She is not a crank, “but only a woman.” We have our reward in her friendship and she is generous enough to think that we have done her some service. We esteem it a high privilege to be her publishers.
But God save me from another woman who has won a conspicuous success in the market. The first question she ever asked me was:
“Do I look like a Jew or a Mohammedan?” I asked.
She never forgave me. Her novel had a great religious motive. It sold by the tens of thousands and most maudlin emotionalists in the land have read it. But I do not publish it. To do so, I should have had to pay the price of being “converted.” Now this lady is a crank. But it is not fair to call her books literature.
The veriest crank of all is our great scholar. It is an honor to publish the results of his scholarship (few parsnips as it butters), for the man’s work is as attractive as he is odd. He thinks himself the very soul of fairness. Yet he comes at frequent intervals wishing so to change his contract as to make publishing his books an even more expensive luxury than it was before. A contract is to him a thing to make endless experiments with. When we were once driven to desperation, one of my associates suggested that we propose half a dozen unimportant changes in it, on the theory that change--any change--was all he wanted. It was an inspired suggestion. A great scholar, a restless child. But some day (we feel) he will break over all traces, and we are all afraid of him.
But very sane and sensible men and women are most of those who succeed in winning the public favor. Some are grasping, as other men are. One, for instance, whose book had earned $7,000 in two years, demanded a prepayment of $8,000 for the next book. A compromise was made on $2,000! That was the measure of my folly, for the book is waning in its popularity and has hardly earned this prepaid royalty.
An author came to my office one day indignant because his novel was not more extensively advertised. There was the usual explanation--it would not pay. He had money to spare and he proposed to advertise it himself. He wrote the advertisements, he selected the journals in which the advertisements should appear, and he inserted them--$1,000 worth.