THE LOST INDUSTRY OF NOVEL-WRITING

THE six-shilling novel is dead. The stone that rolls downhill always gathers velocity as it rolls, and the novel which has been going downhill for a long time now has performed the last gallop to the bottom with a rapidity which leaves the professional novelist rubbing his eyes with surprise to find that his occupation is gone.

Only three years ago I was calling attention to the fact that the writing of novels had ceased to be a profession and become a speculation. Although it had ceased to be an occupation in which there was the remotest chance that a certain amount of conscientious and effective labour would meet with a fair reward, proportionate in any way to the actual literary value of the product or the labour and skill expended upon it, there was still a chance that through fortunate choice of a subject, through skilful or merely accidental advertisement, or through the 'popularity of its writer, one novel in five hundred would meet, not with a fair reward, but with a reward far in excess of its merits. Writers risked the probability that they would not be paid enough for their work on the chance that they might be paid too much.

But that was three years ago, and the possibility of that unanimous demand for a six-shilling novel at the libraries and the bookshops which was necessary to make it 'pay' has become already remote. For the desire to possess the particular novel which everybody at the moment is talking about, is met and satisfied by the knowledge that a very slight abnegation, a very short period of waiting will enable one to obtain it tastefully bound and fit to put on one's bookshelves for sevenpence or a shilling instead of four-and-sixpence. The difference is too great for anybody but a millionaire to ignore it, when the market of sevenpenny reprints is crowded with books probably by the same author, and in any case of equal value, whether one considers actual literary worth or the popular estimation of the moment.

New six-shilling novels are still being published and advertised. To the undiscerning observer it may appear indeed that the publishers' lists are as full of them as they ever were. But a careful scrutiny of the lists will explain how the supply of a commodity which has ceased to pay its producer can be kept up.

To begin with, you will notice the predominance of stories that before appearing as six-shilling novels have already served their purpose and gained their reward as serials in the newspapers and magazines. Now the writing of books and the writing of serials 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 whatever 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.

If one examines, then, the six-shilling novels of the moment, with these distinctions in mind, one realises, I think, that the majority of them are merely serials in book form, and so long as the library circulation of a republished serial is sufficient to pay the printer and give a small fee to the publisher, there seems no reason why the publishers' lists or the supply of new books at the circulating libraries should ever grow smaller, even though the real novel may be as dead as the dodo. For the writer of the serial has been paid for it as a serial, and it is a convenience and pride to him to see it in covers, and hear the babble of the Press over it, although he receives no money for the transaction. Besides, it increases the chances that his book will reach the real book market, the market, that is, for sixpenny, sevenpenny, and shilling reprints.

The trade in six-shilling novels is a trade in 'dumped' goods -goods which have already made their profit in another market, or are being sold at a loss (so far as the producer is concerned) in order to secure another market, that of the cheap reprints.

We may add to the republished serials, in explaining the publishers' lists, the works of those established writers whose circulation at the libraries brings in a certain reward; since their novels have ceased to sell in six-shilling form at the shops, they are strenuously trying to keep up their income by increasing their output for the libraries. This is a tendency so marked that

the libraries in their own defence have been obliged to limit the number of novels that they will receive from any one writer in a given period of time.

You may add to these the new or occasional writers who are still nursing the fond illusion that the writing of novels is a profession, and that if it does not immediately give them a living wage, the fact is due only to the disabilities of the apprentice who must work at a loss until he has become competent in his trade. These may still find among the publishers some who are still looking upon the six-shilling novel as a speculation in which the probability of loss is set off against the possibility of a very great profit. It is, as the almanac shows, quite a short time since the unknown writer's book, bought for a song, proved a gold mine to its discerning publisher.

But the fact that neither writers nor publishers may have realised fully yet that the industry in six-shilling novels is dead does not make its death any the less a fact.

The six-shilling novel is dead simply because it ought never to have been born. Its history furnishes a most interesting example of a measure which after being debated in theory has been allowed to test its soundness completely in practice. What eighteen years ago was a matter of theoretical debate among those interested in fictional literature, has now been tested by experiment, and what eighteen years ago were logical anticipations now present themselves as established and apparent facts. In similar fashion, if the proposals of the Tariff Reformers were adopted in this country one would be able to look back eighteen years later and say with some certainty whether the anticipations of the Tariff Reformers or of the Free Traders are the more logically sound. For the most interesting lesson from the failure of the six-shilling novel is that a measure based upon a faulty theory is predestined to failure in practice, however much it may commend itself to the expediency of the moment. Fortunately for the purposes of the lesson, the decay of the six-shilling novel has been so rapid that one is able to remember the theory with which it originated, even perhaps the arguments for and against the new departure.

The theory with which it was inaugurated was that it is possible to decide on a price for a new novel which shall be a fair and convenient price for the circulating library to pay for a volume which it circulates among some fifty readers, and at the same time a fair and convenient price for the private buyer who purchases it for his own individual use.

Up to the year 1894 the practice had been to publish a new novel first for the libraries in three volumes at a price (a guinea and a half) which practically prohibited its sale in the book-shops,

and, if its reception by the Press and by the library readers justified the venture, to publish a second and distinct edition a little later for the private purchaser. The popular book-shop price varied from two to six shillings, and in order to make the library price and the book-shop price the same, it was necessary to take the maximum book-shop price, although, even then, it made the library price ridiculously out of proportion to anything the libraries had previously paid. In a word, it was impossible to increase the price for the private buyer to any appreciable extent, so in order to make the two prices uniform it was necessary to drop the library price abruptly to less than a fifth of what it had previously been.

The advantages claimed for this drastic change, and the disadvantages urged against it, have been so completely exemplified in practice that to repeat the arguments used at the time of the change is simply to say what has actually happened.

It was claimed that it would increase the number of novelreaders, and make novelists richer. It has increased the number of novel-readers, and even more distinctly the rate at which novels are consumed. It has given a fortune to several novelists. It was urged that it would make novelists poorer and kill the art and profession of novel-writing. It has made most novelists poorer. It has killed, as we have seen, the art and profession of novelwriting.

I have said that the theory on which the change was based is unsound, and I do not think any reason can be found in equity and fairness why the circulating library should pay the same price for a novel as the private purchaser. If the attempt to make the price the same for both is unfair in practice, the only protest, of course, would come from the purchaser who paid too much. The library that paid too little would remain silent, as the libraries have done. While the dearness of novels in the shops has been the subject of a constant outcry ever since the cheap library book was instituted, the fact that the library book is too cheap has been allowed to prove itself without comment in action.

The proof is found, among many other evidences, in the fact that the libraries can afford to sell off surplus copies of the books they purchase, at a nominal price, a practice which reached its culminating point in the action of the Times Book Club. The memory is comparatively fresh of that struggle between the Club and the publishers, and its conclusion in an undertaking on the part of the Club not to sell books as cheaply as it could afford to do, as a kind of concession to the actual people from whom it bought them and who had the power of fixing the price at which they should be sold to the Club and to all other libraries. Could anything be more ridiculous than that position? The

wholesale vendor, the publisher, agrees to sell his wares at a certain price to the middleman, the library, and then is obliged to go on his knees to him to beg him not to retail his wares at the low price which those terms enable him to place upon them.

The fact that novels are sold too cheaply to the circulating libraries is as apparent to the careful observer as the fact that the six-shilling novel is too dear for the individual buyer, and the two facts are intimately connected. It is not only that the surplus of the libraries enters into competition almost as soon as a book is published with the novel in the shop. What is more important is that the fee demanded by the library forms the basis on which the just price of a novel arranges itself in the public mind. With the lending library wiped out of existence the just price of a novel would be anything that it cost to produce, allowing a fair reward to its author and publisher. If that price were a sovereign, the reading of novels would be no doubt a luxury limited to a comparatively small wealthy class, but nobody would say that novels were too dear. To say that demands a basis, and the lending library's fee supplies one. The question before the book-buyer is this: If by waiting my turn I can read the book I want for twopence, and by waiting a little longer obtain a more or less new copy of it for anything from a shilling to half-a-crown, what is the price that I ought to pay to obtain the book at once from my bookseller? And the answer given by the average reader, an answer which the publishers have to find out by experiment, seems to be that a novel intended for reading and not for keeping is worth threepence or fourpence halfpenny, and a cloth cover to make it more permanent is worth an extra fourpence. I do not think there is any doubt that if the library fee is further reduced, as it could be, these prices would appear too high. I do not think there is any doubt that if the library fee had remained higher, these low prices would never have been demanded.

The two things, the library fee and the bookshop price, are absolutely dependent on each other. Because the libraries could purchase a novel for six shillings, it became impossible to sell a novel for six shillings in the shops. If on that account the price of the novel is reduced to two shillings, it will follow as inevitably that because the libraries can purchase a novel for two shillings, it will be impossible to sell a novel for two shillings in the shops. Except in the case of those novels which one wishes to read again and again (and how many are published in the course of a year?) a book will always be too dear to purchase so long as it is possible to obtain it from the library without difficulty for a fee appreciably less than the book-shop price.

The decision to publish new novels simultaneously for the