if a painter sold his picture at so much a
square inch, or a sculptor bargained away a group of statuary by the
pound. But it is a custom that you cannot always successfully quarrel
with, and most writers gladly consent to it, if only the price a
thousand words is large enough. The sale to the editor means the sale
of the serial rights only, but if the publisher of the magazine is also
a publisher of books, the republication of the material is supposed to
be his right, unless there is an understanding to the contrary; the
terms for this are another affair. Formerly something more could be
got for the author by the simultaneous appearance of his work in an
English magazine, but now the great American magazines, which pay far
higher prices than any others in the world, have a circulation in
England so much exceeding that of any English periodical, that the
simultaneous publication can no longer be arranged for from this side,
though I believe it is still done here from the other side.

VII.

I think this is the case of authorship as it now stands with regard to
the magazines. I am not sure that the case is in every way improved
for young authors. The magazines all maintain a staff for the careful
examination of manuscripts, but as most of the material they print has
been engaged, the number of volunteer contributions that they can use
is very small; one of the greatest of them, I know, does not use fifty
in the course of a year. The new writer, then, must be very good to be
accepted, and when accepted he may wait long before he is printed. The
pressure is so great in these avenues to the public favor that one,
two, three years, are no uncommon periods of delay. If the writer has
not the patience for this, or has a soul above cooling his heels in the
courts of fame, or must do his best to earn something at once, the book
is his immediate hope. How slight a hope the book is I have tried to
hint already, but if a book is vulgar enough in sentiment, and crude
enough in taste, and flashy enough in incident, or, better or worse
still, if it is a bit hot in the mouth, and promises impropriety if not
indecency, there is a very fair chance of its success; I do not mean
success with a self-respecting publisher, but with the public, which
does not personally put its name to it, and is not openly smirched by
it. I will not talk of that kind of book, however, but of the book
which the young author has written out of an