Tonight we are, as far as the audience is concerned, few and very select, and we might have a very good discussion this evening of the problem of the novel as the publisher and publishing and economics make a difference to it.

This evening, we will have two talks by publishers followed by a discussion by the members of the panel, which I think will be a very free one since by two afternoon sessions and two evening sessions, the members of the panel have come to know each other's opinions, powers, and prejudices very well.

In general, despite the length of that discussion, since we have no commentator this evening, I think we'll perhaps have a considerably earlier evening than last evening.

Our first speaker tonight, whose title is "Paperback Books and the Writer," is the assistant to the president of New American Library, which is responsible for a large portion of the books of all types and qualities which you see in markets ranging from the bookstores and drugstore to the Stop and Shop. Ms. Hilda Livingston.

APPLAUSE

Thank you, Mr. Collins. I'm going to sound a rather low commercial note in the discussion tonight because I'm going to talk about money, and I'm going to talk about readers. And I'm going to talk about who reads books and why they read them. And now that I've defined my terms, I will start.

What I want to talk about is a kind of revolution in merchandising that has induced a cultural revolution in reading in this country. And if you think this sounds pretentious, I hope I can convince you by the time I'm finished that it is, in effect, something that we're all experiencing and something of the utmost importance to everyone who wants to write or to everyone who reads.

The mass audience for books, for paper bound books, is an enormous one. But the mass audience itself is no new phenomenon in this country. Paper bound books have existed as early as 1800 in one form or another. Dime novels were paper bound books of their own that had tremendous vogue.

National magazines in the late 19th century and early 20th century brought the works of a great many very, very talented writers to a very wide audience, and newspaper syndication and book clubs have also brought books to a very wide audience. But the new and important aspects of paper bound distribution is that it has immensely multiplied the size of this audience and enormously varied the kinds of books available.

Paper bound book publishing as a kind of marriage of book publishing and magazine distribution, and I thought I'd tell you a little bit about how it works so that we can follow one another. Paper bound books are distributed like magazines. They are sold at 100,000 retail outlets throughout the country.

And as Mr. Collins said, this includes newsstands, drugstores, railroad terminals, supermarkets, and we even have a couple of funeral parlors on our list. Everywhere you find magazines and practically everywhere you find people, you'll find paper bound books. In 1952, 250 million copies of paper bound books were sold, and this represented about 1,000 titles-- 1,000 new titles.

Because of our discussion this morning, which painted a rather bleak view for new writers, particularly writers who were unfortunate enough to be aspiring novelists, I thought I would tell you that from where we sit in the paper bound book industry the news is very cheering indeed because as an industry, we published and sold last year almost 200 million copies of new novels.

And by new, I may be stretching a point. They were reprints, but they were contemporary novels that had been published within the past two or three years so that certainly a vast new audience has been built up for fiction in book form, and it's an audience of the most varied and catholic taste.

To describe the kinds of books that are available in paper bound editions would be a directory of the leading writers of the 20th century, as well as a great many of the older writers of our time. Fiction ranges from Louis Bromfield to Tennessee Williams. European writers include Georges Simenon, Moravia, Flaubert.

The nonfiction title in the paper bond industry is steadily increasing in importance. Nonfiction and paper bound books includes history, science, anthropology, philosophy, Shakespeare, the classics, et cetera. I don't want to sound too commercial, but the New American Library, which publishes mentor books which are entirely nonfiction of a rather high order, has sold 10 million copies of nonfiction in the past six years.

These were 35 cent books that people walked up to newsstands to buy, and the two most popular titles in this series are Patterns of Culture by Ruth Benedict, which has sold a half a million copies, and the W.H.D. Rouse translation of Homer's Odyssey.

But what does this all mean? These figures are impressive and substantial, but what does it mean to the writer particularly and to the reader? The thing that it means to me most precisely is a refutation that I long to make this afternoon when I listened to Mr. Little who talked about the aristocracy of art.

I'm perfectly willing to admit the aristocracy of art in the minds of the creators because talent is confined to a very elect few, but our whole publishing experience has proved quite conclusively that there is no limitation on the aristocracy who responds to good books.

We have had the most-- and all reprint published shows have had the most-- extraordinary success with truly good books at low prices. William Faulkner has sold over 6 million copies in 25 cent editions in the past five years. And this can be reflected in a whole stream of other authors of absolutely first rate-- James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Ralph Ellison, and Georges Simenon, and a great many others.

The fact is that although you hear a good deal about the so-called mass audience and the so-called class audience, I don't believe there is any such animal. The mass audience in this country, the audience that's serviced by paper bound books, are people who have the same curiosities, the same aspirations, and the same interests in their world as the people who can afford to spend $3 for books.

But there are two things that separate them. First, they only have a quarter to spend instead of $3. And secondly, they live in places where there are no bookstores and where most of the books available are available only through paper bound editions.

This brings me, again, to the housekeeping of book publishing, but it's something you have to understand to realize the significance of this revolution in reading. There are something like 2,000 honest to God bookstores in this whole country, and there are many, many substantial cities where you could hunt very, very hard and couldn't find a bookstore.

I had an experience like this in Youngstown, Ohio, about two years ago. I was kept waiting for two hours by a gentleman. This never happens, but it did that night. And so I decided I would case the bookstore situation. And there were two department stores in Youngstown that sold books. There is no bookstore.

And I went to the department store whose slogan was, "The Greatest department Store in Youngstown," because I thought I'd start at the top. And I asked for the book department, and it was in the third floor. So I went to the third floor, and I couldn't find it.

And they said, oh, it's in the gift shop. So I went to the gift shop, and they had six tables of books. Five of them were children's books. They had the best assortment of the Honey Bunch series that I've ever seen under one roof, and they had a wonderful collection of paper books, linen books, that infants can eat without serious after effects.

They had one table of illustrated books that could be easily given to anyone who couldn't read. They were art books, cookbooks, and the sort of book you might give a hostess whose tastes you weren't very sure of. So I said to the clerk, well, where's the current fiction and nonfiction? She said, oh, we don't get much call for that sort of thing.

So I said, well, what happens if someone in Youngstown wants to read a new novel? She said, well, they go to Cleveland. It's only 20 miles away.

LAUGHTER

Well, this is a very sad story if you're a writer, incidentally, and the only happy note in the whole thing is that the independent magazine wholesaler in Youngstown who distributes about 70% of the paper bond books available sold 700,000 paper bound books that year. So the people in Youngstown are reading books. They're just reading them at a quarter and not at $3, but they never read them at $3.

Mr. Sloane was absolutely right this morning when he said that the market for fiction has increased enormously in the past 25 years. It may have increased in different ways. The big emphasis may be now in paper bound books, but it's a very, very broadening category of people who are reading books.

Well, what does this vast mass audience have to offer a writer-- a writer of fiction, especially? First, an audience. It's my hunch that most writers write to be read. And in the mass audience, he finds this happy condition most immediately.

As you know, the average first printing of a novel, especially a new novel by an unknown author, may be as low as 5,000 copies. Well, the average first printing of a paper bound novel is at least 200,000 copies and sometimes goes as high as 500,000, so the immediate distribution of a book is far more penetrating in a paper bound edition than it is in a trade edition.

Secondly, it offers him an audience with a highly spontaneous response to what the writer has to say. It's an audience that's completely or almost completely uncluttered by literary cliches, conversational fads, bestseller lists, or what looks good on a coffee table.

Paper bound books really don't lend much social prestige to the people who has them in his hand. If you get a paper bound book the chances are you read it because there's really very little other aclad to be achieved by parting with a quarter.

APPLAUSE

And the third thing that it offers the writer is a burgeoning audience for the writer's future books. Many people have been seduced into reading books as a result of paper bound editions.

There are not only a great lack of bookstores in this country, but the whole convention of selling books-- and I do hope there are no booksellers in the audience, because if there are, this doesn't apply to Cambridge-- is one that is hedged around with restrictions.

Many bookstores resembles cathedrals of higher education. And for a person of little literary sophistication to enter such a place is frequently a rather trying experience. Well, this doesn't happen on a newsstand. You go to a newsstand for a pack of cigarettes, and you buy it. And something attracts you on the book rack, and maybe you pick it up.

You go down to get your favorite magazine, and it's all sold out. And you want very much to read something because it's raining, so you pick up a book instead. And once you have read a book and find out that it doesn't bite back, the chances are you're much more fair game for future books.

I promised not to tell this story because it wasn't very intellectual, but I think I'll tell it anyway because it demonstrates this point. We got a letter from a man in Tennessee, which has been used extensively and will sound like a handout. But it really happened and I read it. And I have a copy at home.

It said, "Just read The Odyssey. Boy, that guy Homer sure can write. Do you have any other books by him?" So I sat down and wrote him a long note about The Iliad. But this is a very, very interesting example of people who stumble on to reading in paper bound editions and are captivated and go on reading other books.

I have another example that's more significant, and that is Patterns of Culture had been out of print in the Houghton Mifflin edition for several years when we released it as a mentor edition. And a year after it had been available at $0.35, Houghton Mifflin went back to press with the second printing.

And they took a large ad in The Publishers Weekly to say that the only thing new added to this book's history in this year had been the paper bound edition, which apparently had attracted enough people to the book so that they were willing, after sort of sampling it at $0.35, to go out and buy it at $3.

Because I'd be deceiving you if I told you that the paper bound edition is as durable as a 35 cent edition or as easy to read or as attractive in many cases. So the paper bound edition has had in a large variety of instances a very salubrious effect on the same title at a higher price and more immediately on the author's future sales on future books.

Well, who reads paper bound books? I think I know, but I wanted to make sure, so I did a little research today. I went to Jordan Marsh to see Mr. Brame who's a very knowledgeable bookseller. And I said, who reads paper bound books? Can you pick a paper bound book customer when they come to the Jordan Marsh book department?

He said, well, maybe you could have eight years ago, but you can't today. So either books are getting better or people are getting worse. But anyway, everybody is reading paper bound books today. College students read them in great numbers. About 180 of our 450 titles a year is required reading in schools and colleges.

They're enormously used by the Army, the Navy, the State Department, housewives, college professors, businessmen-- there's as diverse an audience for paper bound books as there is for trade books. And what's the special appeal of the paper bound book to the so-called new reader of books?

First, I think the availability is probably the most important aspect. You can get a paper bound book as easily as you can a pack of cigarettes or a magazine. Secondly, it's a low price, which puts it in the reach of many people who have never been able to afford to buy all the books they wanted to.

And then, as I mentioned before, the extremely high attraction of the self-service operation, which makes it very easy for a person to look at a book get some idea of what's in it, and if he doesn't like it, reject it with the least loss of face. I heard something very interesting in this connection from a librarian in Washington just yesterday before I came down.

Libraries are using increasingly more paper bound books because it gives them a good deal more money to spend for reference books and nonfiction. But I meant they're using a great many more paper bound editions in fiction, particularly light fiction entertainment and that sort of thing.

Well, this librarian told me they have two copies of Daisy Miller in their circulating shelves, and that just for the fun of it, she thought she'd check the circulations on the two editions. They have a trade edition, and they have a paper bound edition.

In the past year, the trade edition, which is the cloth bound big book, went out twice. It was borrowed twice, and the paper bound edition was borrowed 19 times, so that, in a sense, the appeal and the kind cozy familiarity of a paper bound edition is almost as potent in a library as it is on a newsstand.

I would be doing you all an injustice if I pretended that the format which has helped spur the sales of paper bound books has not also been a hindrance. Paper bound books, because they sell themselves, have to contain their own selling story.

As you all know, paper bound books have pictures on their covers, and they usually have descriptions of what's in the book on the front cover and on the back cover. And we all know of the ghastly abuses of the artwork and copy which has appeared on paper bound books.

I think this has been brought out by sales figures, that not only are publishers taking a much more stringent attitude for these lapses in good taste, but in the long run, the reader who reads solely for the promise of sensation on a cover and fails to find it within the book doesn't respond quite so visibly to this misleading bait in the future.

As I said, one of the big excitements of the paper bound field is that it has proved in publishing something that has not yet been demonstrated as widely in other mass media, such as movies, radio, and television, and that is there is no such thing as a six-year-old audience.

The most extraordinarily profound books sell well, and the most trivial books sell well. But there is no kind of formula for success in fiction in paper editions. And if you think so, you are misguiding yourselves.

The amount and variety of offerings in the paper bound book field is infinite. It ranges from Mickey Spillane to William Faulkner. And Spillane sells well, and so does Faulkner. And sometimes, the same people read them both. And one is art and one is not. But this is not--

LAUGHTER

I haven't used a big word, and I've been here two days, so I thought I'd get art in, too. But this doesn't matter. The fact is they're both available, and people respond to both of them in vast quantities. And in the long run, the substantial endures, and the freakish expires. It makes a lot of noise, but when it ends, it's very dead.

This brings us to the problem of a reprint editor and his function and how he does it. Reprint editors select about 1,000 titles annually from the 10,000 that are published. They read titles and manuscripts. They read titles in galleys. They read advance copies. They read out of print copies. They frequently read books in foreign languages, which have to be translated.

And then based on their own publishing policies, they select the books that we will publish. The average reprint publishes between 80 and 100 books a year, so it's a very, very selective process to winnow down from the 10,000 books available the 80 or 100 you choose to distribute to this mass audience.

And what does the reprint editor look for? Again, I repeat there's no formula. There's no way of picking a book that will do well.

And I suspect it's very close to what Mr. Sloane may tell you about the trade editors' problem in what to publish because the big search in the reprint editor's mind when he reads all of these books is for the book that communicates to a reader-- not so much in terms of style, not in terms of format, not in terms of allegory or novel, but a book that has something pertinent to say that a reader will understand.

And it has been this true communication that has established the most substantial successes in the paper bound field. And that's why I think that it's so important for new writers or writers of novels to realize that art is good, but other things will also suffice a conviction, the genuineness of experience which Mr. Ellison has mentioned so eloquently.

And something to say that people reciprocate and respond to is what, in our experience, determines success in a very wide audience. There has been a good deal of experimentation in paper bound editions. I'm sure you've all seen New World Writing, Discovery, New Voices, The Partisan Review Reader, and there are probably many more.

These are books which tend to do what the little magazine does, but on a much larger scale. They offer literary hospitality to the new writer of talent, the novelist, the short story, writer, and the poet. And they use the vehicle of mass distribution to bring these people to a very wide audience because one of the enchanting things about this audience is that it doesn't matter whether the writer is well known or unknown or whether the book is new or old.

If they haven't read it before, it's new, and they're much more concerned about the author has to say than what is said about him. You'll hear a lot-- and if you are a writer, you may have even said a lot-- about the influence of the success of reprint fiction, on the kind of fiction that is published in trade editions.

Mr. Sloane could tell you much more about this than I can because he's a trade editor. But we have found this to be a much more minor note than is generally suspected. Certainly, there are prefabricated novels. The pulp writer has always existed in one form or another. Many of these formula novels may have a temporary one shot success.

But as I said before and the big thing that I would like to leave with you is that the enduring success is the Faulkner. It's the Caldwell. It's the Farrell. It's the Simenon and the Ellison and the writers of genuine conviction who write from experience who succeed in the long haul.

In the long run, magazine distribution, colorful covers, exciting blurbs, and low prices are all devices that bring many books to many readers. But what makes these books stay with the readers and what makes them win millions of other readers is what's in the book itself.

There's a phrase in publishing I can't stand because publishers always use it to describe something they can't analyze. It's called word of mouth. When a very peculiar book suddenly runs away and sells a million copies, they say, well, word of mouth did it. And when a very good book that gets a good deal of advertising promotion lays a big egg, they say, well, we didn't get the word of mouth started.

Well, I'm afraid I have to use it again in paper bound books because it's true-- it exists-- that all of the techniques that I've described rather briefly this evening that tend to package a book and bring it to the attention of the potential reader are just techniques. What makes the book a success and a real success is what's in the book itself.

And what's in the book itself can be an infinite variety of messages and experiences that can range from voice operas to tall stories. It can range from anthropology and philosophy to Alberto Moravia.

But it is essentially what is in the book that has developed-- wins friends for the book and that wins the friends for the author. And this, I think, is the important thing to remember about writers and paper bound books because it's perfectly true.

You can't sort of fool people, and the vast audiences that have been won for paper bound books in the past 13 years-- and this is a rather adolescent industry with lots of goosebumps still on it-- have been won because of the genuine merit of the majority of titles offered in this field.

When paper bound books first appeared on the American scene in 1939, they were a lot different than they are today. The early lists, if you look back on them, were largely mysteries and Westerns and popular bestsellers. There was very little experimentation done with new writers. There were almost none of the foreign writers, and there was entirely no nonfiction, except for the imported Penguin editions.

The character of the industry has changed enormously in the past 13 years because as of last year, 20% of the titles offered in paper bound editions were nonfiction-- serious nonfiction-- and they are substantial categories of plays, poems, short stories, humor, et cetera.

I'm sorry to belabor Mr. Liddell because I think he's so charming, but I do want to say that the aristocracy in art in the mass audience rests in the communion between the writer and the reader, and this is a communion in which we have the utmost faith for the future.

Now I finished my talk, and I want to tell you a newsflash that I should have started off with. We, as a company and as an industry and writers as a whole, won a great victory today. Six months ago, the chief of police in Youngstown, Ohio, banned 335 books from the newsstands because he said they were obscene.

I don't have the complete list with me, but they were a very representative selection of the best contemporary writing-- Faulkner, Steinbeck, Farrell, Moravia, Dos Passos, Simenon, and many, many others.

LAUGHTER

And just a few minutes ago before I got here, my office called me. The New American Library brought suit against the police chief. There were 11 of our titles on this list. We objected to a police officer taking this power of censorship into his own hands.

Our position was that the courts are the place to try the obscenity of books, and we don't think that police chiefs or ladies clubs or other well-intended people should take this rather important function to their own bosoms, so we brought suit. And it's been going on for six months.

And it was a great hazard because, as many people pointed out, we could lose. But I'm delighted to say that we won. And I think this is a great blow for freedom. Thank you.

APPLAUSE

Thank you, Ms. Livingston. Our next speaker has, as his subject, he editor and the author. He is the Editorial Vice President of Funk and Wagnalls, Mr. William Sloane.

APPLAUSE

I'm not going to read all of this formal documentation, just a piece of it. I got to this assembly only a little over 24 hours ago, and I must say that they have been a fruitful 24 hours for me.

I think I've been compelled to re-examine, in one fashion or another, almost all of the operating precepts by which I think I live and work and also a picture of myself, which every man forms as he goes through this world.

What follows is a somewhat modified version of what I was going to say when I came up here. I believe myself to be a publishing editor as well as a publisher-- more important to be an editor perhaps in certain ways than to be a publisher.

But I have heard a view of the patterns of modern writing expressed--

Bill, this is a very bad hall. It's a fine hall except acoustically, and I think you'll speak a little louder. We've had trouble with this.

All right. Can you hear this?

You don't need to overdo it.

APPLAUSE

OK. I've heard a lot of opinions expressed about the structure and nature of the modern novel in the last 24 hours, and this is merely a report from somebody who has been a midwife to a few of them, sometimes under rather grueling circumstances, including snowstorms and bankruptcy.

Modern novels have to be published. Otherwise, they don't get read. Somebody has to publish them. The publisher, at least in publishing a novel, does not intend it as an act of introspection on the part of the author.

He is not concerned, basically, with how the author feels when he reads his own printed pages silently over to himself after the printer has delivered the finished copy. He is indeed interested in how everybody else feels, including the critics, but most of all, the people with a certain sum of money in their pockets who intend to part with the money in exchange for the novel.

Now, it's no secret that very large numbers of people in this country write. I mean, surely there must be quite a few people in this audience who are even now writing something. I am, and I'm sure that many of you must be.

And a process is required by which to select from all that is written that which is to be said. In terms of a word which I've heard often here in the last 24 hours, in terms of society, somebody has to make this decision.

Basically, the editor of the initial publishing house makes this decision, and it's a little bit about him and how he makes this decision and why he makes this decision that I want to talk tonight. It is, to give you, really, the theme of this, at the editor's desk that the future reader and the writer first meet each other.

Unfortunately for the best principles of business management, nobody in the book industry has been able to invent a way of rearranging and reorganizing it so that the editor is not the central factor in the process of publishing. There is every inducement to reorganize our industry so that editors would not be the central fact in it. I will come to the reasons why this is economically desirable later.

The editor is generally considered by writers to be everything from adult to the authentic mouthpiece of God. And his words are either treasured or excoriated, and every shade of opinion in between. A man doesn't have to be an editor very long to be nervously aware of the fact that he is going to play as many roles in the course of his life as there are writers who submit material to him.

However, back in the 19th century, which to a certain extent-- at least I think Mr. O'Connor correctly perceives to have been one of the golden ages of fiction publishing as well as fiction writing, the situation is rather different from the way it is now. Publishing was a much smaller operation.

And in general, the central editor of a publishing house was also its owner, or at least he controlled it. He could set the tone of voice. He could set the quality, caliber, and character of the operation in which he was interested. He was, in a sense, a very cultivated and civilized member of society to begin with, but he was also very powerful.

The book itself in those days enjoyed a relatively more central status than it does now-- again, using a word I've heard here over and over again-- than it does now in our society, the analysis of which I believe could perhaps better be left to sociologists.

In any event, the book editor enjoyed an enormous prestige, and he was almost always the president of the company. People like Mr. Henry Holt-- later, contemporary perhaps, George H. Doran many, many, many others. These men were their houses. What they thought about writing, publishing was what the house thought about it, and authors were not compelled to go there or not to go there but at least their houses were themselves.

Nowadays, in all but very small houses the editor, even the central editor, is essentially an employee. And thus, you have a situation in which the decisions about what is to be said and not said in our time is divided between a man who advises another man that this or that ought to be said, and the other man who says, I will or won't find the money to do this depending on how persuasive you are about the necessity for this matter. Now, this is a complex matter but except as I say for small houses almost all large publishers are headed by businessmen, and almost all important editors are employees.

During the period in which this transition was taking place, a certain group of very distinguished editors lived and worked in the United States, and I intend to quote from one of them both favorably and adversely in a minute, who occupied in a sense a very dominant position. They could really force their houses to follow their publishing bent even if they didn't own them, and even if they weren't on the board of directors or a corporate officer.

However, this situation is increasingly less common in American publishing today. To this reason, I still feel and believe deeply that it is important that as many small publishers as possible should survive the fortunes of our time because in them reposes a certain freedom and integrity of action which is impossible in a large corporate structure.

Now, I thought before I came up here how to explain what it is that distinguishes an editor from, let us say, the head of the bookkeeping department of a publishing house or the head of the sales department perhaps even. And finally, I hit upon a word. If I don't make this plain, I hope you'll all ask questions later. This word is interest. The one distinguishing common characteristic of every effective editor that I have ever known or of which there is any written record is his capacity to be interested.

Now, almost 10 years ago I was associated in another publishing house with a friend of mine, a woman named Helen Taylor. And the two of us became quite enamored of what you might call the folklore of our craft, and we wrote a series of advertisements about what we thought publishing was all about. And Miss Taylor wrote an advertisement for the Saturday Review of Literature on what an editor is. And in a decade with one exception, which I will also present to you, I haven't heard anything any better than this.

"We have been reflecting on the work of some important people on our staff. One of them just went by the door with a bulging briefcase, probably going home to get two days' work done in one night. We'll tell you the whole truth if we can about what an editor in a publishing house is and what he does.

An editor is a man with a finger to the wind. He reads all important periodicals and newspapers, and when he thinks a book on a certain subject is needed, he tries to find the best person to write it. This might entail anything from a telephone call to a series of investigations resembling the work of the FBI. An editor is a man who likes to read and a good thing too. He must be on speaking terms with all notable and all best-selling books currently published. He can read only a few hundred of these books a year. Therefore, he scans all book review sections carefully.

An editor is a man of hope he reads from 10 to 50 manuscripts in a week. Less than 1% of them is ever published by his house. He is also courageous and tactful, for he must reject the rest of those manuscripts often face-to-face with the author, and try to give the honest reasons.

An editor is a man with a gregarious mind and a tender regard for human nature. He works sympathetically with any number of his firm's authors. No two alike, writers being more individualistic than most people.

An editor is a friend to all literary talent and thereby leads a hunted life, for his friend's friends, and all their merest acquaintances besiege him with mistaken ideas of their own creative powers. But that doesn't stop him, let him get his hands on a manuscript with promise or a great manuscript--" see this is the day before I got the word great out of everything-- "and he is a humble and happy man. He will wrack his brain to help a writer out of a dilemma with a character or a situation. He will style it for the printer with great care or he will throw all style to the winds if the situation demands it.

An editor is a plastic surgeon to books by unprofessional writers. Book writing these days, unlike a century ago, isn't limited to people trained in literary matters. Let someone devise a new way of erecting chicken houses or let him live six months in a Persian village and the result is a book, full of facts, true but not always too well written.

That's where the editor comes in. It is he who cuts thousands of words of dead wood, organizes, tightens, reshapes sentences, puts in grammar and punctuation, and still retains the author's style. It's still the author's book too, though the author often doubts it while the process is going on.

An editor is a businessman, he arranges contracts with authors and authors' agents. He has a sharp eye for second serial and reprint possibilities for his firm's books. He wrestles with Hollywood for a good price. He has to predict sales of books too. And when he is off by the thousands as he often is, people accuse him of being a visionary or a liar and not a good businessman.

An editor is a gambling man, he will recommend that his firm publish the first, the second, and even the third book by an author, knowing full well that they will lose money. The editor is putting his chips on the books his author will write a decade or more hence, and you couldn't get any side bets in Wall Street on a proposition like that. The editor must also steel himself for the author's disappointment, whatever form of reviling or despair it may take, he must comfort and encourage him."

And she goes on to say that "the editor is also a denizen of the reference room, he has got to be a legal man, he has got to be a man of detail."

Andrew Tisement wound up with these words, "Editors have their compensations, when our friend, the manufacturing man, comes upstairs with the first copy of a book that is just off the press, he always goes to the editor whose baby it is and says, how do you like it? The editor reaches for it with a glint in his eye and says, let's see it. And they stand there both of them admiring it like a couple of fools."

Yeah. There is another statement about the business of the editor in the world of books, and this is written by a man whom I admire very much, John Hall Wheelock, who is the senior editor at Scribner's, and who contributed the preface to a book which I imagine some of you have read, which is The Collected Letters of Max Perkins. And I intend to do a slightly unfair thing in order to make a point, I want to quote a little bit from Mr. Wheelock, a little bit for Mr. Perkins, the former with approbation, the latter in spite of the fact that he was a friendly acquaintance of mine, with the opposite.

Mr. Wheelock says, "The job of editor in a publishing house is the dullest, hardest, most exciting, exasperating, and rewarding of perhaps any job in the world. Most writers are in a state of gloom a good deal of the time, they need perpetual reassurance. When a writer has written his masterpiece he will often be certain that the whole thing is worthless." Incidentally, this happens less and less frequently as time passes.

LAUGHTER

"The perpetrator of the dimmest literary effort, on the other hand, is apt to be invincibly cocksure and combative about it. No book gets enough advertising, the old superstition regarding its magic power still persists, or it is the wrong kind.

And obviously, almost every writer needs money and needs it before not after delivery of the goods. There is the writer whose manuscript proves that Shakespeare's plays are merely an elaborate system of political code. Another has written a book to demonstrate that the Earth is round but that we are living on the inside of it. Still, another has completed the novel in five volumes entitled God. Probably if not vocally expressed, the most consistent ejaculation in the editor's mind that I know of."

He then goes on to comment on Mr. Perkins' grasp of the editorial function which is beyond dispute. And says, that "Mr. Perkins had a very fine conception of the function of a publisher, he frequently stresses the fact that fiction is not mere entertainment but at its best a serious interpretation of reality." These are very nice, clean, clear words, perhaps they should have been read earlier.

"Comprehending within its scope the evil and the ugly side of things as well as the good and the beautiful, and subject to such limitations only as are imposed by the conscience of art. Where ideas are concerned, a publisher as such must not be partisan but should offer to any honest and fresh viewpoint worthily presented a chance to take its place in the free commonwealth of thought.

Is it of interest to the public? If so the public is entitled to know about it and to pass upon it. If so the public is entitled to know about it and to pass upon it. The public, not the publisher is the judge."

Now, even a man who is perhaps the greatest editor of my time is capable like Homer of nodding, and I wouldn't want any author in the audience here to think that I'm not very well aware of the fact that the editorial function frequently results in something a little short of perfection. So unless you are all overcome by a good side of the editorial operation, I have selected from Mr. Perkins' letters to a contemporary writer something which I regard as balderdash. And in reading it I must tell you that unfortunately, this kind of horse liniment is altogether too viable. And I myself writing similar passages have never been called once for doing this.

This is a letter by Mr. Perkins, who certainly was as good as any editor of our time, to a writer named Nancy Hale, whose work I'm sure some of you at least have read. "Dear, Nancy. You cannot worry me about your novel. I remember so well the quality of all that I saw of it and I know that you have a rich and sensitive mind and memory. In fact, I would be much more concerned if you did not have to go through periods of despair and anxiety, and dissatisfaction. It is true that a good many novelists do not but I think the best ones truly do. And I don't see how it could be otherwise. It is awfully hard work, writing of the kind you do.

I myself feel certain that it will end very well indeed if you can endure the struggle. The struggle is part of the process. There is no sign that Jane Austen had any trouble at all but I am sure Charlotte Bronte must have had, and almost all of the really good ones except Jane, who is good as gold of course."

As I say even Homer nods, and if I had received a letter like that from an editor I wouldn't have known what to do with the work in question at all except possibly to reread Jane Austen and reflect that it didn't cause her any trouble at all to write what she wrote.

LAUGHTER

Now, I'm not contending in these quotations, and in the course of this talk that I think that any editor is capable of being universally interested but only being catholically interested with a small "c." Naturally, anybody is more interested in some things than others. The better the editor, the more things he's interested in, and the more things a man is interested in the better foothold he has on the problem of becoming a good editor.

By the same token, no one editor could suffice a whole society. Mark Twain said that it was a difference of opinion that made horse races possible. And it's a difference of opinion on the part of editors that makes modern publishing possible. Otherwise, we'd have one single vertical trust the way they do in Russia. I've watched my contemporaries make a lot of money off books in which I could see but little virtue and turned down, and I have myself from time to time scored some astonishing successes off things which were rejected by better men than I.

But from the point of view of management of a publishing house the trouble with editors is twofold. The first trouble is very serious, they spend money. Publishing is not a very profitable process and editors are apt to be quite lavish with money in different ways. They have a bad habit of handing it out to authors and worse than that, they sometimes allow authors to write books in a manner which makes them more expensive to produce many other things. This makes editors unreliable from the management point of view.

Equally bad, the editors aren't infallible. In fact, very few of them bat over .300. When they do they seldom if ever get the same salary that Monte Irvin gets for doing the same thing for the New York Giants.

I'd like to leave plenty of time for questions. So I'm going to skip over the rest of my points rather rapidly. The modern book editor is required to be a creative type guy. He's supposed to have a lot of book ideas and know who could write them and go out and get them, and all the rest of it, and woe betide if it doesn't sell. Management has a memory longer than an elephant, it never forgets. And the next project he brings up has got two strikes on it.

The next place the editor is being subjected to a cruel and unusual form of punishment, if he's as old as I am, he began by planning to be a book editor and finds himself in his middle age being compelled to edit something which no longer is a book but is a property. It is we'll say 2/3 of a ghost or a novel and at this point, the writer has sold it to him and having made the book contract sale, the writer's mind immediately switches to a consideration of what he could do with it in television, radio, first serial, 101 other places all of which pay very much better than the royalty on the book itself. And all he wants from his editor is advice as to how now that I've got you nailed to the cross I can really get the big dough.

And this is becoming an increasing matter. It's not only directly with the authors themselves that this tendency is taking place but also interminable meetings, which I myself hold, and I'm sure all other editors do with the author's agents, who are no longer interested in what the Germans used to call a NON-ENGLISH the book is a book, but in the property.

And the editor is compelled to be a universal genius, he doesn't produce a good book, he produces a good property, or rather he supervises the production of a good property. And this is very attractive in the rare cases where it works out, everybody makes a lot of money off it but there still are the old fables about the two stools and you know who is between the two bundles of hay.

A book is a book, is a book, and my advice as an editor, to any writers in the audience is to write a book. And don't try to become booksellers or TV experts or scenario writers or literary agents or anything of the sort. Just write books. Leave it to the people who have to make their living in these secondary areas to exploit your property for you. If they could they'd probably write themselves. In any event, they're good at what they're good at, stick with what you're good at.

I make it sound as if it was pretty rough to be an editor. It isn't but the roughest thing of all is a hard thing to explain to all of you. And here I'm departing from my outline, it's an emotional thing. Nowadays, if you win you don't make any money off it, you don't win except prestige or acclaim, a lot of things. There's practically nothing in it for you. If you lose, boy you really lose. Those are real dollars that you lose. And there aren't very many publishers' yachts, and what yachts there are belong to people who decided to become publishers because they could afford both activities at one and the same time.

APPLAUSE

I think now we can have a--

I think now we can have a roundtable discussion of these points as presented by two representatives of the publishing world. Would Mr. Lytle, since his name has been mentioned, would he like to speak? Mr. Sloane, would you pass the microphone down?

Well, I don't see how I could possibly disagree with such a beautiful woman bringing the horn of plenty in her arms. Except I would like to make one little correction, if I may. I feel like Mr. Ellison's invisible man, my name has been pronounced so many different ways. It's really a Scotch name, Lytle. And New England, as you know, are not the only people who had Puritans in that country.

Scotch-Irish were very Puritan. They kept the Sabbath and everything they laid their hands on. And I'd like to keep my name, if I might. I was overwhelmed by what I heard. I see I made a mistake in plutocratic democracy of using the word aristocracy this afternoon.

But all I was trying to say, finally, is that art, and it's not a big word. All it means is craftsmanship. That you don't take a foot at to lay the inlay to a fine tabletop, that you use the tools at hand that are best do the job and that that is the core of certainly all writing.

And that the lesser and more dilute forms, even though they sell, finely depend on the stricter form. I'm sorry to say that I have much more to say except that I feel that it's the right I must write the book and that certainly the publisher should believe in it enough to go out and try to sell it.

And I don't think finally that it's the publisher's business to determine the nature of the interest that the writer has in his craft, finally. Nor is he a literary critic, finally, as Mr. Sloane himself is he has said. Now all of these millions of copies that are sold, I don't know finally how are you going to distinguish who buys Faulkner and who buys, say a lesser, a Mickey Spillane, for example.

And I don't see finally, what kind of a judgment that has. And maybe it doesn't matter, so long as they sell them. But finally, certainly, all fiction depends on the art form. That's all I have to say.

Is there any other member of the panel who will speak to either of these speeches? Mr, O'Connor? Thank you.

I don't know that I have very much to say. And I'm very much afraid of saying what I have to say because it puts me into a state of permanent opposition. And that's a state I don't want to get into, particularly as my relations with publishers and agents have always been remarkably good.

And in fact, the only advice I ever give young writers is, find a good publisher and find a good agent and stick to them for the Lord sake. Don't go wandering around. I think I was frightfully alarmed by Miss Livingstone's speech.

I know it all sounds wonderful. Here is Faulkner by the 6 million. You're spreading the lies on a scale in which the light has never been spread before. Now, I'm a great believer, as you've gathered, in getting an audience for literature and in showing respect for one's audience.

The moment you begin to talk to me about an audience of 6 million, I want to run. Remember, I realize perfectly well that Miss Livingstone is full of almost a starry-eyed idealism about this. But there are a number of wicked people in the world who will not have her idealism.

And that sort of attitude towards literature is not entirely new because in fact, it was the gospel of somebody who was anything but a starry-eyed idealist. And that was Lord Northcliffe, who valorized the English press out of existence.

Remember the moment money comes into business on that scale, art begins to go out. I can hear Monsieur Simenon side beside me. I know he doesn't agree with me. But I've had some experience of this in the theater. And the thing which Mr. Sloane said is the real secret of it, that publishing in the 19th century was a smaller operation.

And you realize that when you've worked in a theater, real theater like the Abay, that a problem of capitalisation becomes a very serious one. I realized that I could produce any play for 100 pounds, $300. And consequently, every young writer got a chance.

And I'm quite certain, speaking as a man who has been director of a theater, that William Shakespeare's Henry V cost his company about $300, the most, $500 to produce. And the famous Hamlet that we saw cost $3 million to produce.

Now the difference between the screen Hamlet and the theater Hamlet was that Shakespeare didn't have to worry about what he said. That beautiful scene in which the French officers speak, tell dirty stories, has just disappeared. So much capital has gone in. And I've worked on films as well as working in the theater. And I realized that the more capital you put into anything, the more people come along and say, oh, you can't say this. There's too much money involved in this.

And I much prefer the smaller operation. Also when you get over-capitalization, don't forget that the squeeze is put on from other directions in the cinema. The squeeze is being put on by the workers as well. The industry has to pay out huge salaries. And the writers have to produce for the huge salaries.

They've got to produce happy endings. It's just too bad. But happy endings are necessary. And the pressure gets more and more extreme. I firmly believe that you cannot have an art if publishing is going to be over-capitalized. I want to see books produced in reasonable editions. And I want them to see them produced as cheaply as possible.

I do not want to have to cater for a public of 200,000 or 500,000, not because I don't respect them as much as I respect my own public of 3,000 or 4,000. I respect them every bit as much. But I know that if I attempt to reach them, I'm going to be destroyed as a writer.

Also another thing I'm very much afraid of about these Pocket Books, I've seen it happen in England. Miss Livingstone described the work of the reprint editor, the reprint editor, with these figures in his head, is going to choose, perhaps in a most idealistic way, perhaps in a not very idealistic way, but it's already beginning to create an awful amount of mischief in England because you get the general idea, if this book is any good, it's going to appear in a pocket edition within a year.

The fact that an author, and here, I am not speaking-- I shouldn't be speaking really at all because I'm involved in the matter. You get the feeling that any author who doesn't get into the Pocket Books can't be a really good author. And it's creating a new vulgarity, I think, in literature, a new snobbishness of sales.

We're beginning to lose the old respect for the job as a job, whether it sells or whether it doesn't sell. And all I'll say is I know perfectly well Mr. Sloane and Ms Livingstone share my views on this. And would prefer a fine book which only sold 1,000 copies to a really bad book that sold 200,000. At least they would be, at the same time, earning their living and doing what they were put into the world to do. Still I just put that forward as a point of view that I am rather afraid of it.

Mr. O'Connor.

APPLAUSE

Before asking Miss Livingston to speak about this, one thing troubles me. In the first evening, you made a very good and very proper plea for the novel to become more popular, be more widespread, not be just the possession of a small group. Yet when a novel sells, what was the figure, 6 million copies in a nation of over 150 million, is I don't want to misinterpret you.

But your present statement seems to me to suggest that this has become too popular. What is the issue here? Something between the Monday night and now, there is a difference which you can resolve. And I would like to have you do it for me only, if not for anyone else.

I think I said today, Mr. Chairman, that I entirely accepted Mr. Lytle's view of the aristocracy. I just want the aristocracy to be as wide as possible. I say the whole tone behind this implies that you're not really interested in an aristocracy.

And I pointed out that the reading public for the 19th century novel was the whole middle class. It was a huge reading public. But it left out a great many people. I don't complain about that at all. I say society was fully representative society.

I want a representative audience. I mean, there is an enormous distinction between autocracy and any form of elective democracy. I think democracy was functioning in the 19th century, although the franchise was exceedingly limited. And in some ways in England, you got a superior type of politician when the franchise was so limited, merely because he didn't have to have the same demagogic appeal.

All I'm afraid of is that somehow or other, we are going to reach the point where the value of a book disappears altogether. I am really talking about over capitalization, not that I don't want the 600,000 people to read the book. I do.

Miss Livingston, please.

Well, should I talk into that? This? First of all, I want to apologize to Mr. Lytle. I didn't mean to take your name in vain. And is it right now, Lytle?

That's right.

I'm glad we agree on the strict form of art as being superior. I certainly agree with you. And what I was trying to say was that in our experience, it is not only superior, but it is the one that endures the longest, which is an interesting influence in this mass distribution. But now I have so many notes from Mr. O'Connor that I'm not sure I'm going to get them all.

Well, I would like to disabuse you of my starry-eyed idealism. And I'm rather touched by it. It's a quality that's diminishing rapidly as old age overtakes me. And I'm glad we met tonight. Now your concluding remark, Mr. O'Connor, was something about a representative audience. I've never written a book. So I can say this with absolute impunity.

If I had spent seven years of my life or even one year of my life writing a book, which to me was a very valid experience and communication, I would not feel that an audience of 5,000 or 4,000 readers was a representative audience. And that, unfortunately, is the fate of many truly fine first novels that are published in this country today. We talk about defining terms a good deal during this conference. So I want to define a term that I think we should all accept or reject before we go much further.

I talked about paper bound reprints tonight. And a reprint, as you know, is simply a word-for-word rendition of a book that's originally been published at a higher price by a low capitalization publisher of good taste and high instincts. The only difference is it's cheaper. It's only a quarter instead of $3. And you can buy at a cigar store instead of Brentano's.

Now this particular revolution, if you like, in merchandising doesn't alarm me nearly as much as it does you because I have a good deal more faith in the judgment of more than 5,000 people. There's one thing that's always puzzled me in relationship to the discussion. Faulkner's name, I guess, has been mentioned more commonly than any other contemporary writers in the course of this novel conference.

And we all seem to be unanimously agreed that Faulkner at $3 is art. But Faulkner at a quarter is very, very dangerous. Well, I just can't accept that in a Democratic society and certainly not at Harvard University.

It seems to me that whole point of view, Mr. O'Connor, and I don't mean this at all personally, represents the kind of closed shop attitude toward art that has made it so difficult for the artist or at least the writer to survive successfully in our society. I don't think that Faulkner has been particularly corrupted by having made some money out of our editions. A matter of fact, he got the Nobel Prize after we had sold about 5 million. That may have had a corrupting influence. But he seems to be holding it pretty well.

You said something about, you're afraid that the people are going to get destroyed as writers because they sell a million copies or 6 million copies. A writer reads to be read by as many people as is written. Beethoven is no more vulgar today because millions of people listen to him on Sunday afternoons than he was 50 years ago when only a few people had gramophones. Art doesn't become corrupt because it's shared with more and more people because more and more people appreciate it.

This is a point of view that I'm a little confused about. And I very much appreciate enlightenment. Then you talked about the fact that you're afraid authors might get corrupted by money. Well, I'm afraid this is likely.

But authors have been corrupted before. They were corrupted by Hollywood. They were corrupted by the Book-of-the-Month clubs. They were corrupted by the slick magazines. I guess every time an author looks around, he's tempted. But in the long run, I think--

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

There will always be some authors who are not going to sell out. And they're not going to sell out because they're being appreciated by people with only a quarter to spend any more than they would have because they were appreciated by a handful with $3 to spend. I conclude.

Mr. O'Connor?

I don't think there's anything--

Mr. Frohock? Mr. Sloane? Mr. Frohock, please?

Yes because I speak from a slightly special vantage point, I'm one of that, how many is it, 6 million. Everyone else at this table down to Mr. Collins is either a writer or someone, a novelist, I mean, or someone intimately concerned with the production and marketing of novels. In other words, you people are all here living on me and people like me.

LAUGHTER

I buy them. And there is no doubt at all that I buy a great many more in the run of a year because I can get one for the price of a package of cigarettes. And I'm inordinately grateful for the opportunity to buy a book and not a cover. Sometimes I wish the paper would last a little longer.

But on the other hand, it's nice to have a book that you can mark up, cut apart, and so on, a very useful thing. I do have one question to ask. And I'm asking for information. Do you think that the same proportions of good and bad will stand as more and more, the paperbacks, not reprints, but the original publications, do you have any feeling that that will endanger us with an increased proportion of, there is always a necessary amount, a necessary part of the whole will be junk. Is that going to increase? Is there a danger of it?

Well, as you probably know, there are only two substantial original publishers now in paper bound editions. Others are trickling in. One is Gold Medal books and the other is Ballantine Books. And in effect, they cancel one another out pretty well because Ballantine Books have started out with an avowed, rather high-minded editorial purpose. And Gold Medal books have made no bones about the fact that they were packaging pulp in book form.

And I honestly don't know the answer to that question, Mr. Frohock. I wish we all did because it's one of the questions that are perplexing publishers and reprinters and authors the most these days. As Mr. Sloane has indicated and as I have said, there's a real problem in publishing fiction originally these days. The trade publisher takes an enormous risk. The author invests his time. And the sales are frequently frightfully disappointing.

There seems to be something rather unfair about a system that pays such dim rewards frequently for so much labor. On the other hand, the combination of trade publishing with reprints seems to have worked very, very well in most cases. But that's only 1,000 out of the 10,000 books that are published annually.

I haven't the vaguest idea of what the future will be. I do know that as of the moment, originals in paper bound editions have tended to be much more of the pre-fabricated book. And I'm sure this is idealism. And I know that it's very unpopular, particularly at literary conclaves.

But it's true that the poor books drive themselves out of the market because the poor books are read by people for whom the reading experience is a different thing from the person who relishes and is rewarded by a good book. And I would think that the best control we have in original publishing at paper is the same we have in reprint publishing at paper, the public who responds to the books.

One of the most fascinating books on our list, and this isn't a precise answer to a question, is Susanne Langer's book, Philosophy in a New Key, which had been published-- well, I think it had been imported in this country. It was published in Oxford, 1,500 sheets we imported. No, excuse me, there was a Harvard University press book. And heavens, in a first printing of 1,500 copies. And we did it as A Mentor Book in a very small first printing, 50,000.

We have sold about 220,000 copies of this very difficult book on philosophy. And no one would have thought that that book would have had that vogue or that success in a paper edition. But it had. And I think for every Gold Medal book, you find an equally encouraging example on the other side of the fence. But I think the future is a great mystery to me. How about you, Bill?

It's a very great mystery to me. And I do have the feeling that, so far as the low-priced paperback reprints are concerned, the following characteristics of them as they appear to me to be, without either approval or disapproval, ought to be laid on the carpet.

In the first place, these books are the beneficiaries of the successful merchandising of another field, that is the magazine publishing field. And they're the beneficiaries of this in two ways. At the retail level, at the point-of-sale level, there are a very large number of places which have learned that they can make money off selling magazines. And the books are, from their point of view, identical, as far as record keeping and the like goes.

And second and much more important, the distribution system, which has made possible the large magazine industry of the United States is also being used by, I think, every one or all but one of the paper covered reprint houses. And that had these distribution systems not been in effect, it would probably have been quite impossible for my industry to finance any such development.

And I remember, and I am not at all sure whether the people directly concerned with it would remember this or not, but many years ago, when I was in the business of selling plays for amateurs by mail and working for a Boston company, I was asked to go and see Mr. DeGraff. At that time, I was an expert in direct mail. And I found Mr. DeGraff in a rather small office.

And he said to me, Bill, I am going to start a company which is going to sell books to the American public at $0.25 or less. And it's going to do it by mail, just like Holden and Juniors, only a little more so. And I understand you know what time of year to send out mailings and other things.

And this came about because Mr. DeGraff, classmate of a brother-in-law, and older brother-in-law of mine. So after about a morning of earnest conversation, I managed to persuade him that this would not work. But even the idea of Pocket Books, which is the originator of the $0.25 reprint idea was originally conceived, without reference to what subsequently turned out to be its greatest economic asset, or at least I think so, Hilda, which is the distribution system through which it operates.

And this carries with it from your point of view as writers and also as book readers a certain word of caution or warning. There's a limit to the display space, to the rack space, to the amount of choice which can possibly be offered to you as readers, as long as this distribution and merchandising mechanism is the one that is employed for the distribution of these low-priced books.

And 1,000 titles a year is, I think, really almost more than the traffic will bear. And those of you who have read some of the very interesting pieces written by Freeman Lewis and others on whether or not the mechanism will stand another book a month, well, know that this is a very serious problem.

There will never be a substitute for a really intelligent person for a bookseller who understands in what you are interested and who will go to the trouble of notifying you of this in the first place. Only one in 10 of the books that might interest you will ever appear in paper covers at all. Second place you may very easily miss them because they come and go on a 30-day average.

And it's not at all uncommon to miss something that you'd want very much. In a third place, most of us are, I think, a lot of different people in one. And this is where I am the most disturbed about this as an editor. I said earlier that I tried to identify myself with the prospective reader. Any editor does. It's at the editor's desk that the reader and the writer meet. I think I put it that way.

Now, I'm a lot of different people all in the same package. And I think you all must be the same. I have two or three extremely special interests. For instance, I am very much interested in certain problems connected with Mayan archaeology. And I think it'll be a long time before Pocket Books comes out with an inexpensive 35 cent copy of the best information which I would like to have on certain problems of Mayan archaeology.

The other hand, I would probably pay Mr. Wilson $10 for the Harvard University Press's volume on this subject, which if it hasn't come out yet, will undoubtedly someday come out and everything in between. I also enjoy the corniest kind of general fiction. I get a wonderful time out of things like Ravel and Arms and all. I mean, and at this point, I am one with 60 million Americans.

And yet, at the point of my interest in Mayan archaeology, I'm probably at one with no more than 1,000. And any intelligent person runs this whole gamut. The paper bound books do very well.

For that part of you which belongs to, what is it, the highest common multiple of the society in which you live. It will never nourish you it the reading level in the special areas where you're the most different from other people because it can't. And therefore, both are necessary.

Thank you, Bill. Mr. Simenon, you have had some experience with publishers. Would you speak to this?

I think have nothing very interesting to say. Maybe about the publishing business, may just I have a remark. I don't think that the danger about publishing will come from the $0.25 edition on the contrary.

But maybe Mr. O'Connor was right in telling that the question of money necessary to publish a book now is a danger. And the danger come that the publisher, for first thought, is reason to I give the artist my money.

And for another reason was I think the length of a room and bookshops and everywhere, try to have books where sell in a very, very short time. A book now has to be selling three months or six months or eight months, try to have a book published one year before you can find it only in $0.25 edition. A $0.25 edition keep the books.

So the publisher first try to find what they call a bestseller. It's not necessarily a good book. It's a book with an interest to people at such time for such or such reason. So he don't try anymore to find author who will live for 30 years or 40 years in the public mind but an author who will give a fast money and as soon as possible.

For example, Conrad is considering the publishing business as a very bad author because Conrad still sell but still a few books every year. So it interest nobody to have covered in their house, you know what I mean? And then the publishers turned to get their money back through another way. They don't speak anymore about books about novels like novels.

But as Mr. Sloane say, it's as a piece of property. And as soon as they have the book and the contract is signed, they trying to sell no books, 3,000, 4,000. They're interested in books. But they're more interested in rights. They're selling rights, the radio rights, television rights, movies rights, and everything.

A first serial, second serial, if there's the average selling of a book said Mr. Sloane it's about 6,000. That cost no too much money because they didn't involve too much publicity, too much work. But to go from 6,000 to 20,000, it involves a big risk because you have at this time to do a publicity and to take a risk.

It's more interesting to sell just 3,000, even 1,000, even one book. But to sell in Hollywood the rights for $50,000 and to keep the half and sometimes more, and it's more interesting to sell it in the television of the same condition too. You know? And it's why the contract now, the printed contract and most of the publishing house speak very, very little about books but a lot about rights and about television, about everything with no books. That's the question. Why, I don't know.

Thank you very much. Mr. Ellison, have you any thoughts on this subject?

Very little, actually. I not like Mr. Simenon. I only have one novel. But about the business of money corrupting the novelist, it just occurred to me that most of the-- well, not even most of the younger writers but many of the younger writers and indeed, many men who have mastered their craft cannot live on the returns from their work.

And I'm just wondering whether it's any more corrupting to receive an income, a livable income, from the mass distribution of one's works than to know that every year or so, you're going to have to fill out an application to the Guggenheim Foundation or to the Rosenwald Foundation, which no longer exist, and for which I am very sorry because I had one of their grants once, or to have to go in and take an advance from a publisher when you don't know whether you're going to be able to finish a book.

I don't know. I write for one reason, because I think I could make more money doing other things. And that is to get readers. And the more, the merrier. I don't think it necessarily corrupts the writer. I just think this.

And here I'm selling the same old bill of goods that I was selling last night is that there must be some way of putting together novels which will speak on one level to the person who is just interested, whose interest is limited, whose interest is limited simply to what happens next and yet have all the other end at the same time.

I remember that some very great novels appeared as newspaper serials. Dostoevsky certainly did and Dickens and many others. I don't think that destroys the writer. And I think the audience just-- well, you have to communicate with that audience. And your art form has to be molded by that.

Thank you. Are there questions from the audience? Question right here in the third row.

I'd like to ask Mr. Simenon and Mr. Sloane perhaps to discuss the influence of literary prizes given by juries of literate men on the sale of books. The reason I asked Mr. Simenon and Mr. Sloane to consider the question is because in France, the literary prizes seem to have very much the same effect on the sale of a book as the Book of the Month selection here.

And I was just curious to know whether they see a trend in this country with Mr. Ellison's winning of the National Book Award and William Styron's winning the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, prizes like those on which you have men like Alan Tate on the juries. Do these have any effect on sales? And if so, do they see any trend toward a reinforcing of this particular phenomenon in the future?

Mr. Sloane, would you, as a publisher, speak to this?

This is a very intelligent question to ask and a very difficult one to answer. Either the first or second year of the National Book Award, a book which I published won the non-fiction award. As a matter of fact, it was a book written by a member of the Harvard faculty. The American Book trade purchased some 1,500 additional copies of this book, which we supplied with a band stating that the book had won the Award and the like.

And we took 900 of the 1500s back when the whole thing was over and the publicity had died down so that some 600 additional copies of this book were purchased and distributed in this country at a very substantial loss to the book's publisher, who had to pay the freight both ways and also was expected to buy a series of advertisements proclaiming the honor which had come his way.

And let me assure you that anyone who buys advertising space in the newspaper today needs to have a good bank account. On the other hand, I'm inclined to believe that the publishers welcome in this country some competition for the Pulitzer Prize awards, which up to the time of the National Book awards, were almost the only awards which had any significance at all.

And a Pulitzer Prize or awards would long ago have fallen into disrepute if it were not for the fact that a good many of them are given for various newspaper activities such as cartooning, the best news photo, and other really ridiculous subjects. I mean, imagine giving a Pulitzer Prize for a photograph and allying that with the best novel, the best play, the best work of the creative imagination.

This is at the worst, a flick of the wrist in a minute. Maybe the man risked his life to get it. But the things are incommensurable. And there's a lot of bad feeling about this. And the Pulitzer juries got rigged and all kinds of things. Remember, a year in which a person who shall be nameless won the award for poetry in this country for a book which not one of you would recognize in the same year that Robert Frost produced a new volume of verse. And he didn't get the Pulitzer Prize because he'd already had it, you see.

So all this had brought a lot of bad feeling about the Pulitzer awards into being. And a competition for it seemed, to the book manufacturer's institute and the book publishers and the book critics, to be a good idea. Now, we all contribute quite heavily to the expenses of this. And it's an investment in publicity, if you want to put it that way.

On our part, we believe in it. And we hope that it will have a good effect, both upon readership for books overlooked by the Pulitzer committees, and on the Pulitzer committees themselves. But I don't think the influence in this country is anything like the one is in France. Mr. Simenon can speak about that. But--

Mr. Simenon.

Please, just INAUDIBLE first, I will say that I am against prize for any kind of art because I don't think that the artist has to be encouraged. If he is an artist, if he has to do something, he will do it against everything and against everybody. If he is not, you may give all the prize in the world. It will never be won. And it will tie. It will be an amateur. It will be a hard thing.

So I am absolutely against it. Now about the influence, you have this, I think, that the literary prize in France are more like here some books of the month. They are not read by the public. They are about to be in the good place and living room so people know that you are a literary people.

Mr. Frohock, will you speak on this subject?

May I just add to that the reminder that among all the winners of the Prix Goncourt, there are probably two titles that can be retained. One of those was the Man's Hope of Malraux. And the other was, and I have not retained the title, either the second or the third part of NON-ENGLISH Those are the only two.

Is there one more question from the audience over in this side? If not, I should like to thank the members of the conference and the audience and adjourn.

APPLAUSE