When the aspirant has devised a subject, he should plan the scheme of the book and, having written a specimen chapter, should submit it to a publisher, by whom he will be either encouraged or discouraged. If he can discover no publisher willing to regard his idea in a favourable light, he should abandon it and search for a better.
As I have stated in Chapter I, the “memoir” book is usually issued at a tolerably high price, and therefore on the royalty system it is more remunerative, in proportion to circulation, than a novel.
2. Popular Biographies.
Popular biographies, both of dead and of living persons, are a prominent feature of modem publishing. There are numerous “series” of biographies; some series are entrusted to writers specially equipped for their task, others might obviously have been written by any persons with a tolerable style and a ticket for the British Museum Reading-Room. The aspirant with a turn for biography should examine the publishers’ lists. Most firms who issue series are prepared to consider suggestions for additions to those series. Nearly every dead celebrity has been dealt with, and most living ones. But the demand for new works is constant; the field may and must be tilled over and over again. At the present moment popular biographies of artists are in vogue. (See No. 6.)
3. Books about Towns and Districts.
Another fashion of the day is the illustrated monograph on a famous town or district Messrs. Macmillan’s “Highways and Byways” series, Messrs. Dent’s two series of “Media;val Towns,” and Mr. Baring-Gould’s topographical volumes offer striking examples. Very few of the books in this vein which have come under my notice can be considered really expert productions, and there is no reason why the ingenious aspirant with an idea and some tangible proof of his ability to write, should not add to the growing piles of historico-topographical gossip. A writer with a desire to travel might pass three months in Timbuctoo, and make something more than his expenses by a book called Highways and Byways of Timbuctoo. I do not mean this suggestion to be taken au pied de la lettre.
4. Adventurous Travel-Books.
In old days the book was a minor result of the adventurous journey. In the present age, however, the adventurous journey is frequently undertaken solely in order that a book may be written about it. A few years ago the travel-book was at the topmost height of a truly extraordinary vogue. But quite recently that vogue has to a large extent diminished, and travel-books are by no means what they were. Nevertheless they still loom large in the announcements of publishers. Dr. Johnson noted more than a century since that they were, as a class, very badly written, and the criticism still holds good. Not the peril of the adventure narrated, but the interest of the narration, is the principal factor in the success of a travel-book, and travellers for literary gain should meditate carefully upon this truth. As travel-books are usually issued at a fairly high price, a moderate royalty combined with a moderate sale results in a quite passable monetary return.
5. Books about Princes.
There is a steady demand for collections of anecdotic gossip about royalties and royal scions of all countries and nearly all ages. The material for such volumes is plentiful, and one or two astute writers have developed the gossip of thrones into a regular department of book-making. These books require the minimum of literary skill As a rule they are extremely bad in their technical aspects. No doubt a good one—well written, discreet, and free from the more atrocious manifestations of flunkeyism —would achieve a very satisfactory reception. Many books about kings and queens begin their career by serialisation in a magazine.
6. Miscellaneous Monographs.
Enterprising publishers are always ready to consider original suggestions for books, no matter what the subject. Sports and pastimes, social topics, and national institutions, seem to be continually in season. The publishing world is waiting, for instance, for a really diverting anecdotic book on the newspaper press in the nineteenth century. Non-technical compilations about the motorcar will infallibly be needed in the immediate future. The inventive mind will easily devise many similar notions. It should be stated that the financial reward of most monographs, and of practically all books which are suggested by the publisher himself, or which form part of a series, is limited by the fact that the publisher prefers to pay down a lump sum for them. This rule applies particularly to Nos. a, 3, and 6 of my divisions. The price of short popular biographies runs as low as £25.
7. Children’s Books.
Children’s books have lately shared the decline of travel-books. A few years ago they were a “craze,” and every one was reading them, except children. They became tediously brilliant beyond the comprehension of the youthful mind. A reaction is now in progress. All children’s books may be divided into three classes — imitations of Alice in Wonderland, pure fairy tales, and plain non-witty stories about children for children. The first class is at a heavy discount; the second is exceedingly difficult to write; the third offers the best opening. The average remuneration for children’s books is not high; indeed it may without exaggeration be called very low. I know of one first-class firm of publishers which pays £25 for all rights in a 40,000 word book. Some firms are willing to pay a small royalty.
8. Essays.
There is almost no market whatever for essays, and books of essays seldom see the light. An aspirant who is obstinately determined to be an essayist should endeavour to place his productions serially in the sixpenny weeklies and the half-crown reviews. If they happen to be surpassingly good, a high-class firm with a taste for letters and philanthropy may conceivably be induced to publish them in book form at its own risk; but the possibility of the author receiving any appreciable sum thereby is remote to the last degree.
9. Verse.
Mediocre verse finds a home in the magazines, and clever verse in the “Occasional" columns of the Pall Mall Gazette and the Westminster Gazette. The two Gazettes pay, I believe, one guinea per piece. The magazines pay from one to two shillings a line, and sometimes more. Mediocre verse can only be published in volume form at the poet’s expense, and even then only through a third-rate firm. Clever verse is issued, often at a trifling profit, by a few good firms who make a specialty of it. A not unusual practice is that the publisher should pay the poet an honorarium of ten guineas for a small volume. Verse of genuine indisputable high quality is so excessively rare that it is certain of recognition and of an adequate publication.