SOURCE: Johanningsmeier, Charles. “What Literary Syndicates Represented to Authors: Saviors, Dictators, or Something In-Between.” In Fiction and the American Literary Marketplace: The Role of Newspaper Syndicates, 1860-1900, pp. 99-125. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

[In the following excerpt, Johanningsmeier examines the relationship between late nineteenth-century authors and the literary syndicates, which often provided lesser-known authors with an opportunity to broaden their readership.]

A great many stories are published in the papers and sent out by these syndicates, but the competition of writers is so exceedingly great in this matter that the rates are not worth working for.

William H. Hills, editor of The Writer, 1888

The Sunday newspaper magazine, supplied with fiction by the syndicates, “has lifted the man of letters out of the slough of despond and given him a chance in the struggle for existence. It has eliminated Grub street [sic], and has enabled genius to market its literary wares at a figure somewhat commensurate with their value. The author of merit no longer burns the midnight oil in a garret; oftener than otherwise he revels in the blaze of electricity and lives in marble halls, because he is able to reach a world of readers through the Sunday magazine. That he can do so is due in large part to the development of the ‘syndicates.’”

John Young, 1915¹

In Britain and the United States during the final few decades of the nineteenth century, fiction-writing evolved from a primarily non-remunerative activity to a profession in which more authors than ever before could make a modest living and enjoy relative job security. One of the most important reasons for this change was the newly-developed ability to reach many more readers with fiction than before. British authors benefited from the advent of numerous British periodicals printing fiction and, at least until the mid-1890s, from the steady market of the circulating libraries. For American fiction authors, the mass-market magazines founded in the late 1880s and early 1890s are usually identified as the main catalysts of this evolution, supposedly having been the first print forms to reach a large, national American audience and thus the first to be able to offer authors greater sums for their work. What is usually overlooked in discussions of this transformation of the literary marketplace, however, is the role that newspaper syndicates played in distributing the works of both British and American authors to this American audience. In reaching such an audience before the mass-market magazines did, syndicates helped encourage American fiction authors and provided British authors greater recompense from American publication. Both readyprint publishers and plate service companies distributed fiction to newspapers across the country, yet in general they had a relatively minor impact on authors. On the other hand, the new galley-proof syndicates of the 1870s and 1880s substantially altered the working conditions for hundreds of authors in the Anglo-American literary marketplace. What advantages did these syndicates offer? Were their overall effects on authors more positive or negative? Most important, did the syndicates—in return for any advantages—allow authors substantial artistic autonomy, or did they act as forerunners of the prohibitive editorial practices used by 1890s magazine editors to regularize literary production?

Because the term “syndicate” encompassed a great many different types of print enterprises and because the syndicates dealt with an extremely wide variety of authors, it is difficult to make broad statements about the relationship of all authors to all syndicates. In general, however, within each category—readyprint publisher, plate service provider, and galley-proof syndicate—each individual company shared the same difficulties and objectives with the other companies in its category, and these in turn dictated common methods of dealing with authors. Thus, despite some individual differences, it is possible to discuss each category of syndicate as a group. The discussion of how authors felt about syndicates and dealt with them, though, must be more nuanced. The syndicate manager's personality, for instance, affected authors' views on syndication. Furthermore, an author's nationality, business savvy, and popularity influenced his or her views of the advantages and disadvantages of syndicate publication and to a large degree determined how much relative power he or she held in negotiating issues of remuneration, subject, treatment, length, editing, and publication. What was true for the literary hack who ground out formulaic pieces to assure him or herself a minimal income, for example, rarely obtained in the case of authors with more serious artistic intentions or those with more than a modicum of fame to trade on. The letters and published impressions of better-known and canonized authors are much more accessible than those of the countless unknown authors who dealt with the syndicates, and this imbalance threatens to give only one view of the syndicates. To correct this imbalance, I have whenever possible represented or deduced from other information the experiences of many lesser-known and relatively forgotten authors. After all, as archaeologists will attest, much of the best knowledge about past cultures comes from examining the artifacts left behind in dumps by “common” people rather than those specially chosen items preserved in the burial vaults of esteemed leaders. The result, I believe, is the most complete picture possible of the working relationship between syndicates and authors.

I

Almost all of the fiction used by readyprint firms was taken without payment from other printed sources or was purchased for a small sum from intermediaries for reprinting; as a result, editors of ready-print firms had little direct contact with authors to negotiate compensation or discuss editorial suggestions. Readyprint editors do appear to have had fairly rigid requirements as to what subjects and treatments in fiction they deemed acceptable for publication; the fiction they printed was uniformly moral, avoided sectarian disputes and partisan politics, and usually ended happily.² Yet because ready-print companies were rarely the primary market for any author, it is highly unlikely that authors composed their fictions with these guidelines in mind; rather, editors chose for reprinting materials that already met their conditions.

Undoubtedly, few authors celebrated when their work was chosen by a readyprint firm for publication, since these companies had little regard for their artistic and property rights. Editors presumably did not want to contact authors whose property they were usually using without permission, and thus they would not have consulted the authors if they edited the texts or adjusted their length with a pair of scissors; most certainly, authors would not have been allowed to correct proofs or have a say in how and when the published text would appear. What hurt authors most was the way readyprint piracy damaged their financial interests. Readyprint firms did not commonly pay authors for reprint rights and they did not usually attach copyright notices to the fictions they printed. Consequently, the texts were unprotected from further widespread pirated reprintings, for which their authors received no compensation. The humorous story writer Bill Nye summed up his complaint against these firms by writing in 1885, “I am convinced that the value of my ‘stuff’ is depreciated by the convenience with which it has been gobbled up by every crossroads paper and ‘patent inside’ in the country.”³ For authors, the only positive effect of being published by a readyprint firm might have been the wide publicity it afforded, which would possibly help sell future works to magazine and book publishers. Surely, though, authors would have preferred direct payment for their artistic labor and protection of their property and creative rights in the texts. Many encomiums about readyprint publishers were written by newspaper editors and readers, but since the benefits these two groups derived from readyprint—cheap copy and comparatively good fiction—came at the expense of authors, it is understandable that no written endorsements by authors have been found.

II

Many plate service providers also distributed reprinted fiction, and thus they dealt with authors in much the same way that readyprint publishers did. The American Press Association (and a few other small concerns), however, operated differently, not only paying for reprint rights but also dealing directly with many authors for first publication rights. Yet because one of the most important selling points of the Association's fiction was its low price—lower even than that of fiction syndicated in galley-proof form—it could only purchase works from beginners or low-level professionals who were desperate to get in print, had few other publishing options, and thus were more willing to accept low wages. Only occasionally did the editors of the Association have to negotiate with famous (and thus more powerful) authors, and in these cases the Association usually bought reprint rights rather than primary rights. These authors, who often submitted advance sheets from their book publishers to the Association, clearly did not regard the Association as their primary market or compose their works with the Association's guidelines in mind. With the more numerous lesser-known authors, however, the Association was able to exert greater control over their work.

For most authors the advantages of syndication by the American Press Association were publicity and income. For those who submitted unsolicited manuscripts from America's hinterlands, syndicated publication represented an opportunity to reach a national audience. The Association understood the dreams of these authors and thus told them in one handbook, “To the author the simultaneous publication of his work in scores of prominent papers in different sections of the country offers the advantage of wide-spread and immediate circulation.” Many authors wrote to the Association that they had published their work previously in a local paper but now, in the words of one hopeful, wished to “seek a wider circle of readers.” Beginning authors hoped that when their work was published nationally through the Association, it would catch the eye of someone in a book or magazine publishing house in the Northeast and lead to a profitable career in fiction writing. More experienced professional authors believed the publicity might help them to achieve further success with the better-paying magazines or boost sales of their books. In 1891 one commentator concluded that authors were justified in such hopes, writing, “It is worth something to an author to have his name in papers all through the country. If he is a writer for a [plate service] syndicate he gets an advertisement in this way which nothing else could procure for him.” In at least one instance the publicity worked; a reader from rural Hoosick Falls, New York, wrote the Association to ask if one syndicated work had been published as a book, because he or she wished to buy a copy.⁴

The plate service companies also offered financial benefits to many authors. A small number of British authors whose works were not in demand by American magazines found they could supplement their incomes with payment from the Association for American serial rights. Most important, though, in a market dominated by British fiction that could be had by newspaper and magazine editors for little or no payment to authors, the Association offered American authors a new and at least reasonably remunerative market for their work. The Association paid much less for fiction than did the large magazines, but it represented a step up from the usual ＄3-＄10 that most unknown authors received from local papers for their short stories. One author's explanation of why he was submitting material to the Association is typical; he wrote, “I have been a regular contributor to the Chicago Daily News for more than a year,” but then added that he wished to secure “a foothold with some syndicate that could pay for work more liberally than any one newspaper could.” Many aspirants were probably also attracted by the reports that unlike with many magazines, at the Association, “Payment is always made upon acceptance, and manuscripts are passed upon with startling rapidity.”⁵

The rates paid by the Association and sought by legions of hopeful contributors were in fact quite modest. In 1887 the Association paid ＄20 per short story of between 1,500 and 2,500 words, and in the early 1890s it appears to have paid ＄10 per thousand words for short stories and about ＄120 total for serials, or roughly what it had been paying in 1887. In the late 1880s these wages had bettered those of most individual urban dailies and equalled those of some of the smaller magazines, but by the mid-1890s, while the Association's rates remained higher than those paid by many individual metropolitan dailies, most magazines paid much more liberally. As the humor writer Opie Read informed the Association in 1893, “lest you think that you are paying to [sic] much, let me say that the Cosmopolitan magazine has just paid me three times as much for a story of about the same length.”⁶

Beginning writers were not the only ones willing to work for these wages. In the overcrowded literary market of the 1880s, low- to middle-rank professional authors also found the Association a welcome additional source of income. William Wallace Cook (John Milton Edwards) referred to the Association as “Another market for the Edward's [sic] product.” In 1895 the Association paid Kate Chopin ＄5 per thousand words for reprint rights to two of her stories (for a total of ＄42), which she termed “fair enough compensation,” and in 1898 it paid her ＄70—the second highest payment she ever received for a short story—for first publication rights to her story “A Family Affair.”⁷

In return for these modest publicity and pecuniary advantages, authors had to write fictions that conformed to guidelines established by the Association. Only two fiction authors have been identified who worked under a long-term contract with the Association that bound them to produce a certain number of works meeting specifications dictated by the Association editors. In the majority of cases there was no prior agreement, yet the Association made it clear to authors which subjects and treatments were most acceptable. In their initial contact with the Association, many authors inquired as to the company's guidelines. Most were subsequently sent the Association's style sheet entitled “Styles of Composition.” No copies of these guidelines have been found, but the sheet's contents can be inferred from how authors promoted their fictions in their cover letters. In 1891, for instance, one author declared, “There is no crime in it and nothing which could offend any person or class, the prime requisites, as I understand it, in a story for general circulation. I have also of course avoided any tincture of questionable morals, religious, sectional or political intimations.” Another noted, “I have complied with the conditions you require, so far as I know them, in the matter of tone and character; i.e. there is no suggestion of a political, religious or sectional nature, no incident of a revolting or unpleasant sort.” Besides avoiding displeasing topics and treatments, authors were also expected to make their work exciting. Probably hoping to mirror the treatment suggested by the style sheet, author Will Lisenbee pitched his serial to the Association editors by assuring them it was “full of strange incidents and dramatic situations,” and he added that he believed “a newspaper serial should be rapid in movement, and the interest never allowed to flag.” If an author failed to adequately follow these guidelines during composition, Association editors appear to have suggested how authors could change their work to make it more acceptable. In response to an editor's remarks regarding his manuscript, for example, one author resubmitted his story and noted, “I suppose I had better kill the villain & send Arizony back to Virginia.”⁸

The Association also had fairly rigid guidelines as to the acceptable lengths of short stories and serials. The maximum length for storiettes was 1,200 words, while the desired length for short stories varied somewhat over the years. In 1887 short stories were supposed to be from one to one and one half columns in length (1,500-2,250 words), but by the early 1890s the minimum was 5,000 words and the maximum 6,000 words. In addition, the Association appears to have preferred fairly short serials, anywhere from 30,000 to 60,000 words long.⁹

Some minimal resistance to the length limitations is evident in author's correspondence with the Association, but most authors seem to have internalized these requirements and either wrote to meet them or passively accepted the editing they knew was necessary to make their works conform. One author spoke in 1896 of his willingness to “saw out chunks [of his story] to the extent of 5,000 words to suit the A. P. A.,” and another freely gave her permission to editors to make her work the desired length, writing that she knew her storiette was longer than the 1,200 word limit but adding, “your editor is at liberty to cut it.” An examination of many short stories syndicated by the Association indicates that these limits were generally adhered to. Authors also believed they understood the desired length of longer serials and their installments. As one author noted, “I am writing it in installments suitable for your use and should like to submit you the story when it is completed. It will contain 30,000 words, perhaps, for I shall condense it as much as possible.” Despite the implication in this letter that the Association required authors to write with specific installment lengths in mind, however, the wide range of actual installment lengths of works the firm distributed, from 1.5 columns (approximately 2,250 words, given the standard length of one newspaper column = 1,500 words) to 5.3 columns (7,950 words), refutes such a hypothesis.¹⁰

In enforcing the guidelines regarding subject, treatment, and length, editors at the Association do not appear to have drawn the ire of authors. Many beginning authors in fact asked for and welcomed advice from Association editors because they believed it would help them improve as writers and increase the marketability of their fiction. Editors I. D. Marshall and A. A. Hill often took the time to give advice to authors whose manuscripts were accepted or rejected. There are numerous letters from authors thanking these men for their attention; typical is one author who wrote, “It is a great thing for me to have this help, and if the future brings me any great success, I shall know where much of the credit belongs.” It is of course difficult to distinguish between genuine gratitude and an obsequious tone adopted to please the editors. Yet in support of the argument that these words were genuine is the significant fact that of all the letters examined, only one contains a complaint from an author about the editing of the Association. Author A. S. Cody explained, “It goes so terribly against my grain to write without the artistic descriptions you so much object to, that I preter to write them in in the first place and then cut them out with a ruthless sweep of the pencil.” In general, though, most authors seem to have enjoyed warm relations with these editors; one wrote to editor Hill, “I appreciate deeply your encouragement,” and he was not alone. Further, the common practice of the Association editors in returning galley proofs to the authors for correction indicates at least a passing recognition of the rights of authors to control their texts.¹¹

After proofs had been corrected and the work set in type and stereotyped, however, the plate service system allowed the author little control over where, when, and how the fiction text would be used. The Association firmly maintained the right to determine which papers received these texts and approximately when they would be printed. In addition, neither authors nor the Association had any control over how the texts would appear in individual newspapers: editors were free to cut the plates to fit the space available and to place it in the paper wherever they chose. Finally, while the Association copyrighted the fiction it distributed, to what degree it protected their property rights by prosecuting any publishers who pirated this material is unknown.

Compared to readyprint publishers and other plate service companies that obtained almost all of their fiction with a pair of scissors, the Association (and other plate service companies purchasing chiefly original fiction) represented greater opportunity to authors, primarily those on the lower rungs of the literary ladder. The Association offered publicity, a subsistence wage, and some editorial assistance. In exchange for these advantages, however, the Association required authors to adhere to fairly strict guidelines during composition; furthermore, the Association exhibited a general disregard for textual integrity. Judging from the hundreds of aspirants who sent unsolicited manuscripts and the many who were disappointed when their work was rejected, however, it appears that to authors who had little power to negotiate better conditions, the advantages of plate service syndication outweighed the disadvantages.

III

The syndicates that most significantly affected British and American fiction authors in the late nineteenth century were Tillotson's Newspaper Fiction Bureau, McClure's Associated Literary Press, and Irving Bacheller's variously-named companies, all of which distributed original fiction in galley-proof form. These syndicates and others like them dealt with a greater number of famous authors than readyprint and plate service companies and in almost all cases bought original manuscripts directly either from authors or their agents. This closer contact put such syndicates in a position where they had more opportunity to influence the construction of fiction texts, and thus more authors, contemporary commentators, and literary scholars were and have been moved to record their opinions of them.

The received opinion on how these syndicates treated authors is quite negative. Some fiction authors at the time complained that they interfered too much in the composition process, telling them what to write about, how to write it, and what length it should be. Jack London believed he had ascertained what at least one syndicate (probably Tillotson's) demanded of its authors. His fictional character Martin Eden, a struggling literary aspirant much as London had been, studied the works published by one syndicate and concluded: “the newspaper storyette should never be tragic, should never end unhappily, and should never contain beauty of language, subtlety of thought, nor real delicacy of sentiment.” Accordingly, to compose a work that would be acceptable, “Martin consulted ‘The Duchess’ for tone, and proceeded to mix according to formula. The formula consisted of three parts: (1) A pair of lovers are jarred apart; (2) by some deed or event they are reunited; (3) marriage bells. The third part was an unvarying quantity, but the first and second parts could be varied an infinite number of times.” He further noted that “In quantity, the formula prescribed twelve hundred words minimum dose, fifteen hundred words maximum dose.” British novelist Ouida (Louise de la Ramée) was equally sure of the pernicious effects of syndicates on authors and their texts. In a letter to the London Times in 1891, she charged that syndicates transformed authors' selves into products standardized to meet syndicate specifications. She described a syndicate as “an ‘immense organization’ which treats authors precisely as the Chicago killing and salting establishments treat the pig: the author, like the pig, is purchased, shot through a tube, and delivered in the shape of a wet sheet (as the pig is in the shape of a ham), north, south, east, and west, wherever there is a demand for him.”¹² When even these homogenized texts failed to meet approval, some authors complained, the syndicates proceeded to butcher their texts in editing or in printing.

Partially as a result of such statements from authors, many contemporary commentators were equally unkind in their portrayal of the syndicates and their managers. One described S. S. McClure as “the newspaper syndicate man, who buys and sells literature as a market commodity.” And, as noted previously, in 1895 Edward Bok, longtime editor of the Ladies' Home Journal, condemned the syndicates for transforming the author “into a veritable machine” who “sinks art into trade” in exchange for high wages.¹³

Literary historians have combined these opinions with statements made by the syndicators themselves and concluded that an author who contributed work to the syndicates was no more than an assembly-line worker in a factory where in the name of efficiency the managers (syndicators) did the planning and dictated to workers (authors) how to manufacture (compose) the homogeneous and standardized product (fiction). N. N. Feltes, for example, refers to Tillotson's and the Bolton Weekly Journal and concludes, “fiction writers entered their pages as hand-loom weavers entered a factory.” S. S. McClure has drawn the most criticism, since he provided numerous statements in his autobiography and elsewhere to sufficiently condemn him as a materialistic boor who treated authors' artistic talents as incidental to literary production. McClure's attitude toward literary artistry and the ancillary role of the author is apparently summed up in his making such remarks as: “To a man of large creative powers the idea is the thing; the decoration of phrase is a very secondary matter”; “Often I was able to suggest to writers a subject profitable to them and to me”; and that “When an author's manuscript becomes sacred, then either the author or the editor is decadent.” McClure also boasted of how much he could control production; he frequently referred to “my” authors who wrote “for” him, and on one occasion he told newspaper editors, “I can secure anything I want from almost any writer.” Given these statements, it is not surprising that his biographer argues McClure had “the notion that good fiction could be ordered by the pound, like mackerel,” and that other scholars have concluded McClure commissioned many fictions for his syndicate. These commissions, curiously enough, are almost invariably portrayed as instruments of authorial oppression. In one case, Stephen Crane made a long-term commitment in 1896 to supply McClure with a series of war stories in return for a secure income, and one commentator has written that while Crane initially “sensed in a generous and naive way that the agreement might be too good,” his “naiveté was one day to wither in the discovery that he was in virtual peonage.”¹⁴

Bacheller, too, is sometimes portrayed negatively. One piece of evidence often used to condemn him is his heavy-handed editing of Crane's The Red Badge of Courage; Bacheller caused the manuscript to be cut by two-thirds to make it a more plot-driven work (to satisfy newspaper readers) and to fit the length requirements spelled out in his contracts with newspaper editors. Yet, because of his later largesse with Crane, Bacheller has largely avoided the sharper criticism aimed at McClure.¹⁵

Finally, in cases where no evidence has been found that syndicates enforced strict guidelines, it has been charged that newspaper publication itself forced authors to use inartistic subjects and treatments. Three different commentators on Henry James's story “Georgina's Reasons,” for example, have asserted that James's perception of what newspaper readers wanted forced him to write one of his weakest and most sensational stories for publication through Charles Dana's syndicate.¹⁶

Many of these charges against the galley-proof syndicates, however, have either been taken out of context (in the case of authors' statements) or have been based on little empirical evidence. McClure's braggadocio of self-representation and authors' complaints, for instance, have been allowed to stand as fact without close examination of whether they reflected the true situation of his syndicate. Closer investigation reveals not only that a great number of authors of all levels saw numerous advantages in galley-proof syndicate publication, but also that the weak marketplace position of these syndicates relative to book and magazine publishers made it very difficult for the syndicates to regularize the production of fiction as they may have wanted to; they simply could not afford to be as restrictive with authors as the commonly cited evidence suggests.

IV

Most literary historians have accepted the verdict handed down in The Cambridge History of American Literature (1917) that “The [mass-market] magazines were indeed a saving influence in the life of the hard-pressed American author.”¹⁷ Authors certainly welcomed these magazines as new and remunerative outlets for their work. Yet the galley-proof syndicates also supported many American authors after the mid-1880s (and British authors beginning in 1873) by providing expanded opportunities for publication and by increasing the overall prices paid for short stories and serials. At a time when the supply of fiction was growing astronomically but many American authors were crowded out of the American magazine and book market by low-cost or free British fiction, these syndicates appeared and began to purchase (at competitive prices) a seemingly endless number of works of American fiction.

The chief reason why American authors had few publishing opportunities in the 1880s was that before the United States entered into an international copyright agreement in 1891, British authors' works were unprotected by American copyright law, and thus American publishers could reprint works from British magazines and books for either very little or no fee. In addition, although the works of American authors were protected in the United States by American copyright law, this tended to hurt their financial position rather than to help it. American book and magazine editors, given the choice between cheap or free British fiction and American fiction for which they would have to pay the author half profits, royalties, or serial right fees, generally chose the British. As just one example of how American authors were effectively shut out of the American market by the cheapness of foreign materials, one can cite Brander Matthews's report that in 1886 only one of the 54 volumes (46 of which were fiction) published in Harper's Franklin Square Library was authored by an American. Moreover, before 1891 American authors living in the United States were unprotected by British copyright law, and thus often did not realize the full profits on their works sold there. In 1888 the situation led American author John Boyle O'Reilly to lament “the wretched conditions in which our professional littérateurs are left through the cheap reprints and translations of European books”; he added that because of the current state of copyright law, “the literary man, the most defenseless and surely one of the most precious possessions of the country, is literally robbed and disregarded.”¹⁸

The practice common in the literary publishing industry until the late 1880s that also depressed the incomes of many American authors developed out of a policy known as “trade courtesy,” first used by American book publishers in the 1820s to minimize the harmful competition among themselves for advance sheets of foreign authors' wares. Under trade courtesy, it was understood that publishers would not try to lure a foreign author away from his or her present publisher with promises of higher fees. Somewhat the same situation obtained with American authors. Donald Sheehan succinctly describes this as “a code of ethics which attempted to place limits on the overtures which a publisher could make to an author already identified with another house”; authors were generally discouraged from shopping for a better wage and switching publishers. While this informal, non-legally-binding understanding was occasionally broken in the scramble for a particularly lucrative author or when an author was very dissatisfied with his or her current publisher, it continued until the 1880s for American authors. One might add that since most of the genteel monthly magazines were affiliated with a book publisher and an author was expected to publish in the magazine connected with his book publisher, authors were under pressure not to submit work to other magazines. Some authors liked trade courtesy because its “rules” informally obligated book publishers to accept works not up to an author's usual standard in order to keep that author in the publisher's fold, and because it relieved the author of the often difficult and time-consuming task of submitting the manuscript to multiple publishers and negotiating the best deal he or she could. Other writers felt inhibited by this loose system. While acknowledging the benefits of trade courtesy for some authors, Susan Coultrap-McQuin concludes that this system “and the aim of noncompetition between publishers over authors actually disadvantaged authors from seeking competitive bids in the marketplace.”¹⁹

With only minimal demand and competition for their short stories and novels, most American fiction authors worked in a very financially insecure environment. Not only did they have problems finding a publisher, but also, since authors could move from one firm to another only with difficulty, there was little reason for publishers to offer authors either advances or contracts for future work. Without such a contract or cash advance, even successful authors usually had to shoulder the burden of living expenses while writing, with the possibility that the publisher might reject a year's worth of work and pay nothing. In addition, authors also frequently had to harass their book and magazine publishers for payment. Book publishers usually paid only twice a year, at mid-summer and year's end; also, except for the various Harper magazines, magazines usually paid on publication, not on acceptance. Magazine editors frequently accepted a work yet did not publish it for many months, not only delaying payment to authors for the serial publication but also precluding book publication and sales, for books could not be published until after the serial had concluded.

Another principal cause of insecurity for the American author of “serious” fiction until the mid-1880s was the severely limited number of magazine outlets. American fiction authors who desired to steer clear of the undignified story papers and dime novel factories knew there were only a handful of American magazines interested in this type of fiction: Harper's Monthly, Century, Scribner's, and Atlantic Monthly. As a result, they were flooded with submissions. One report stated that Harper's Monthly received 12,024 manuscripts, half of them poems, between January 1886 and January 1887, and used a total of only 200 of these items. It was also reported that in 1890 the Ladies' Home Journal received 15,205 manuscripts of all genres and accepted 497; of these, 300 were solicited in advance. As monthlies, these magazines could publish only a very small number of works of fiction each year; at best they could buy one or two serial novels and a dozen or so short stories. In 1874 Henry James wrote to William Dean Howells, then editor of the Atlantic Monthly, “The Atlantic can't publish as many stories as I ought and expect to be writing.” In 1885 the Century simultaneously serialized James's The Bostonians and Howells's The Rise of Silas Lapham, indicating that Americans were beginning to break into the American magazine market, but this does not mean the market had greatly expanded. For these two authors such publication was a prestigious coup; however, as one scholar has noted, it constituted “a cheerless prospect for those American authors who saw the Century closed to their work until the eminent serialists had unwound their plots many months ahead.” By 1895, one self-professed “literary hack” argued—probably correctly—that “not one voluntary contribution in fifty had any chance of acceptance in a first-class magazine.” Furthermore, even for those whose work was accepted, the financial rewards were not all that large; because of their limited circulation these magazines generally paid high in prestige and low in money.²⁰

American authors were not the only ones working in an insecure environment. Readers and editors in the United States previous to the Chace Act of 1891 might have enjoyed reading and publishing works by British authors for a low price, but British authors did not benefit from this. The United States at this time represented a potentially large and lucrative market, but British authors were frustrated by their inability to reap their just rewards from it. The low fees that American publishers were willing to pay for advance sheets of works by the type of authors Tillotson's was marketing before 1891 are indicated in a number of letters from Tillotson and Son to Henry Holt and Co. during this period. Significantly, these letters indicate that the syndicate was forced to adopt a markedly subservient and plaintive tone. In 1885, for example, Tillotson's wrote regarding one series of short stories, “if you had felt £10 to be too large a sum we should have been willing to accept such a sum as you felt justified in offering.” Further, one 1889 letter refers to an “honorarium” for one novel and concludes, “We are hoping that your sales of the book will enable you to forward us a handsome remittance.” John Maxwell, husband and agent of author Mary Elizabeth Braddon, expressed in an 1885 letter to William Frederic Tillotson sentiments quite common among these authors. Disgusted at the low offer of £20 from Harper's Magazine for American serial rights to the Braddon novel Wyllard's Weird, he commented satirically, “I am sick—very sick—of such Princely encouragement of literature!”²¹

With the galley-proof syndicates, on the other hand, the chances of the British and American amateur, the professional hack, and the writer with serious artistic intentions were much greater. They were the sole hope for those whose works were not solicited by magazines or stood little chance of being accepted there, and functioned as vital secondary outlets for authors whose works were often published in magazines. For British authors, who faced a crowded domestic magazine market and had been hurt by the American copyright situation before 1891, Tillotson's, and then later, American syndicates, offered new and lucrative outlets, purchasing British, Colonial, and American serial rights to numerous works by British authors. The insecure working conditions for American authors made syndicates especially attractive to them. As Julian Hawthorne concluded in 1888, “if our native authors are not to find an outlet in syndicates, the prospect for them is dark. The magazines are all overstocked, and no author can live on the royalties of his books.”²²

Not only did syndicates need to buy many more manuscripts than the magazines did, but because they were the first to reach a true mass audience by combining a great number of relatively small local newspaper markets, they could usually—until the 1890s—offer higher rates for serial rights to authors than individual newspapers and magazines did. To authors who previously had published only in local metropolitan newspapers or with plate service providers such as the American Press Association, the pay scale of these syndicates represented a marked step up. In the 1880s and early 1890s many commentators acknowledged the potential gold mine the syndicates represented to authors. Probably remarking on the high prices Charles Dana paid Henry James for stories contributed to Dana's syndicate, one report in 1884 stated that “daily papers combine, but magazines cannot, and it is beyond question that ten wealthy, powerful dailies can outbid one magazine, however wealthy, in buying a supply of original fiction.” In 1889 one observer concluded, “The result of this [syndication] must be that every author will become a rich man,” and publisher Charles Scribner later remembered that in the 1880s, “the authors all expected to become rich on the newspaper syndicates.” A few disgruntled authors did complain that the syndicates robbed them of their local newspaper markets; in 1896 one wrote to the American Press Association that “the Bacheller Syndicate has run me out of two places [newspapers] with cheaper and better work.”²³ Yet the almost universal response to such complaints was that if a piece of fiction was any good at all, it could find a place in the syndicate and the author could get paid more for it in this way.

Establishing a benchmark for the average amount paid to fiction authors for American magazine work is extremely difficult, since this amount varied widely. In 1884 one report stated that authors were still receiving only about ＄10 per thousand words of fiction, the same as thirty years earlier, and this is seconded by a scholar who notes that in the 1880s “only quality magazines offered over one cent a word [＄10 per thousand words] and standard payment was usually three-fourths of a cent a word [＄7.50 per thousand words].” In the 1890s prominent magazines appear to have paid unknown authors only about ＄5 per thousand words of fiction and well-known authors on average about ＄7.50 per thousand words.²⁴ Rates offered British authors—when at all—were probably much less.

In comparison, in the 1880s and early 1890s the syndicates generally appear to have paid much more for fiction. Tillotson's, which usually kept a close watch on what other syndicates and various story papers paid authors, was usually quite liberal with authors' compensation. In 1888 Bret Harte, living in Britain at the time, received £455 (approximately ＄2,275, computed at the approximate equivalence during this period of £1 = ＄5) for the American serial rights and all British rights to a 31,000 word story, “The Argonauts of North Liberty.” Harte was thus being paid the exorbitant sum of about ＄73 per thousand words for this short serial, a rate that remained constant for him throughout the 1890s. Not all authors received such princely sums, of course, but it appears that many authors soon saw that Tillotson's was willing to pay high rates for what it wanted. As for Irving Bacheller, Hamlin Garland credited him with being “careful not to overpay his authors,” but in 1886 Bacheller, referring to all syndicates—though probably mainly to his own—wrote that syndicates usually paid between ＄10 and ＄100 per thousand words for fiction, “depending entirely upon the fame of the author and upon the quantity of matter which he is producing.” In December 1884 McClure announced that he would pay authors ＄20 to ＄40 per thousand words, and in fact, in November 1884 H. H. Boyesen received approximately ＄45 per thousand words for the first story McClure syndicated. In 1888 one knowledgeable commentator reported that McClure's syndicate paid only ＄5 per thousand words to beginning authors, but McClure's office manager John Phillips was probably more accurate when he noted that the syndicate paid average writers between ＄10 and ＄20 per thousand words and established authors between ＄20 and ＄50 per thousand. For example, in 1889 McClure offered Edward Bellamy ＄25 per thousand words for Youth's Department short stories. Except in the case of very famous authors, these rates do not appear to have increased over the years; in 1899 McClure paid authors such as Bret Harte and S. R. Crockett £5 (approximately ＄25) per thousand words for American serial rights. Yet what had seemed generous in the 1880s by this time seemed very low pay. In 1891 McClure could fairly accurately advertise, “I pay the same rates as the regular magazines,” but by the late 1890s the rates paid by his syndicate were much lower than those paid by the major magazines.²⁵ Tillotson's rates, too, failed to remain competitive toward the end of the century.

Authors at the beginning of their careers who were least likely to have their work published in any of the major magazines especially benefited from the opportunity to earn respectable wages from the syndicates. At least one contemporary, though, differed with this assessment, writing in 1887, “Are writers in general benefited by syndicates? I think experienced ones are, but … the less well-known find market with difficulty.” A Tillotson's circular of 1894 also seems to concur: “A story by an unknown writer is of no value; the announcement of a new story by ‘Mr. Jones’ or ‘Mr. Smith’ will attract no one.” Yet in fact lesser-known authors were welcomed by the syndicates, chiefly because there was a higher profit margin on works by these writers than on works by famous ones. More accurate portrayals of the situation were offered by an editor at the Journalist in 1886: “I fancy these syndicates offer a better market for young and aspiring authors than the magazines do,” and by William Dean Howells, who concluded in 1893 that for the lesser-known authors, syndicates “offered perhaps the best market they have had out of book form.” It should be noted, for example, that Stephen Crane submitted The Red Badge of Courage to Bacheller for syndication as a last resort, only after S. S. McClure had turned it down for use in McClure's Magazine. What was written by one contemporary about W. F. Tillotson can be applied to other syndicators as well: “he has not hesitated to take in hand new writers struggling for fame, not a few of whom have reason to be thankful for their association with him.”²⁶

In many cases, the money these beginning authors earned from syndicates afforded valuable financial support and time necessary to continued artistic development. As the not-so-fictional Martin Eden wrote, probably mirroring the experience of Jack London and numerous other struggling authors, “Then there are the newspaper syndicates, and the newspaper short story syndicates, and the syndicates for the Sunday supplements. I can go ahead and hammer out the stuff they want, and earn the equivalent of a good salary by it … I don't care to become as they, but I'll earn a good living, and … Then I'll have my spare time for study and for real work. In between the grind I'll try my hand at masterpieces, and I'll study and prepare myself for the writing of masterpieces.” London himself received much encouragement and a stipend from McClure at a critical time in his life to “attempt the novel he felt he couldn't afford to write.” Other writers who found that regular employment in one form or another with the syndicates could support them financially at the beginning of their careers were Frank Norris and Stephen Crane. Norris's work for the McClure syndicate from 1898 to late 1899 gave him space and time to work on McTeague, and Crane survived the years 1896-1898 in large part because of McClure's and Bacheller's largesse of loans and steady work. Norris wrote to John S. Phillips: “I remember perfectly well that as far as ‘getting on’ is concerned I practically owe you everything … I owe my start to you and whatever measure of success I have achieved so far. You have made it so easy for me that I shall always remember my first experiences in New York as some of the pleasantest years of my life—whereas they might have been the hardest.” In 1895 Bacheller financed the Western travels of Crane that later yielded many of his best stories, and Crane was able to find time to write The Third Violet in late 1895 and early 1896 chiefly because of the income he gained from syndicate work. Further, while Crane would later speak disparagingly of McClure as a “Scotch ass” and write to friends that he felt entrapped by his agreement with McClure, in January 1896 he had a different opinion and wrote to him, “I think the agreement with you [for a series of stories] is a good thing. I am perfectly satisfied with my end of it.”²⁷

Authors already well-known also reaped great financial benefits from the syndicates, which had to outbid the magazines to obtain their work. For example, Henry James, who in the 1870s was accustomed to receiving approximately ＄100-＄150 from Scribner's or Atlantic for one of his short stories, was shocked when syndicator Charles Dana in the summer of 1884 offered to pay him ＄1,100-＄1,200 each for two short stories. James consequently wrote to his friend Thomas Bailey Aldrich in February 1884 that the stories had “been, in a word, secured, à prix d'or in—je vous en donne en mille [I give the price to you in thousands]—the New York Sunday Sun!” For James, the amount paid by Dana increased his earnings from American serial rights in 1884 to ＄4,815, the second highest yearly amount in this category he would ever earn, and it helped make 1884 the third most financially lucrative year of his career.²⁸

Robert Louis Stevenson was another author shocked by the high prices syndicates—in his case S. S. McClure's Associated Literary Press—could pay for his work. One literary historian has written that despite his success, Stevenson's “income from writing [from 1870 to 1887] was not enough to support him,” and another has noted that in 1886 and 1887 Stevenson had made very little money from American publication of his work because pirates had robbed him. McClure's offer in 1887 of ＄500 for rights to syndicate Stevenson's story “The Black Arrow,” which had appeared four years earlier in Britain, thus pleasantly surprised Stevenson and represented much more equitable compensation for his labor. Stevenson, despite his frequent complaints about McClure's haggling over terms, always knew that McClure was invaluable to his economic survival. In 1892 Stevenson chastised his friend Charles Baxter for causing discord with McClure, writing, “he has put a vast deal more money into my hand than ever I had before … I would advise you if possible to avoid actual hostilities with the little man, whom you may still find useful.”²⁹

Other famous authors whose pockets the syndicates lined with gold included Wilkie Collins, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Tillotson's payment of £1,300 to Wilkie Collins for The Evil Genius, according to one biographer, “was almost certainly the largest figure he ever received for serial rights.” In May 1891, after Twain had already accepted an offer of ＄6,000 for the American serial rights to The American Claimant from Bok of the Ladies' Home Journal, McClure entered the bidding and secured British and American serial rights from Twain for ＄12,000. McClure also outbid Scribner's for a Kipling serial, offering either ＄20,000 or ＄25,000 compared to the ＄16,000 that Charles Scribner offered. Irving Bacheller bettered magazine rates, too, in one instance obtaining a series of short stories from Arthur Conan Doyle despite his long-term arrangement to offer his work first to Sir George Newnes of the Strand magazine. In 1894 Bacheller visited Conan Doyle in England and found him unwilling to sell his work for first publication, but when he offered Doyle £30 (＄150) per thousand words instead of the £15 paid by Newnes, Bacheller recalled, “That mortgage [with Newnes] was breaking loose. It [the offer] had begun to act like a lifting cloud.”³⁰

In addition to offering popular authors more for the works that they could publish in magazines if they chose, syndicates constituted a lucrative secondary market for the work that they did not wish to or could not place with their primary magazine publishers. In general, Edward Bok was correct when he charged that “the higher-class authors do not first offer their best wares to the newspaper syndicates: they employ them either as a last resort or as a ‘special channel’ for ‘a certain class of their work.’” Occasionally, it is true, the syndicates were the last resort for these authors. For example, Mary E. Wilkins wrote to Harper and Brothers regarding the British serialization of her novel Pembroke, “If no other disposal of it can be made [to a magazine], I am quite willing it should be published by a syndicate.” In addition, Stephen Crane viewed Tillotson's as a ready source of cash for his lesser works. Living in a large manor house in England at the turn of the century, Crane had enormous expenses and was in dire financial straits. To obtain enough money to pay his creditors Crane wrote a great number of fictions, many of which were below his usual level of quality. To market some of these works he turned to Tillotson's and sold various rights in eight stories for a total of £193 1 sh., or approximately ＄965.³¹

Just as often, however, well-known authors regarded the fictions they submitted to the syndicates highly and chose to publish through them chiefly because they knew their primary publishers could not print everything they wrote. Mary E. Wilkins, for example, in 1891 had pledged all of her adult fiction to Harper and Brothers for both magazine and book publication, but was very happy to have McClure pay a large fee for the right to syndicate her children's stories. As one scholar notes, “for that work she insisted upon and received higher and higher payments,” and by 1894 the Bacheller, Johnson, and Bacheller firm was paying her the high rate of ＄50 per 1,000 words for her secondary fiction (this is the same rate it was paying Sarah Orne Jewett for a similar grade of stories). In addition, when the literary publishing community was clamoring for more Sherlock Holmes stories from the pen of Arthur Conan Doyle, McClure was willing to pay high prices for his other work (which Doyle regarded as artistically superior to the Holmes stories). McClure bought Doyle's The White Company for ＄375, even though few newspaper editors wanted it, paid him £40 (＄200) for American serial rights to “The Doings of Raffles Haw,” and in 1892 even paid Doyle £15 each (＄75) for his short sketches under the title, “In a Physician's Waiting Room.” Robert Louis Stevenson also benefited from the high fees McClure paid him for his comparatively lightweight South Seas Letters. It is doubtful that any magazine could have published nearly as many of these letters as McClure was able to, and while McClure took a financial drubbing from this deal, the money Stevenson earned from it helped him buy a yacht, pursue his dream of sailing to the South Pacific, and construct a house in Samoa. As Stevenson wrote in 1890, of all his current work “the letters [are the] most remunerative.”³²

Tillotson's also bought numerous works that authors liked but which for one reason or another they could not place with magazines. Mary Elizabeth Braddon was a popular British author whose works frequently appeared in both British and American magazines. Yet between 1873 and 1893 she chose to sell rights in 23 short stories and novels to Tillotson's (primarily for newspaper syndication) for a total of £8,925 or approximately ＄44,625, quite a large sum. Bret Harte also was a very prolific writer and found Tillotson's an important outlet for some of his work; he sold the firm worldwide English-language serial rights to 14 short stories and short novels for £1,412, or approximately ＄7,060.³³

Besides offering higher direct payments to authors for their fiction, syndicates might have indirectly helped raise authors' incomes by increasing the overall demand for their work and promoting competition among magazine editors (and other syndicators) for it. The very presence of syndicates in the marketplace, William Dean Howells asserted, “no doubt advanced the prosperity of the short story by increasing the demand for it.”³⁴

Finally, a financial advantage some syndicates appeared to promise—but which in general did not regularly materialize—was payment on acceptance. Many authors during this period were unhappy with the common practice among magazine editors of accepting a manuscript and then holding it for months before publication and payment. Some authors unwilling or unable to wait took their manuscripts to the syndicates for a faster return on their work. In the fall of 1884 McClure offered authors a choice of payment plans: they could either receive “a guaranteed price & 90 per cent of receipts when in excess of [the] price” or “a fixed cash price at once.” Tillotson's contracts with authors usually stipulated partial payment upon delivery of the first one-third or one-half of the manuscript and the remainder upon completion of the work. However, the more common practice of these syndicates was to delay paying authors until the receipts from newspapers had been collected. Bacheller, who one author said paid on acceptance in 1888, offered Arthur Conan Doyle “cash on delivery of the manuscript” in 1894; yet by 1897 he was often behind in payments to authors. McClure wrote that in 1885, “I got along by paying my authors ＄10 or ＄20 on account … my actual working capital was the money I owed authors. I made no secret of this, and the men who wrote for me were usually willing to wait for their money, as they realized that my syndicate was a new source of revenue which might eventually become very profitable to them.” As time went on, however, many authors complained about late payment. As early as August 1885, Sarah Orne Jewett wrote to McClure, “if I do any more work for you I must have my regular price and be paid at once … Oughtn't you to have put a safe and profitable business in good order by this time? … You see, it [McClure's unbusinesslike behavior] troubles your writers and makes them lose a little confidence.” John Maxwell summed up the frustration some authors felt at being kept waiting when he wrote to W. F. Tillotson, “My wife [Mary Elizabeth Braddon] does not like the position involved in having to wait while you gather in your harvest [receipts]. She thinks the position is alike unprofessional and undignified.”³⁵

V

Besides direct financial reward, authors were attracted to syndicate publication for the great quantity of publicity it afforded. As one contemporary put it, the author benefited from syndication because “his name appears simultaneously in one hundred leading newspapers, thus presumably enhancing his reputation, and certainly giving his work a conspicuous opportunity to be read and admired.” Another observer argued that in the United States syndicates could introduce authors “to a larger circle of readers than they could obtain through any magazine, or book.” For authors whose works were syndicated by Tillotson's, the audience was especially large. As one 1885 report in the Saturday Review stated, these authors' “wares are vended in the remotest parts of the antipodean world … no longer confined to the centres of civilisation or the limited areas of railway and postal enterprise.” Moreover, syndication by Tillotson's was known to expand an author's exposure among persons of lower socioeconomic classes. In 1889 one writer argued that in accepting an offer from Tillotson's the author found that he “lost none of his old readers and gained hosts of new ones; for not only was he read in thousands of homes where his name would never otherwise be heard, but he was talked about and thoroughly well advertised.” The authors of all these comments might have had Britain, India, and Australia foremost in their minds, but they could easily have been describing how Tillotson's increased authors' exposure in the United States. McClure, like the others, understood the potential value of such publicity to authors and used it to help him obtain contributions; in September 1885 he enticed authors with the claim that syndication was “a method of publication that gives an author four times the audience afforded by the largest magazines.” Author Octave Thanet (Alice French) apparently agreed, telling McClure in 1892 that she would not raise her asking prices to the level of what she received from magazines, explaining, “We will take the extra money out in ‘boom’ [publicity]. You are the best of boomers.” Finally, an 1895 article about Mary E. Wilkins's story “The Long Arm,” syndicated by Bacheller, concluded: “Her latest effort has been more widely commented on than any previous production” that had appeared in magazine or book form.³⁶

For beginning authors, the publicity generated by syndication was frequently invaluable in launching or boosting their careers. McClure can be credited with having given a number of the period's most popular authors their first national American exposure. An 1893 report accurately concluded that McClure “had the discernment in some cases and the good luck in others to establish connections with rising authors at the happy moment when they were about to step across the threshold of fame. He helped them and they helped him.” Frank Norris, for example, who is described by one literary historian as “one of the young writers whom McClure ‘discovered’ during his meteoric career,” used the syndicate to reach beyond the regional audience that publication in the Wave magazine of San Francisco had given him. McClure was especially successful in discovering young British authors and giving their work its first major publication in the United States; one 1897 report noted that McClure's “powerful syndicate enterprise … introduced to the larger American public the British novelists—such as Stevenson, Kipling, Barrie, Crockett, Ian Maclaren, Stanley Weyman, and Conan Doyle—who today divide the literary world among themselves.”³⁷

McClure was not alone in giving unknown authors needed publicity. Bacheller discovered in his first visit to authors' homes that a few well-established authors such as Oliver Wendell Holmes and John Greenleaf Whittier “had no desire for the publicity I offered,” but most authors welcomed it. Stephen Crane realized the power of the Bacheller syndicate shortly after it distributed The Red Badge of Courage in December 1894: seemingly overnight the previously unknown Crane found himself nationally famous, and he was pleasantly surprised to receive letters from as far away as California in response to this work.³⁸

What most authors hoped to gain from this publicity was help in obtaining a hearing with book and magazine publishers, along with a lever to increase their book royalties and magazine serial prices. An independent report of 1889 noted that “There is an [British] authoress now so full of orders from publishers that she cannot work fast enough. She was first made known to them through [syndicated] newspaper success.” One commentator also argued in 1887 that publication through Tillotson's meant the author's “fame increased and relying upon that fact he could make better terms for each successive book not only with Messrs. Tillotson and Son, but with the book publishers.” Many beginning authors used syndicate publication as an entrée to other publishing firms. Stephen Crane, for one, “regarded [his newspaper success with The Red Badge of Courage] as the best ground for putting himself forward” with the book publisher D. Appleton; instead of appearing as an unpublished, unknown author, Crane could show the firm's editors printed clippings of his abbreviated novel and published reports of his reception at the offices of the Philadelphia Press as a rising star of American literature.³⁹ Book publishers were likely more attracted to authors who had achieved such syndicate success because the syndicates saved them risking their capital on these unknowns before finding out if there was an audience for their work.

In addition, already well-known authors used the publicity generated by syndicate publication as a bargaining chip to increase their rates of compensation elsewhere. Robert Louis Stevenson, for example, credited McClure's “offers—[as] the first thing to make me raise my charges [with other publishers].” Frances Hodgson Burnett also tried to use the syndicate option to her advantage. Her biographer writes that Burnett's husband wrote to Frank Doubleday at Scribner's “that he had Frances' consent to offer it [Giovanni and the Other] to Scribner's Magazine and mentions an offer ‘made for it by a syndicate’ [McClure's], obviously in an attempt to get Scribner's to improve their terms.” Finally, part of Henry James's motivation for selling two stories to Charles Dana in 1884 was to prove to book and magazines publishers that he could write something that would appeal to a mass audience and thus strengthen his argument for higher pay. In February 1884 James wrote to Thomas Bailey Aldrich that the prospect of these two stories being syndicated in June and July made him “expect to be in the enjoyment of a popularity which will require me to ask ＄500 a number for the successive instalments of The Princess Casamassima.”⁴⁰

Some authors also believed that syndicate publicity could help increase sales of their books. Whether or not this belief was borne out by fact is uncertain and probably will remain so, but at least in the 1880s some members of the literary community believed it would. In 1886 one commentator wrote, “The sale of a novel, it is commonly said, is not injured by having been issued as a newspaper serial.” An editor at the St. Paul Pioneer-Press opined in 1885 regarding Henry Harland's syndicated novel Mrs. Peixada, “We doubt not that its publication in our paper will tend to increase its sales in book form, rather than otherwise.” Such also appears to have been the case in Britain, where one writer stated that syndication “advertises his [the author's] new book in a great many districts, and so promotes its sale.” To help sell both the syndicated fiction and the author's other books, syndicates regularly provided editors with short notices listing these books and a few paragraphs of the author's biography; these were often printed in newspapers directly under or next to the author's name. Yet one can also understand how some book publishers might have worried about the prospective sales of a book such as Joel Chandler Harris's Plantation Pageants (1899), first syndicated by McClure; one New Orleans newspaper review of it began, “Mr. Harris' new book was so extensively circulated through the south in the guise of a newspaper serial, that it is a work of supererogation to describe or even to praise it. Everybody knows all about it …” On the other hand, master promoter Mark Twain believed syndicate publication would help boost sales of the cheap paperback version of his The American Claimant; he wrote to Fred Hall that in order to maximize sales, this edition “should issue a little before the last instalment appears in newspapers.”⁴¹

Overall, a statement made about William Morris Colles of the Authors' Syndicate can be applied to almost all authors who contributed work to American and British galley-proof syndicates: “Those who stuck with Colles did so usually for various self-serving reasons, such as to raise their prices, to play one publisher against another, or to extend their markets into areas where they had no previous entrée.”⁴² Clearly, such syndicates offered authors many advantages, and these made it unnecessary to twist their arms in order to force them to contribute work.

Notes

1. Hills, “The Stranger in New York,” Writer (New York) 2 (1888): 5; John P. Young, Journalism in California (San Francisco: Chronicle Publishing Co., 1915) 154.

2. For a good description of the light moralizing tone of much of this fiction, see David Roy Cassady, “The Content of the Rural Weekly Press in Illinois in 1882,” diss., University of Iowa, 1980, 198-204.

3. Edgar Nye, letter to S. S. McClure, 28 August 1885, Edgar Nye Collection (#7949), CWB-Alderman.

4. A Handbook of Useful Information Concerning the Plate Service of the American Press Association (1891) 3; J. B. Naylor, letter to Dear Sirs, 21 July 1899, APA-LC; “A Word About Plate Matter,” Journalist 9 May 1891: 8; L. E. Buckley, letter, 19 May 1896, APA-LC.

5. Emma M. Wise, letter to Gentlemen, 9 August 1895, APA-LC; “Literary Syndicates,” Editor 2.2 (1896): 51.

6. The 1887 price is indicated in “Bye-the-Bye,” Journalist 5 February 1887: 8; the rates paid in the early 1890s are seen in “The Local Paper,” Journalist 21 June 1890: 8, and in Clara Brown, letter, 11 February 1893, APA-LC; Opie Read, letter to I. D. Marshall, 17 February 1893, Opie Read Colection (#9279), CWB-Alderman.

7. Edwards, The Fiction Factory (Ridgewood, NJ: The Editor Co., 1912) 127; quotation and price of ＄5 per thousand words from Kate Chopin, letter to A. A. Hill, 16 January 1895, APA-LC; the length of these works (5,000 words and 3,400 words) is given in Kate Chopin, letter to A. A. Hill, 1 January 1895, APA-LC; for sale of “A Family Affair” see Toth, Kate Chopin 275.

8. An agreement for a series of stories is indicated in Alfred R. Calhoun, letter to I. D. Marshall, 25 March 1892, APA-LC, and another is implied in Opie Read, letters to I. D. Marshall, 21 December 1891 and 17 February 1893, Opie Read Collection (#9279), CWB-Alderman. Charles L. Hildreth, letter, 6 November 1891, APA-LC; “no suggestion” quotation in Mrs. Julia K. Hildreth, letter to Mr. Marshall, 22 February 1892, APA-LC; Will Lisenbee, letter to Mr. Marshall, 12 December 1891, APA-LC; William Perry Brown, letter, 29 January 1892, APA-LC.

9. The storiette limit of 1,200 words is indicated in Alice Ives, letter, 21 May 1895, APA-LC; 1887 lengths are found in “Bye-the-Bye,” Journalist 5 February 1887: 8; the minimum of 5,000 words is in W. Hibbs, letter to Mr. Hunt, 6 February 1893, APA-LC; the maximum of 6,000 words is in Charles L. Hildreth, letter to Mr. Marshall, 22 June 1891, APA-LC.

10. J. Connelly, letter to Mr. Hill, 1 April 1896, APA-LC; Alice Ives, letter to Mr. Hill, 21 May 1895, APA-LC; Will Lisenbee, letter to Mr. Marshall, 12 December 1891, APA-LC.

11. Annie I. Willis, letter, 1 February 1892, APA-LC; A. S. Cody, letter to Mr. Hill, 20 March 1896, APA-LC; Bart Kennedy, letter to Mr. Hill, [December 1894], APA-LC.

12. Jack London, Martin Eden (1908; New York: Macmillan, 1973) 225-226; Ouida, letter, London Times 22 May 1891: 3.

13. Interview with S. S. McClure, typescript notes, 1907, MP-Lilly; Bok, “The Modern Literary King” (1895): 340, 341.

14. Feltes, Modes of Production of Victorian Novels 64; Circular, Scrapbook, September 1890, MP-Lilly; remarks in McClure, My Autobiography 196 and 182, plus McClure, Autobiography notes, MP-Lilly. For McClure's boast, see Circular, 2 December 1891, Copybook, MP-Lilly; Lyon, Success Story 97; for charges that McClure commissioned fiction, see Lyon, Success Story 96 and Lichtenstein, “Authorial Professionalism” 42; J. C. Levenson, introduction, Crane, The Third Violet and Active Service xxxvii.

15. For a disparaging view of the syndicated version of The Red Badge of Courage, see Katz, introduction, The Red Badge of Courage 31-32; for Bacheller's largesse with Crane see J. C. Levenson, introduction, Crane, Tales of Adventure, vol. 5 of Works of Stephen Crane, ed. Bowers (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1970) lxxi.

16. For comments about “Georgina's Reasons,” see Michael Anesko, “Friction with Market” 225n, Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1985) 305, and Robert L. Gale, ed., A Henry James Encyclopedia (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989) 254.

17. Earl L. Bradsher, “Book Publishers and Publishing,” Cambridge History of American Literature, ed. William Peterfield Trent et al. (1917; New York: Macmillan, 1943) 549.

18. Matthews, Cheap Books and Good Books (New York: American Copyright League, 1888): 11; O'Reilly, What American Authors Think About International Copyright (New York: American Copyright League, 1888) 8.

19. Sheehan, This Was Publishing 57; Coultrap-McQuin, Doing Literary Business 39.

20. Harper's figures in William J. Bok, “Literary Leaves” (12 March 1887): 3; Ladies' Home Journal figures in Hills, Writer (New York) 5 (1891): 122; Henry James, letter to William Dean Howells, 9 January 1874 and 10 March 1874, quoted in Anesko 41; Century quotation in Lichtenstein 38; “Confessions of a Literary Hack” (1895): 633.

21. Tillotson and Son, letters to Henry Holt and Co., 14 October 1885 and March 1889, Box 127, File #3, Henry Holt Archives, Princeton University Libraries; Maxwell to Tillotson, 28 February 1885, ZBEN 4/3.

22. Hawthorne, “Syndicate Matter,” Journalist 14 July 1888: 4.

23. “Novels in Daily Newspapers,” Syracuse Daily Standard 30 June 1884: 2; “Newspaper Novels,” Journalist 14 September 1889: 10; Scribner, letter to L. W. Bangs, 13 July 1893, quoted in Sheehan, This Was Publishing 77; Alfred R. Calhoun, letter to Major Smith, 9 November 1896, APA-LC.

24. 1884 report from “Magazine Literature and Illustrations,” Journalist 9 August 1884: 6; 1880s figure from George McMichael, Journey to Obscurity: The Life of Octave Thanet (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1965) 115; 1890s figure from Borus, Writing Realism 43; in 1895 Edward Bok also wrote that magazines paid on average ＄5 per thousand words, but further noted that some authors could make as much as ＄14 per thousand (Bok, “The Modern Literary King” [1895]: 338).

25. For Harte's rates see various account ledgers, BL-Turner; Hamlin Garland, “Irving Bacheller, Interpreter of the Old America to the New,” Red Cross Magazine March 1920: 12; Bacheller, “The Syndicate Matter,” Journalist 17 April 1886: 3; Circular, [December 1884], MP-Lilly; McClure wrote that he paid ＄250 for “A Daring Fiction” (My Autobiography 168), a story approximately 5,500 words long, which equals ＄45.45 per thousand words; W[illiam] H. H[ills] in 1888 reported that with the McClure syndicate “a ‘bright story of two thousand words by a beginner’ should be worth ten dollars [thus approximately ＄5 per thousand]. It might be worth a good deal more” (“Letters to the Editor,” Writer (New York) 2 [1888]: 90); Phillips, “Newspaper Syndicates” (1888): 489; McClure, letter to Bellamy, 11 July 1889 (BMS Am 1181), Houghton Library, Harvard University; for prices McClure paid to Harte, see Robert McClure, letters to Tom McClure, 20 May 1898 and 19 October 1899, MP-Lilly; for Crockett prices, see Robert McClure, letter to Tom McClure, 1 November 1899, MP-Lilly; Advertisement in S. S. McClure, letter to E. D. Cope, 26 August 1891, Copybook, MP-Lilly.

26. Adelaide Cilley Waldron, “Business Relations Between Publishers and Writers,” Writer (New York) 1 (1887): 57; Circular quoted in Turner, “The Syndication of Fiction” 104; “Bye-the-Bye,” Journalist 4 September 1886: 9; William Dean Howells, “The Man of Letters as a Man of Business,” Scribner's 14 (1893): 441; “Death of Mr. W. F. Tillotson, J. P.,” Journalist 9 March 1889: 3.

27. London, Martin Eden 172; Ellen Moers, introduction, Lyon, Success Story: The Life and Times of S. S. McClure (1963; DeLand, Florida: Everett/Edwards, Inc., 1967) ix; Frank Norris, letter to John Phillips, 9 January 1900, letter 50 of Frank Norris: Collected Letters 102; “Scotch ass” quotation from Crane, letter to Paul Revere Reynolds, 14 January [1898], letter 355 of vol. 1, The Correspondence of Stephen Crane 327; Crane, letter to S. S. McClure, 27 January 1896, letter 192 of vol. 1, The Correspondence of Stephen Crane 192.

28. Figure of ＄100-＄150 from Anesko, “Friction with Market” 52; the price of ＄1,200 for “Georgina's Reasons” is reported in Phillips, “Newspaper Syndicates” 448; Ellen Ballou writes that Dana paid James between ＄1,100 and ＄1,200 for “Pandora,” and for “Georgina's Reasons” “probably a like amount” (The Building of the House 376); Henry James, letter to T. B. Aldrich, 13 February [1884], in The Selected Letters of Henry James, ed. with introduction by Leon Edel (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1955) 79; for James's income figures, see Anesko, “Friction with Market” 176-177.

29. For Stevenson's income in the early years, see Hepburn, The Author's Empty Purse 88; for Stevenson's income in 1886 and 1887 see George J. McKay, Some Notes on Robert Louis Stevenson, His Finances, and His Agents and Publishers (New Haven: Yale University Library, 1958) 21; also see Jenni Calder, Robert Louis Stevenson: A Life Study (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980) 233; details of McClure's offer regarding “The Black Arrow” (marketed by McClure under the title, “The Outlaws of Tunstall Forest”) are found in Swearingen, Prose Writings 84; Stevenson, letter to Baxter, 1 December 1892, RLS: Stevenson's Letters to Charles Baxter, ed. DeLancey Ferguson and Marshall Waingrow (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956) 313.

30. Kenneth Robinson, Wilkie Collins. A Biography (London: The Bodley Head, 1951) 311. For details of the competition for The American Claimant see Mark Twain-Howells Letters, ed. Smith and Gibson 644n, and Mark Twain's Letters to His Publishers, ed. Hill 276n, 277n. In his address to the Stevenson Society in 1922, McClure recalled that he offered Kipling ＄20,000, probably for “The Light That Failed” (MP-Lilly), but in 1936 McClure recounted a somewhat different story that included how he topped Scribner's offer of ＄16,000 with his own of ＄25,000 (letter to Catherine Douglass, 7 February 1936, MP-Lilly). Bacheller, Address to the Stevenson Society, B-StL.

31. Bok, “The Modern Literary King” (1895): 341; Mary E. Wilkins, letter to Harper and Brothers, 12 August [18]93, letter 139 of The Infant Sphinx 158; the amounts paid to Crane are listed in a Tillotson's ledger in BL-Turner.

32. For “higher payments” quotation see Kendrick 119; for ＄50 figures, see Mary E. Wilkins, letter to Arthur Stedman, 12 February 1894, letter 145 of The Infant Sphinx 161 and Sarah Orne Jewett, letter to Messrs. Bacheller, Johnson, and Bacheller, 10 October 1894, Sarah Orne Jewett Miscellaneous Papers, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. For the figure of ＄375, see McClure, Autobiography notes 11, MP-Lilly; for the negative reaction of editors to The White Company see McClure, My Autobiography 205; “Physician's Waiting Room” prices in John Phillips, letter to S. S. McClure, 9 November 1892, MP-Lilly; Stevenson, letter to Baxter, 14 October 1890, RLS: Stevenson's Letters to Charles Baxter 273.

33. For information about Braddon and Harte's fees see various Tillotson's ledgers, BL-Turner. Harte actually sold 15 works to Tillotson's, but the amount paid is available for only 14 of these.

34. Howells, “Man of Letters as Man of Business” (1893): 441.

35. S. S. McClure, letter to Charles Egbert Craddock, pseud. (Mary Noailles Murfree), 25 October 1884, the Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University; for Bacheller paying upon acceptance see George J. Clarke, letter, Journalist 12 May 1888: 9; Conan Doyle quotation in Coming Up the Road 271; for Bacheller falling behind in payments see Coming Up the Road 292; McClure, My Autobiography 169; Jewett, letter to S. S. McClure, 24 August [1885], Sarah Orne Jewett Collection (#6218), CWB-Alderman; Maxwell, letter to Tillotson, 5 January 1883, ZBEN 4/3.

36. Mead, “The Practical Side of Literature,” 443; Donald, “Sunday Newspapers in the United States” (Sept.-December 1890): 79; Saturday Review article quoted in Bolton Weekly Journal 27 February 1885: 2; Alex. Paul, letter, Providence Sunday Journal 10 March 1889, typescript copy in ZBEN 14/10; Circular, 10 September 1885, Publicity file, MP-Lilly; Alice French, letter to McClure, 20 February 1893, Alice French Collection (#7194), CWB-Alderman; “Literature in Newspapers,” Newspaper Maker 29 August 1895: 7.

37. “Mr. M'Clure [sic] and His Magazine,” American Review of Reviews 8 (1893): 99; Franklin Walker, “Four Additional Frank Norris Letters” (Winter 1974): 4; “Live Topics of Today,” Chicago Tribune 28 January 1897: 6.

38. Bacheller, From Stores of Memory 59; for Bacheller's account of Crane's sudden propulsion to fame and his reception at the Philadelphia Press, see Bacheller, letter to Cora Crane, 13 July 1900, Appendix 4, R. W. Stallman and Lillian Gilkes, eds., Stephen Crane: Letters, (New York: New York University Press, 1960) 298-299; Crane's surprise is indicated in Crane, letter to an unknown recipient, [December 15, 1894], Stephen Crane: Letters 43.

39. “The Fiction Bureau,” Writer (London) 1.6 (1889): 137; Alex. Paul, letter, Providence Sunday Journal 10 March 1889, typescript copy in ZBEN 14/10; for an account of Crane using his clippings in this way see Katz, introduction, The Red Badge of Courage 38.

40. Robert Louis Stevenson, letter to Charles Baxter, 1 December 1892, RLS: Stevenson's Letters to Charles Baxter 313; the Burnett drama is recounted in Ann Thwaite, Waiting for the Party: The Life of Frances Hodgson Burnett 1849-1924 (London: Secker and Warburg, 1974) 144 (in the end, McClure succeeded in obtaining “Giovanni and the Other” for syndication); James, letter to T. B. Aldrich, 13 February [1884], Selected Letters of Henry James 79 (James did not receive the amount he asked for: see Ellery Sedgwick, “Henry James and the Atlantic Monthly: Editorial Perspectives on James' ‘Friction With the Market,’” Studies in Bibliography 45 [1992]: 318).

41. Bok, “Literary Leaves,” Indianapolis News 9 October 1886: 3; S. C. Williams, letter to S. S. McClure, 23 November 1885, MP-Lilly; “The Fiction Bureau” (1889): 137; “Recent Publications,” review of Plantation Pageants by Joel Chandler Harris, New Orleans Daily Picayune 15 October 1899: sec. 2: 7; Twain, letter to Fred J. Hall, 20 October 1891, Mark Twain's Letters to His Publishers, ed. Hill 286.

42. Colby, “‘What Fools!’” 66.

Bibliography

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Newspapers Consulted

Albany [NY] Argus

Atlanta Constitution

Auburn [NY] Daily Advertiser

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Boston Globe

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Chicago Daily News

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Detroit Free Press

Hammondsport [NY] Herald

Indianapolis News

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San Francisco Chronicle

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———. “The Syndicate Matter.” Journalist 17 April 1886: 3.

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Bok, William J. “Literary Leaves.” Indianapolis News 9 October 1886: 3.

———. “Literary Leaves.” Indianapolis News 12 March 1887: 3.

“Bye-the-Bye.” Journalist 12 June 1886: 9; 10 July 1886: 8; 4 September 1886: 8-9; 2 October 1886: 9; 29 January 1887: 9; 5 February 1887: 8; 23 April 1887: 9; 29 October 1887: 8; 18 January 1890: 9; 19 April 1890: 9; 26 April 1890: 9; 18 October 1890: 8; 1 November 1890:9; 4 April 1891: 8; 24 October 1891: 8; 3 September 1892: 8-9.

Clarke, George J. Letter. Journalist 12 May 1888: 9.

“Death of Mr. W. F. Tillotson. J. P.” Journalist 9 March 1884: 3-4.

Donald, Robert. “Sunday Newspapers in the United States.” The Universal Review 8 (September-December 1890): 78-89.

“The Fiction Bureau.” Writer (London) 1.6 (April 1889): 136-7.

A Hand Book of Useful Information Concerning the Plate Service of the American Press Association as Furnished to Over Six Thousand Newspapers in the United States. New York: [American Press Association], 1891.

Hawthorne, Julian. “Syndicate Matter.” Journalist 14 July 1888: 4-5.

H[ills], W[illiam] H. Editorial. Writer (New York) 5 (1891): 122-124.

“The Man of Letters as a Man of Business.” Scribner's Magazine 14 (1893): 429-45.

“Literary Syndicates.” The Editor 2.2 (February 1896): 49-51.

“Literature in Newspapers.” Newspaper Maker 29 August 1895: 7.

“Live Topics of Today.” Chicago Tribune 28 January 1897: 6.

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London, Jack. Martin Eden. 1908. New York: Macmillan, 1973.

“Magazine Literature and Illustrations.” Journalist 9 August 1884: 9.

Matthews, Brander. Cheap Books and Good Books. New York: American Copyright League, 1888.

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“Mr. M'Clure [sic] and His Magazine.” American Review of Reviews 8 (1893): 98-99.

O'Reilly, John Boyle, What American Authors Think About International Copyright. New York: American Copyright League, 1888.

Paul, Alex. Letter. Providence Sunday Journal 10 March 1889: n. p.

Philips, John S. “Newspaper Syndicates.” Book News 6 (1888): 487-489.

Waldron, Adelaide Cilley. “Business Relations Between Publishers and Writers.” Writer (New York) 1 (1887): 56-57.

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———. From Stores of Memory. New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1938.

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Borus, Daniel H. Writing Realism: Howells, James, and Norris in the Mass Market. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

Bowers, Fredson, ed. The University of Virginia Edition of The Works of Stephen Crane. 10 vols. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1969-1976.

Bradsher, Earl L. “Book Publishers and Publishing.” The Cambridge History of American Literature. Ed. William Peterfield Trent et al. 1917. New York: Macmillan, 1961. 533-553.

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[Stevenson, Robert Louis]. RLS: Stevenson's Letters to Charles Baxter. Ed. DeLancey Ferguson and Marshall Waingrow. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956.

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Abbreviations

APA-LC: American Press Association Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

BL-Turner: Tillotson's Newspaper Fiction Bureau materials in the possession of Michael Turner, Bodleian Library, Oxford, England; these are available by application to Mr. Turner.

B-StL: Irving Bacheller Papers, Special Collections, Owen D. Young Library, St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY.

CWB-Alderman: The Clifton Waller Barrett Collection, Manuscripts Division, Special Collections Department, Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.

ECSP-Columbia: Edmund Clarence Stedman Papers, Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, NY.

KAHB: Kellogg's Auxiliary Handbook: Containing a History of the Origin of Auxiliary Printing; With Opinions of Publishers; and Day-Book and Journal Combined: Being a Model System of Keeping Advertising Accounts; Together with Various Useful Articles, Tables, and Calendars. Chicago: A. N. Kellogg, 1878.

MP-Lilly: S. S. McClure Papers, The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

VLP-Newberry: Victor Lawson Papers, the Newberry Library, Chicago, IL.

ZBEN: The Bolton Evening News Archive, Archives and Local Studies, Bolton Metro Library, Bolton, England.