FullReads

But I think there will be a general agreement that in the needed revisal of our local copyright law we can attain some measure of justice. Some of the most obvious hardships can be removed. There is no reason why an author should pay for the privilege of a long life by the loss of his copyrights, and that his old age should be embittered by poverty because he cannot have the results of the labor of his vigorous years. There is no reason why if he dies young he should leave those dependent on him without support, for the public has really no more right to appropriate his book than it would have to take his house from his widow and children. His income at best is small after he has divided with the publishers.

No, there can certainly be no valid argument against extending the copyright of the author to his own lifetime, with the addition of forty or fifty years for the benefit of his heirs. I will not leave this portion of the topic without saying that a perfectly harmonious relation between authors and publishers is most earnestly to be desired, nor without the frank acknowledgment that, in literary tradition and in the present experience, many of the most noble friendships and the most generous and helpful relations have subsisted, as they ought always to subsist, between the producers and the distributors of literature, especially when the publisher has a love for literature, and the author is a reasonable being and takes pains to inform himself about the publishing business.

One aspect of the publishing business which has become increasingly prominent during the last fifteen years cannot be overlooked, for it is certain to affect seriously the production of literature as to quality, and its distribution. Capital has discovered that literature is a product out of which money can be made, in the same way that it can be made in cotton, wheat, or iron. Never before in history has so much money been invested in publishing, with the single purpose of creating and supplying the market with manufactured goods. Never before has there been such an appeal to the reading public, or such a study of its tastes, or supposed tastes, wants, likes and dislikes, coupled also with the same shrewd anxiety to ascertain a future demand that governs the purveyors of spring and fall styles in millinery and dressmaking. Not only the contents of the books and periodicals, but the covers, must be made to catch the fleeting fancy. Will the public next season wear its hose dotted or striped?

Another branch of this activity is the so-called syndicating of the author’s products in the control of one salesman, in which good work and inferior work are coupled together at a common selling price and in common notoriety. This insures a wider distribution, but what is its effect upon the quality of literature? Is it your observation that the writer for a syndicate, on solicitation for a price or an order for a certain kind of work, produces as good quality as when he works independently, uninfluenced by the spirit of commercialism? The question is a serious one for the future of literature.

The consolidation of capital in great publishing establishments has its advantages and its disadvantages. It increases vastly the yearly output of books. The presses must be kept running, printers, papermakers, and machinists are interested in this. The maw of the press must be fed. The capital must earn its money. One advantage of this is that when new and usable material is not forthcoming, the “standards” and the best literature must be reproduced in countless editions, and the best literature is broadcast over the world at prices to suit all purses, even the leanest. The disadvantage is that products, in the eagerness of competition for a market, are accepted which are of a character to harm and not help the development of the contemporary mind in moral and intellectual strength. The public expresses its fear of this in the phrase it has invented–“the spawn of the press.” The author who writes simply to supply this press, and in constant view of a market, is certain to deteriorate in his quality, nay more, as a beginner he is satisfied if he can produce something that will sell without regard to its quality. Is it extravagant to speak of a tendency to make the author merely an adjunct of the publishing house? Take as an illustration the publications in books and magazines relating to the late Spanish-American war. How many of them were ordered to meet a supposed market, and how many of them were the spontaneous and natural productions of writers who had something to say? I am not quarreling, you see, with the newspapers who do this sort of thing; I am speaking of the tendency of what we have been accustomed to call literature to take on the transient and hasty character of the newspaper.