Some idea of his business methods may be derived from the fact that
it pleased him to reflect that all the other publishers were
producing exactly the same books as he was. And though he would admit
that the trade had been ruined by competition and the outrageous
royalties demanded by successful authors, and, further, that he made
a loss on every separate department of his business, in some
mysterious fashion the business as a whole continued to pay him very
well. He left the active part of the management to a confidential
clerk, and contented himself with signing cheques and interviewing
authors.
With such a publisher the fate of our author's book was never in
doubt. If it was lacking in those qualities that might be expected to
commend it to the reading public, it was conspicuously rich in those
merits that determine the favourable judgment of publishers' readers.
It was above all things a gentlemanly book, without violence and
without eccentricities. It was carefully and grammatically written;
but it had not that exotic literary flavour which is so tiresome on a
long railway journey. It could be put into the hands of any
schoolgirl, and at most would merely send her to sleep. The only
thing that could be said against it was that the author's dread of
inspiration had made it grievously dull, but it was the publisher's
opinion that after a glut of sensational fiction the six-shilling
public had come to regard dullness as the hall-mark of literary
merit.
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