Incidentally, I am one of those fortunate authors who possess
the perfect publishers. I have been publishing with them for nineteen years, and I shall go on publishing with them until I, or they, die. Other authors have not estab- lished with their publishers those relations of almost con- jugal fidelity which I have established with mine. And the question what sells a book is therefore a recurrent question. All publishers, as I have said, agree that advertise- ment has nothing to do with it. Most publishers also con- tend that reviews are of slight effect. I simply do not believe this. Everybody I know is influenced more or less by reviews, and the library lists of many thousand households must be based upon the comments of their accustomed reviewer. " No," says the publisher, " this is a pathetic fallacy upon your part. You review- books, and therefore you like to imagine that reviewing sells books. There is only one thing which sells books . . ." and then comes the story about Mr. William Heinemann. It is not a particu- larly interesting story, but the conversation of no publisher is complete unless it be inserted once, or twice, or thrice. The story is as follows. They were discussing, in the presence of Mr. William Heinemann, the extremely interesting problem of selling books. Advertisement? Certainly not. Reviews? Very rarely. Then what? " If," said Mr. William Heine- mann, " I could have my way, I should pay two people to lunch out regularly and to talk about my books."
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