The man of very exceptional talent and the man of genius make rules to suit themselves, and break the old rules with astonishing felicity.
The Literary Agent.
The beginner, at the very outset, will do better for himself than any literary agent can do for him. A good agent with a busy practice will not, and cannot, devote to the work of a beginner, who may prove in the end profitless, that careful and minute attention which is necessary to ensure success. The best agents naturally decline to act for quite unknown men except on payment of a preliminary fee; and the preliminary-fee system is bad for all parties. When the aspirant has made a little success, when he can sell his work himself, then is the time for him to go to an agent. This advice may seem paradoxical, but it is sound. The value of a good literary agent to a rising or risen author has been demonstrated beyond all argument The question of the literary agent is no longer a “vexed question”; it is settled. An occasional protest against the agent, as an institution, is raised in some organs of the press, but all authors familiar with the inside of Fleet street are perfectly acquainted with the origin of such protests, and they smile among themselves. The editor and the publisher who “cannot understand why authors should be so foolish as to pay 10 per cent, of their earnings to an agent,” are marked men in genuine literary circles. When an editor or publisher informs you with a serious face that he never deals with literary agents, keep your wits about you, for you will need them. As a matter of strict fact I do not believe that there is a single editor or publisher of the slightest importance in London who could afford to boycott literary agents, for the simple reason that the work of nearly all the best authors can be obtained only through their agents.
An inefficient literary agent is worse than none. The number of efficient agents is exceedingly small. My personal opinion is that there are certainly not more than three. The young author should remember this, and not be led away by specious circulars. In no case should he pay a preliminary fee. If a good agent will not act for him without a preliminary fee, the aspirant may rest assured that his case is not ripe for agency. The remuneration of agents, 10 per cent, on gross receipts, may at first sight appear large, but actually it is not excessive, especially on small incomes. When an author’s income reaches two thousand a year, the agent should be willing to accept 5 per cent, on all sums exceeding two thousand; but these details are not for the aspirant.
The agent cannot perform miracles. He cannot force editors and publishers to buy work which they do not want, or to pay more than they feel inclined to pay for work which they do want What he can do is to suit the goods to the market and the market to the goods, to prevent the author from making an arrant fool of himself, and generally to exercise in delicate negotiations that diplomatic firmness and that diplomatic elasticity which are his chief stock-in-trade. The author who sells his own work when he might employ an agent to do so, commits three indiscretions at once. He loads his mind with preoccupations which impede the processes of literary composition. He meddles, of course clumsily, in a department of activity in which he is not an expert, and for which he is not fitted. And he loses money. It is almost universally true that an agent will get higher, and much higher, prices for a rising author than the author can get for himself. I do not think I am exaggerating if I say that when the average rising author goes to an agent, his income is doubled within twelve months.
An author should visit his agent frequently, and keep him fully acquainted with his projects and plans. He should listen to the agent’s advice, but should not follow it too slavishly. No man, except a greater author, can teach an author his business. The agent is seldom or never a real expert of the literary art He is half an expert of the literary art and half a commercial expert: that is his raison (d'etre. An agent who was a real expert of the literary art would decidedly be a very bad agent.
Lastly, when an agent is negotiating the sale of a work, he has the right to expect that his client will not interfere in the negotiations in any manner whatsoever. On the purely business side, after minimum prices have been settled between author and agent, the author should trust to the agent implicitly.
Chapter IX
The Occasional Author
Books by Non-Literary Experts.
In these days a man who has no general desire to write, and no sympathy with literature, may be led by circumstances temporarily to join the ranks of the authors. The inducing circumstances are entirely unconnected with the literary instinct; they have to do with the love of gain, the passion for notoriety, or—more seldom—the genuine wish to impart knowledge. Any man, for example, who happens to win the professional or amateur golf championship for three years in succession could certainly get a good offer from a good firm of publishers for a book on golf. He may be almost wholly unfitted for the task of writing a book; he may loathe the sight of a pen, the composition of even familiar letters may be a weariness to him; nevertheless a book by him on his subject will sell. The same thing may be said of the man who swims the channel, the man who spends twenty years in prison, the man who loops the loop, the man who squanders a million in three years, the man who gets in and out of Lhassa safely, the man who goes round the world in sixty days, the man who has achieved fame by devoting a lifetime to chrysanthemums, or bulldogs, or dynamos, or consumption, or the North Pole, or hunting, or old furniture, or safe-robbing. Sooner or later the idea will occur, or will be presented, to every conspicuous specialist: " Why not write a book about your speciality?” From such a volume the profits may be anything from fifty pounds to fifty thousand pounds. The literary sequel of Nansen’s approximation to the North Pole no doubt resulted in the accruing of considerably more than fifty thousand pounds to the explorer’s pocket, while even the Jubilee Plunger was able to make an appreciable sum out of the record of his jejune follies. Examples might be multiplied infinitely, and it cannot be questioned that the class of books by non-literary experts grows more numerous year by year.
The Amateur’s Best Way.
When the non-literary expert is wooed by a firm of publishers, or himself conceives the idea of a book, he is often at a loss how to proceed. He cares nothing and knows nothing about literature, but he wishes to produce just that book, as well as he can, and with the least possible worry and trouble. To begin with, if the affair is sufficiently important—that is to say, if he is likely to make a hundred pounds or more out of it— he should put the business side of it unreservedly into the hands of a good literary agent. And he should also consult the agent as to the literary side.
Some non-literary experts have a natural gift of literary expression; every man who thinks clearly can write clearly, if not with grace and technical .correctness. Most non-literary experts, however, write very badly— and who shall blame them, since neither thinking nor writing is their special business? The man who cannot write decently, and feels that he cannot, yet is determined to compass a book, should proceed as follows:—
He should forget that such things as style, literature, and print exist; and he should endeavour to convince himself that writing a book is exactly on all-fours with telling a friend about one’s exploits, or writing a letter to one’s mother to say that one has been made a K.C.B. or a ’Varsity Blue. (It is, really.) He should then plan out the various divisions of the subject itself, omitting all side-issues, digressions, prefaces, introductions, or other extraneous matter. He may next make short notes of the contents of each division. Then, taking the first division, he should thoroughly think it out in his mind, and when he is saturated with it, he should explain it all orally to a friend—any friend who happens to be handy. He will find that this process, if faithfully executed, will clarify and arrange his ideas in an extraordinary way. The time has now come for him to write out the first division. Let him write
