Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of Tables
- Note on the Text
- 1 Economics and the Flowering of the British Short Story
- 2 The Business of Authorship
- 3 How Much Money Does an Author Need?
- 4 Publishing Conditions in England, 1880–1950
- 5 Authors’ Careers: The Development of the Short Story in Britain, 1880–1914
- 6 Short Stories and the Magazines
- 7 Magazines’ Restraints on Art in the Service of Commerce
- 8 Short Stories in Book Form
- 9 Sales of Short Story Collections and Novels
- 10 First Editions, Limited Editions and Manuscripts
- 11 The British Short Story and its Reviewers
- 12 Vitality and Variety in the British Short Story, 1915–50
- 13 Art and Commerce in the British Short Story
- Chronology
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
2 - The Business of Authorship
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of Tables
- Note on the Text
- 1 Economics and the Flowering of the British Short Story
- 2 The Business of Authorship
- 3 How Much Money Does an Author Need?
- 4 Publishing Conditions in England, 1880–1950
- 5 Authors’ Careers: The Development of the Short Story in Britain, 1880–1914
- 6 Short Stories and the Magazines
- 7 Magazines’ Restraints on Art in the Service of Commerce
- 8 Short Stories in Book Form
- 9 Sales of Short Story Collections and Novels
- 10 First Editions, Limited Editions and Manuscripts
- 11 The British Short Story and its Reviewers
- 12 Vitality and Variety in the British Short Story, 1915–50
- 13 Art and Commerce in the British Short Story
- Chronology
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
I have often noticed that when authors break loose, that is to say when they escape from their colleagues, and flash their personalities at dinner parties and tea-fights, they invariably talk about Smollett and Fielding, Freud and Froissart, and art, and art, and ART. But when they are together, with no visitors present, they talk about contracts and agents, and the best way to squeeze a bit more out of editors and publishers. All of which is very nice and as it should be.
In the last twenty years, many biographies and individual studies have discussed or even focused on the monetary and business aspects of authors’ lives and writing. As we shall repeatedly see in these pages, authors from Thomas Hardy to V. S. Pritchett and everyone in between paid careful attention to their financial affairs, for what is an author but a small businessman or woman? To be sure, the writer works with intangible materials –imagination, ideas, the possibilities of language. Beyond this, the needed materials are few – pen and paper, postage and access to a typewriter or typist are the minimum tools of the trade. From this combination of the tangible and intangible comes something that can only be called a product – a poem, story, article, review, novel, play, etc. Like any product, it must be sold, which means that it must find a manufacturer (publisher) and a market (readers). Writers are perhaps most like inventors, devising something new that requires the work of others to produce and market. In dealing with editors, authors may choose to be cavalier about prices, contracts or details of publication, in which case they are almost certain to be cheated. Or, if they do not want to attend to such matters, they may employ an agent – as most of them did – to oversee these matters. The 10 per cent agents charged was almost always offset by increased income and greater convenience. Even so, most authors did not trust solely to their agents but took an active interest in every phase of their business, from the prices paid for their works to the terms of their contracts and even the marketing and advertising strategies for their stories, articles and books.
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- Art and Commerce in the British Short Story, 1880–1950 , pp. 15 - 22Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014