Autobiography of Mark Twain (19 page)

Whenever a publisher in the trade thinks enough of the chances of an unknown author’s book to print it and put it on the market, he is willing to risk paying the man 10 per cent royalty and that is what he does pay him. He can well venture that much of a royalty but he cannot well venture any more. If that book shall sell 3,000 or 4,000 copies there is no loss on any ordinary book, and both parties have made something; but whenever the sale shall reach 10,000 copies the publisher is getting the lion’s share of the profits and would continue to get the lion’s share as long thereafter as the book should continue to sell.

When such a book is sure to sell 35,000 copies an author ought to get 15 per cent: that is to say, one-half of the net profit. When a book is sure to sell 80,000 or more, he ought to get 20 per cent royalty: that is, two-thirds of the total profits.

Now, here was a book that was morally bound to sell several hundred thousand copies in the first year of its publication and yet the Century people had had the hardihood to offer General Grant the very same 10 per cent royalty which they would have offered to any unknown Comanche Indian whose book they had reason to believe might sell 3,000 or 4,000 or 5,000 copies.

If I had not been acquainted with the Century people I should have said that this was a deliberate attempt to take advantage of a man’s ignorance and trusting nature, to rob him; but I do know the Century people and therefore I know that they had no such base intentions as these but were simply making their offer out of their boundless resources of ignorance and stupidity. They were anxious to do book publishing as well as magazine publishing, and had tried one book already, but owing to their inexperience had made a failure of it. So, I suppose
they were anxious, and had made an offer which in the General’s instance commended itself as reasonable and safe, showing that they were lamentably ignorant and that they utterly failed to rise to the size of the occasion. This was sufficiently shown in the remark of the head of that firm to me a few months later: a remark which I shall refer to and quote in its proper place.

I told General Grant that the Century offer was simply absurd and should not be considered for an instant.

I forgot to mention that the rough draft made two propositions—one at 10 per cent royalty and the other the offer of
half the profits on the book
after subtracting
every sort of expense connected with it
, including
OFFICE RENT, CLERK HIRE, ADVERTISING
and EVERY-THING ELSE, a most complicated arrangement and one which no business-like author would accept in preference to a 10 per cent royalty. They manifestly regarded 10 per cent and half profits as the same thing—which shows that these innocent geese expected the book to sell only 12,000 or 15,000 copies.

I told the General that I could tell him exactly what he ought to receive: that, if he accepted a royalty, it ought to be 20 per cent on the retail price of the book, or if he preferred the partnership policy then he ought to have 70 per cent of the profits on each volume over and above
the mere cost of making
that volume. I said that if he would place these terms before the Century people they would accept them; but, if they were afraid to accept them, he would simply need to offer them to any great publishing house in the country and not one would decline them. If any should decline them let
me
have the book. I was publishing my own book, under the business name of Charles L. Webster & Co., I being the company, (and Webster being my business man, on a salary, with a one-tenth interest,) and I had what I believed to be much the best-equipped subscription establishment in the country.

I wanted the General’s book and I wanted it very much, but I had very little expectation of getting it. I supposed that he would lay these new propositions before the Century people, that they would accept immediately, and that there the matter would end, for the General evidently felt under great obligations to the Century people for saving him from the grip of poverty by paying him $1,500 for three magazine articles which were well worth $100,000; and he seemed wholly unable to free himself from this sense of obligation, whereas to my mind he ought rather to have considered the Century people under very high obligations to him, not only for making them a present of $100,000, but for procuring for them a great and desirable series of war articles from the other heroes of the war which they could never have got their hands on if he had declined to write. (According to Gilder.)

I now went away on a long western tour on the platform, but Webster continued to call at the General’s house and watch the progress of events.

Colonel Fred Grant was strongly opposed to letting the Century people have the book and was at the same time as strongly in favor of my having it.

The General’s first magazine article had immediately added 50,000 names to their list of subscribers and thereby established the fact that the Century people would still have been the gainers if they had paid General Grant $50,000 for the articles—for the reason that they could expect to keep the most of these subscribers for several years and consequently get a profit out of them in the end of $100,000 at least.

Besides this increased circulation, the number of the Century’s advertising pages at once doubled—a huge addition to the magazine’s cash income in itself. (An addition of $25,000 a
month
as I estimate it from what I have paid them for one-fifth of a page for six months [$1,800].)

The Century people had eventually added to the original check of $1,500 a check for $1,000 after perceiving that they were going to make a fortune out of the first of the three articles.

This seemed a fine liberality to General Grant, who is the most simple-hearted of all men; but to me it seemed merely another exhibition of incomparable nonsense, as the added check ought to have been for $30,000 instead of $1,000. Colonel Fred Grant looked upon the matter just as I did, and had determined to keep the book out of the Century people’s hands if possible. This action merely confirmed and hardened him in his purpose.

While I was in the West, propositions from publishers came to General Grant daily, and these propositions had a common form—to wit: “Only tell us what your best offer is and we stand ready to make a better one.”

The Century people were willing to accept the terms which I had proposed to the General but they offered nothing better. The American Publishing Company of Hartford offered the General 70 per cent of the profits but would make it more if required.

These things began to have their effect. The General began to perceive from these various views that he had narrowly escaped making a very bad bargain for his book and now he began to incline toward me for the reason, no doubt, that I had been the accidental cause of stopping that bad bargain.

He called in George W. Childs of Philadelphia and laid the whole matter before him and asked his advice. Mr. Childs said to me afterwards that it was plain to be seen that the General, on the score of friendship, was so distinctly inclined toward me that the advice which would please him best would be the advice to turn the book over to me.

He advised the General to send competent people to examine into my capacity to properly publish the book and into the capacity of the other competitors for the book. (This was done at my own suggestion—Fred Grant was present.) And if they found that my house was as well equipped in all ways as the others, that he give the book to me.

The General sent persons selected by a couple of great law firms (Clarence Seward’s was one,) to make examinations, and Colonel Fred Grant made similar examinations for himself personally.

The verdict in these several cases was that my establishment was as competent to make a success of the book as was that of any of the firms competing.

The result was that the contract was drawn and the book was placed in my hands.

In the course of one of my business talks with General Grant he asked me if I felt sure I could sell 25,000 copies of his book and he asked the question in such a way that I suspected that the Century people had intimated that that was about the number of the books that they thought ought to sell. [See Roswell Smith’s remark, later on.]

I replied that the best way for a man to express an opinion in such a case was to put it in money—therefore, I would make this offer: if he would give me the book I would advance him the sum of $25,000 on each volume the moment the manuscript was placed in my hands, and
if I never got the $50,000 back again, out of the future copyrights due, I would never ask him to return any part of the money to me.

The suggestion seemed to
distress
him. He said he could not think of taking in advance any sum of money large or small which the publisher would not be absolutely
sure
of getting back again. Some time afterwards when the contract was being drawn and the question was whether it should be 20 per cent royalty or 70 per cent of the profits, he inquired which of the two propositions would be the best
all round
. I sent Webster to tell him that the 20 per cent royalty would be the best for him, for the reason that it was the surest, the simplest, the easiest to keep track of, and, better still, would pay him a trifle more, no doubt, than with the other plan.

He thought the matter over and then said in substance that by the 20 per cent plan
he
would be sure to make, while the publisher might possibly lose: therefore, he would not have the royalty plan, but the 70-per-cent-profit plan; since if there were profits he could not then get them all but the publisher would be sure to get 30 per cent of it.

This was just like General Grant. It was absolutely impossible for him to entertain for a moment any proposition which might prosper him at the risk of any other man.

After the contract had been drawn and signed I remembered I had offered to advance the General some money and that he had said he might possibly need $10,000 before the book issued. The circumstance had been forgotten and was not in the contract but I had the luck to remember it before leaving town; so I went back and told Colonel Fred Grant to draw upon Webster for the $10,000 whenever it should be wanted.

That was the only thing forgotten in the contract and it was now rectified and everything was smooth.

And now I come to a circumstance which I have never spoken of and which cannot be known for many years to come, for this paragraph must not be published until the mention of so private a matter cannot offend any living person.

The contract was drawn by the great law firm of Alexander & Green on my part and Clarence Seward, son of Mr. Lincoln’s Secretary of State, on the part of General Grant.

Appended to the contract was a transfer of the book to General Grant’s wife, and the transfer from her to my firm for the consideration of $1,000 in hand paid.

This was to prevent the General’s creditors from seizing the proceeds of the book.

Webster had said yes when the sum named was $1,000 and after he had signed the contract and was leaving the law office he mentioned incidentally that the $1,000 was of course a mere formality in such a paper and means nothing. But Mr. Seward took him privately aside and said “No, it means just what it says—for
the General’s family have not a penny in the house and they are waiting at this moment with lively anxiety for that small sum of money.”

Webster was astonished. He drew a check at once and Mr. Seward gave it to a messenger boy, and told him to take it swiftly—by the speediest route—to General Grant’s house, and not let the grass grow under his feet.

It was a shameful thing that the man who had saved this country and its government from destruction should still be in a position where so small a sum—so trivial an amount—as $1,000, could be looked upon as a godsend. Everybody knew that the General was in reduced circumstances,
but what a storm would have gone up all over the land if the people could have known that his poverty had reached such a point as this.

The newspapers all over the land had been lauding the princely generosity of the Century people in paying General Grant the goodly sum of $1,500 for three magazine articles, whereas if they had paid him the amount which was his just due for them he would still have been able to keep his carriage and not have been worrying about $1,000. Neither the newspapers nor the public were probably aware that fifty-five years earlier the publishers of an annual in London had offered little Tom Moore twice $1,500 for
two
articles and had told him to make them long or short and to write about whatever he pleased. The difference between the financial value of any article written by Tom Moore in his best day and a
war
article written by General Grant in these days was about as one to fifty.

To go back a while. After being a month or two in the West, during the winter of 1884–5, I returned to the East, reaching New York about the 20th of February.

No agreement had at that time been reached as to the contract, but I called at General Grant’s house simply to inquire after his health, for I had seen reports in the newspapers that he had been sick and confined to his house for some time.

The last time I had been at his house he told me that he had stopped smoking because of the trouble in his throat, which the physicians had said would be quickest cured in that way. But while I was in the West the newspapers had reported that this throat affection was believed to be in the nature of a cancer. However, on the morning of my arrival in New York the newspapers had reported that the physicians had said that the General was a great deal better than he had been and was getting along very comfortably. So, when I called, at the house, I went up to the General’s room and shook hands and said I was very glad he was so much better and so well along on the road to perfect health again.