Why Authors Go Wrong, and Other ExplanationsOverton, Grant M. (Grant Martin)
Philosophy
Why Authors Go Wrong, and Other Explanations
Overton, Grant M. (Grant Martin)
Authorship
Book readers can be recruited just as magazine readers are recruited.
The most important way of getting magazine readers is still the
subscription agent. Every community of any size in these United States
should have in it a man or woman of at least high school education and
alert enthusiasm selling books of all the publishers. Where there is
a good bookstore such an agent is unnecessary or may be found in the
owner of the store or an employee thereof. Most communities cannot
support a store given over entirely to bookselling. In them let there
be agents giving their whole time or their spare time and operating
with practically no overhead expense. Where the agents receive salaries
these must be paid jointly by all the publishers whose books they
handle. This should naturally be done through a central bureau or
selling agency. Efficient agencies already exist.
The “book agent” is a classical joke. He is a classical joke because he
peddled one book, and the wrong sort of a book, from door to door. You
must equip him with fifty books, new and alluring, of all publishers;
and arm him with sheets and circulars describing enticingly a hundred
others. He must know individuals and their tastes and must have one or
more of the best book reviewing periodicals in the country. He must
have catalogues and news notes and special offers to put over. If he
gives you all his time he must have assurance of a living, especially
until he has a good start or exhibits his incapacity for pioneering. He
must have an incentive above and beyond any salary that may be paid him.
But the consideration of details in this place is impossible. The
structural outline and much adaptable detail is already in highly
successful use by periodicals of many sorts. In fundamentals it
requires no profounder skill than that of the clever copyist.
7
We charged in the third count of our indictment that books are rather
frequently advertised in the wrong places. We had in mind the principle
that for every book considerable enough to get itself published by a
publisher of standing there is, somewhere, a particular audience; just
as there is a certain body of readers for every news item of enough
moment to get printed in a daily newspaper. A juster way of expressing
the trouble would be this: Books are rather frequently not advertised
in the right places.
The clues to the right places must be sought in the book itself and its
authorship, always; and they are innumerable. As no two books are alike
the best thing to do will be to take a specific example. Harry Lauder’s
_A Minstrel in France_ will serve.
The first and most obvious thing to do is to advertise it in every
vaudeville theatre in America. Wherever the programme includes motion
pictures flash the advertisement on the screen with a fifteen second
movie of Lauder himself. Posters and circulars in the lobby must serve
if there are no screen pictures.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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