & Company, Norwood, Massachusetts, one of the three concerns forming the Norwood Press. - Composition by the Linotype Machine
By Frederick J. Warburton, Treasurer of the Mergenthaler Linotype Machine Company. - Composition by the Monotype Machine
By Paul Nathan, a member of Wood & Nathan, New York, selling agents for the Lanston Monotype Machine. - Proof-reading
By George L. Miller, with the Charles Francis Press, New York. - Paper Making
By Herbert W. Mason, of S. D. Warren & Company, Paper Makers, Boston, Massachusetts. - Presswork
By Walter J. Berwick, of Berwick & Smith Company, Norwood, Massachusetts, one of the three concerns constituting the Norwood Press. - The Printing Press
By Otto L. Raabe, with R. Hoe & Company, New York, Printing Press Manufacturers. - Printing Ink
By James A. Ullman, of Sigmund Ullman Company, Ink Makers, New York. - The Printer's Roller
By Albert S. Burlingham, President of the National Roller Company, New York. - The Illustrator
By Charles D. Williams, Artist, New York. - Half-tone, Line, and Color Plates
By Emlyn M. Gill, President of the Gill Engraving Company, New York. - The Wax Process
By
By Elmer Latham, Manager of the mechanical department of M. Kramer & Company, Photogravure Makers, Brooklyn, New York.
By George W. H. Ritchie, Printer of photogravure plates, etchings, etc., New York.
By Emil Jacobi, Manager of the factory of the Campbell Art Company, New York, and Elizabeth, New Jersey.
By Charles Wilhelms, late of Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographing and Printing Company, Brooklyn, New York.
By Amy Richards, Artist, New York, her specialty being cover designs.
By George Becker, of Becker Brothers Company, Die Cutters, New York.
By Henry P. Kendall, of the Holliston Mills, Book Cloth Manufacturers, Norwood, Massachusetts.
By Ellery C. Bartlett, of Louis Dejonge & Company, Dressers and Importers of Book Leathers, New York.
By Jesse Fellowes Tapley, President of J. F. Tapley Company, Binders, New York.
By Henry Blackwell, Fine Binder, New York.
By Frederick H. Hitchcock, Member of the New York Bar; President of The Grafton Press, Publishers, New York.
By Vivian Burnett, formerly in charge of the Publicity Department of McClure, Phillips & Company, Publishers, New York.
By Walter Littlefield, a Member of the Staff of the New York Times Saturday Review of Books, and literary correspondent of the Chicago Record-Herald, and other papers.
By Harry A. Thompson, formerly representing John Lane, and Small, Maynard & Company, Publishers. Now one of the Associate Editors of the Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia.
By Joseph E. Bray, formerly with A. C. McClurg & Company, Wholesalers, Chicago. Now with the Outing Publishing Company, New York.
By Warren Snyder, Manager of the Book Stores of John Wanamaker, Philadelphia and New York.
By Charles S. Olcott, Manager of the Subscription Department of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Company, New York.
By John Anderson, Jr., President of the Anderson Auction Company, New York.
By Arthur E. Bostwick, Chief of the Circulation Department of the New York Public Library.
By Charles E. Goodspeed, Dealer in Rare and Second-hand Books, Boston.
THE BUILDING OF A BOOK
INTRODUCTION
By Theodore L. De Vinne
To the hasty observer printing seems the simplest of arts or crafts. The small boy who has been taught to spell can readily arrange lettered blocks of wood in readable words, and that arrangement is rated by many as the great feature of printing. With his toy printing-press he can stamp paper upon inked type in so deft a manner that admiring friends may say the print is good enough for anybody. The elementary processes of printing are indeed so simple that they might have justified Dogberry in adding
In real practice this apparent simplicity disappears. Commercial printing is never done quickly or cheaply by amateur methods. The printing-house that undertakes to print miscellaneous books for publishers must be provided with tons of type of different faces and sizes. It needs type-making and type-setting machines of great complexity, printing-presses of great size and cost, and much curious machinery in the departments of electrotyping and bookbinding; but these machines, intended to relieve the drudgery of monotonous manual labor, do not supplant the necessity for a higher skill in craftsmanship. They really make that craftsmanship more difficult.
The difficulty of good book-making is greater now than ever. Improvements made during the last century in processes of engraving and the making of ink and paper and the increasing exactions of critical readers and reviewers, compel a closer attention to the petty detail of manufacture. The novice soon finds that some of the methods recently introduced are incompatible with other methods. For the production of a superior book practical experience and theoretical study of all processes are needed to harmonize their antagonisms. One has but to read over the headlines of the foregoing table of contents to note how many different arts, crafts, and sciences are required in the construction of a well-made book. A reading of these articles makes one understand the scope and limitations of each art and the necessity for its proper adjustment in its relation to the workmanship of other crafts with which it may be associated.
For this purpose this book has been prepared. It is believed that a compilation of the experience of men eminent in their respective departments will be a useful guide to the amateur in authorship or the novice in publication.[Back to Contents]
THE AUTHOR
By George W. Cable
In a certain fine and true sense books of imaginative writing—and the present writer cannot undertake to speak of any others—are not built, but born. Nevertheless, there has always been an unlucky tendency on the part both of writers and readers to overstate this non-mechanical nature of poetic works, whether in prose or verse, and to give the processes of this production that air of mystery—not to say miracle—in which art is always tempted to veil its methods. There is an anatomy of the book, which is not its life, but is just as real as its life, and only less essential. There is an architecture awaiting the book while it is still in its author's brain; and for want of due regard to this architecture's laws, for want of a sound and shapely anatomy, many a book misses the success—not commercial only, but spiritual as well—which the amount of toil and talent spent on it ought to earn. And now that reading has become so democratic that the fortunes of a book of the imagination are largely in the hands of the Crowd, which cares nothing and feels nothing as to grace of form and tone in what it reads, the commercial risk in the physical deformities of a book is not so great as the risk of its spiritual failure. Now, too, that the magazines have made it so very desirable to the author that his work should be printed first in them, their mechanical limitations, which are legion, bear upon the author and often seem to him (and his personal friends) to bear cruelly. This difficulty is not a flattering or gentle discipline, nor are its discriminations always good or always bad. It works almost as crudely as that of the stage works on the theatrical dramatist. A cunning subservience to it covers a multitude of sins, and often achieves for the literary craftsman place and preference over the truer artist, if he overlooks the need of being also a craftsman. Yet it is the hard demand, not of the magazines alone, but of every highest interest, that the cure for this injustice be found in the truest artist making himself also the cunningest craftsman. "He that would be first among you let him be the servant of all."
Well, then, what are some of these mechanical rules of construction? The space here allowed—see there, for instance!—gives room for but a hint or two; but, first of all, an author should know before the actual constructure of his creation begins to rise, how long it is to be. Of course he would like to say he cannot tell; that he is in the hands of his muse, and all that; but the truth is, his "artistic temperament" is trying to shirk the drudgery of the engineering problem involved. It is far better for him as an artist that he should thoroughly solve that problem; it will take time and labor, but it need not waste them. The length of his work will, or should, depend upon the breadth of it; by which we mean that a certain fulness of treatment involves a certain length. For instance, one cannot reasonably hope to keep a story short if it is about several persons and involves a conflict of their characters or fates. That is the second necessity; the length must be planned in proportion to the breadth. But, thirdly, both length and breadth should be governed by the importance, the dignity, the substantial value, the business, the substance, the spiritual stuff, of which the projected book is to consist. Hence the writer of true literary conscience will put the first, as above named, last, and the last first: spiritual substance, then breadth, then length.
In order to make fairly sure of these essentials, as well as for other reasons, the author should have a clear determination of all the main features of the structure he proposes to raise. Especially the bridge should not be itself begun until its builder knows very definitely where and how it is to reach the other shore; nothing between the beginning and the end is so important to be sure about from the beginning, as the end. There is a great difference among writers as to the sense of need for a complete preliminary framework on which to build. But beyond doubt many feeble, many abortive, results come of having too little preparatory framework, too slender a scenario, to use a playwright's word which authors and editors are borrowing more and more.
It seems good that a literary artist should always write for himself. Yet, of course, he should write unselfishly; we may say he would do well always to aim at the entertainment of the noblest minds, even when he does not exhort their loftiest moods. But he certainly achieves much besides if, while he does these things, at the same time and in the same doing he entertains the great commonalty of readers. If he does this, and all the more if he has the rare genius to do all these in one, his books, we may almost say, ought to go first through the magazines. If he wants them to do so, then it will be a godsend to himself as well as to the editors if he will lay his plans, as far as they have any arithmetical character (and they can have much), according to the magazines' mechanical exigencies. He should know just how much of any magazine page his own typewritten pages will occupy; how many of its own pages that magazine commonly allows to writings of the kind he proposes to offer—how many yearly, and how many monthly; and so on. It is well that he should
Be it understood that these remarks are as impromptu as a letter, and are intended only as hints and pointers. Yet much as they leave unstated, let a word be said as to the relation of the author to his book after he and all the later artisans of it have done their several parts in its building, and it is built. The care of the edifice ought still to be, far more than it commonly is, in the author's hands. The publisher has the fortunes of hundreds of works to promote and keep in repair; the author has but his own. Even an author may say that any publisher is glad to have suggestions from any author as to plans for keeping the children of that author's own brain alive in the world.[Back to Contents]
THE LITERARY AGENT
By Paul R. Reynolds
The work of the literary agent in the building of a book may be roughly divided into two parts, first, in relation to the author, and second, in relation to the publisher. When the author has finished his manuscript, he brings it to the literary agent to be placed. The literary agent reads it and decides what house is most likely to publish such a book. He does not offer a book on Nervous Disorders to a house which never publishes that kind of book. He does not offer a sensational novel to a conservative house. He offers a book on Political Economy to a house which publishes that class of book and which is in touch with the people who buy books of that order. Among a number of houses which bring out books of any definite class, he can select the house that is most energetic in pushing its books, that has behind it a prestige and name which will help its publications, and which possesses the requisite skill to lay its wares before the public advantageously. The success of many a book has depended more on the shrewdness of the publisher in laying it before the public in attractive and seductive guise than either the public or the author often realize.
If the publisher accepts the manuscript offered to him by the literary agent, the latter arranges terms with the publisher, making as good a business arrangement as all the conditions justify. He draws up the contract with the publisher, and after the book is published, he collects the royalties from the publisher as they fall due. He enables the author to avoid any house that has a reputation for sharp practices. Knowing the personnel of the different houses, he knows the proper man to approach in offering his book, and he is of aid to the author in blowing his trumpet for him, telling what his previous work has been, in a way that the author, sensitive as he often is, cannot properly do. In short, the agent takes off the author's shoulders all the business end of publishing, leaving him free to devote himself to his own proper vocation without the vexatious business worries which he finds all the more vexatious because he has not had any training or experience in coping with them.
I think the literary agent can be, and as time goes on, will be, of increasing use to the publisher. The literary agent, if he understands his business, takes up no manuscript in which he does not believe. When he brings the publisher a manuscript, it is because he thinks there is money in such manuscript for the publisher, for the author, and as far as commission is concerned, for himself. While it is an advantage to the author that he should have the judgment of the agent, because the agent looks at any manuscript from a cold-blooded business point of view, it is also of advantage to the publisher to know that the agent, free from the confidence and perhaps the bias that the author has about his own wares, is offering him any individual manuscript because he (the agent) believes it will sell. The result is that the publisher gets to know that the agent won't offer him a manuscript that is not up to a certain standard, and which, even though it should in the end not prove suitable to this publisher's special list, must receive careful consideration. In this way the agent becomes of use to the publisher because he tries never to offer him anything that is mere trash or that simply wastes the publisher's time. Some time ago a publishing house wrote to an agent telling him they wanted a certain kind of novel for the next season, and describing, with a good deal of particularity, the kind of book they wanted. The agent, after thinking the matter over, submitted two manuscripts. The publisher considered them and accepted both. In such a case the agent had certainly been of great use to the publisher. He had given him what he was looking for, and had saved him the nuisance and the actual expense of reading through a large number of manuscripts before finding the right one.
It may be admitted frankly that the agent is sometimes accused of asking more for his wares than they are worth. In reply to this accusation it may be said that asking is not getting, and the agent who asks more than the market justifies, and thereby spoils the chances of a satisfactory arrangement, is not serving the best interests of his client. On the other hand, he will get the best price obtainable in the market, taking into consideration the character of the publishing house, its prestige and ability in pushing books, and as he is offering and selling every day he can generally obtain a better price and make a better arrangement than the author can. Realizing that the author and publishers are partners in an enterprise whose success depends upon a frank and clear understanding, he will do his best to make such relations friendly and harmonious and to the mutual advantage of both parties to the contract, never forgetting, however, that his especial client is the author, and that it is his duty to represent the author's interests.
One of the notable features of the times is the growth of magazines. The arrangement for the serialization of a long story in a magazine, the placing of short stories and articles in magazines, the selling of stories, articles, and books in England, and arranging the simultaneous issue in both countries,—all this involves an immense amount of detail which one has to encounter fully to realize. Sometimes, where an author is putting out a good many manuscripts, the complications are numerous and perplexing. In the case of one author living abroad whom we will call Smith, a book was arranged with a house A, and a second with a house B. The author was taken ill, could not finish the first book in time so that A had to postpone it till the next year, and this meant that B had to postpone his book. Then a publishing house took a story which the same author had sold direct to it for magazine publication, without reserving book rights, and brought such story out in book form. This meant another complication. After B had postponed his book twice the author produced another book which he thought better than the second book, and wished published before B's book. Four times B was asked to postpone his book and each time agreed to, though not without certain quid pro quos. All these matters the agent had to straighten out, while the author was living three thousand miles away.
The agent can also be of use to the author because he looks at any manuscript in an objective rather than in a subjective way. The author, who
Then again, the agent can be of use to the author in sparing him some of the bitterness that the author feels when his manuscript is rejected. Who that has read it can ever forget the story of how Hawthorne, while still struggling for success, submitted a collection of short stories to a publisher, and of how the publisher, not having much capital, laid the manuscript aside, intending to publish it when things were a little easier; and how Hawthorne, after months of dreary waiting, wrote an angry letter to the publisher, and when he got the manuscript back, in bitter, hopeless rage burned it up? Years afterward the publisher admitted that the manuscript contained some of the most exquisite work Hawthorne had ever written. This story emphasizes the intense sensitiveness of the author about his work. Often after two or three rejections he will give the manuscript up as hopeless and of no value, while it may be that he has only failed to find the house that is looking for that kind of book. An agent, if he has once taken the book up, does not drop it so quickly. Only recently an agent sold a book which had been declined by fifteen houses to the sixteenth. He is willing to persevere with a manuscript and with an author, in spite of rebuffs and discouragement, if he believes that the author has merit; and if he is willing to persevere with an author in the day of small things, he will reap his reward later on.
In conclusion the writer believes that the agent, as he has tried to indicate, can perform a definite and valuable service to both author and publisher by helping the author to bring his wares to the man who will publish them most advantageously, and by obtaining for the author the prices that such wares are worth in the open market, and he can help the publisher by acting as a sifter and bringing before the publisher and editor manuscripts that are really worthy of consideration.[Back to Contents]
THE LITERARY ADVISER
By Francis W. Halsey
The position of literary adviser to a publishing house differs in its duties, according as the adviser may be employed in a house highly organized, or in one that is not. When the organization is such that the duties in the various departments are not well differentiated, the adviser's work will be likely to involve many things that properly belong to the manufacturing and advertising departments. These conditions, however, if they exist at all, will be found in the smaller houses, or in houses which, as to personnel, are undergoing reorganization; they are, and ought to be, exceptional.
The adviser's actual duties should pertain almost exclusively to the manuscripts, and to the relations of the house with those who produce them. In this way, the adviser acts as an intermediary between the publisher and the author. This relation seems, on the surface, to be somewhat delicate, and it usually is confidential, but most men find the occupation an agreeable one. Authors as a class, so far from being an irritable race, will usually be found, at least in their relations to publishers, not only interesting men and women, but candid and reasonable human beings. Probably the most delightful rewards of the literary adviser's calling come from the opportunities it gives him to extend his friendships among charming people.
Any house which is large enough to employ a literary adviser will probably receive, in the course of a year, at least one thousand unsolicited manuscripts, which will come from every part of the country. They will naturally be of widely varying degrees of excellence; quite two-thirds of them will be fiction, and a considerable number will bear convincing evidence of having already been for some time in search of a publisher. Testimony from various houses has at different times been given as to the percentage of volunteered manuscripts which eventually find acceptance. It does not materially vary, being from one to two per cent. Some years ago, in order to test this estimate, I went carefully over the unsolicited manuscripts which had reached a large publishing house during a period of several months, and found that exactly one and one-half per cent of them had been published.
This small showing should not imply that the remaining ninety-eight or ninety-nine per cent could in fairness be called worthless. With occasional exceptions, rejected manuscripts have been prepared with considerable intelligence; knowledge of themes is shown in them; there is some real literary skill in evidence, and particular care has been taken to secure legibility, about nine-tenths of them being in typewritten form. What they lack is certain other qualities more vital in the formation of a judgment as to their availability. In the case of fiction, they lack novelty of treatment, or for some other reason fail to be interesting, and in general there has not been infused into them the real breath of life. When they deal with serious subjects, they often cover ground which has been better covered before, or they attempt to achieve the not-worth-while, or the impossible.
There is always a small number of manuscripts against which no other objection can be raised than that it would be impossible to secure from the public an adequate return in sales for the expenditure necessary in the manufacture and distribution of the books. One of the pathetic sides of the publishing business is the fact that manuscripts of this kind cannot oftener, in this day and generation, secure the amount of attention they deserve from the reading public. When a sale of one or two thousand copies would be necessary to make good the cost of publication, the publisher is confronted with the fact that he could not secure a sale exceeding five hundred. Indeed, when one considers the almost certain fate that awaits them, pathos of the most genuine kind is closely associated with volunteered manuscripts—those, I mean, which come from new writers. Hardly any form of endeavor to which educated minds devote themselves should more often awaken sympathetic feeling. Those who produce them almost always have their rewards far to seek, and seeking will not find them, and yet they "wrought in sad sincerity."
The public is familiar with stories of successful books which, in the course of their peregrinations, were several times rejected by publishers. This, doubtless, has been the experience of all authors who have made notable
It is a common impression that manuscripts are not carefully read in publishing houses. Again and again has this fiction been exploded by houses whose word should be accepted as final, but it now and then lifts up its head as if untouched before. Of course there are manuscripts which no one ever reads completely through from beginning to end, chapter by chapter, and page by page, simply because it has been found not to be necessary to do so. Every conscientious reader, however,—and most readers known to me have been nothing if not conscientious,—reads at least far enough into a manuscript to learn if there be anything in it that in the least degree is promising. He understands full well the danger of overlooking a meritorious work, and experience has taught him to be careful. Moreover, he is usually fired with the worthy ambition to make a discovery; but he acts according to his light only, and hence makes mistakes. The conditions in which his work is done, however, preclude the possibility of careless reading.
It is doubtless true—indeed, I believe the records of every publishing house in the country will sustain this statement—that while no house has failed at some time in its career to reject at least one manuscript that was afterwards a highly successful book, mistakes of this kind have been extremely few; whereas the mistakes made by the same houses in accepting manuscripts that were afterward found to be unprofitable have been numerous. A further fact, which is seldom borne in mind, although it ought always to be remembered in any discussion of literary success, is that highly successful books usually bring to their publishers as much surprise as they do to any one else. This is distinctly true of novels by new writers, whose "big-sellers" have seldom or never been anticipated. It is well known in the trade that at least two, and probably a half-dozen, books highly successful during the past ten years, and all the works of new writers, were sent to press for the first edition, with a printing order for only two thousand copies.
The public has gotten very much into the habit of judging the fortunes of a publishing house by the successful fiction which it puts forth, and this is also true of many men in the trade, whose means of knowing better ought to be ample. Probably the literary gossip prevalent in newspapers and periodicals is largely responsible for this habit. The facts are, however, that, from these books alone, no publishing house in this country is, or could be, well sustained. Unless there be in the background some other publishing enterprise that is producing constant revenue from year to year, mere fiction will accomplish little to make or save the publisher. The real sources of stability lie elsewhere, far beyond the ken of the superficial observer, and they are very commonly overlooked. In one instance, this mainstay is religious books; in another a cyclopædia; in another medical books, or educational; in another a dictionary; in another a periodical; and fortunate the house that has not one, but two or three, such sources of prosperity.
It might be set down as an axiomatic statement that no large publishing house in this country could possibly live exclusively from what are known as miscellaneous books, by which is meant current fiction and other ephemeral publications. The worst thing about such books is that they create no assets; their life is short, and once it is ended, the plates have value only as old metal. A house, therefore, in publishing this class of books finds that each season it must begin all over again the work of creating business for itself. Books of the more substantial kind, however, whether they be religious, educational, scientific, medical, or in other senses books of reference, do not perish with the passing of a season. Once the right kinds have been found, they are good for at least ten years, and not infrequently for a generation.
But this is wandering somewhat away from the subject of the literary adviser. His duties primarily are to preserve and to create good-will from authors toward the house which employs him, for that good-will is an asset of the first importance to a publishing house. Other kinds of good-will at the same time are essential to its fortunes,—notably the good-will of the bookseller and that of the book buyer,—but behind these, and primarily as the source of these, lies the good-will of the author. Houses now known to be the most prosperous in this country possess this good-will in abundance. So, too, the houses which are destined to much longer life are those which, by all legitimate means, shall seek to preserve and increase that good-will. Equally true is it, that the houses which in future shall fail will be those which do not cultivate and cherish the good-will of authors as the most valuable asset they can ever hope to possess.
It is because of this possession that a publisher gets an author's book. It was by this means that he got the books he already has, and by this will he get those which will make him successful in the future. His books being good, it is through them that the bookseller's good-will is acquired, and through them also that the publisher will secure the good-will of the book buyer. No wiser words on this subject have been uttered in our generation than those which may be found, here and there, in "A Publisher's Confession," which I hope was written, as reputed, by Walter H. Page, for it is certainly sound enough and sane enough to be his:—