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Updated: May 12, 2025
Finished that new book of yours yet?" "Very nearly!" "I suppose Jannissary is going to do it, too?" "Yes. I've contracted for three novels with him!" "I wonder how that man would live if it weren't for the vanity of young authors!" "I don't know," said John. "I'm too busy wondering how young authors manage to live!"
A great thrill of pleasure went through him as he signed the long document, full of involved clauses. He was now entitled to call himself an author. In a little while, a book of his would be purchaseable in bookshops.... "We'll print immediately," said Mr. Jannissary, handing a copy of the agreement, signed by himself, to John and putting the other copy carefully away.
Jannissary, when you publish so many books that don't bring you any return?" Mr. Jannissary glanced very interrogatively at John. Then he waved his hands, and murmured vaguely. "Sacrifices," he said. "We all have to make sacrifices!..." John left the publisher and went on to the office of the Evening Herald where he saw Hinde.
The appalling conditions of the publishing trade were accentuated by the extraordinary reluctance of the booksellers to take risks or to show any enthusiasm for new things. Between Mr. Jannissary and John, he might say that booksellers were a very unsatisfactory lot. Most of them were quite uncultured men. Hardly any of them read books. Mr.
So uncompromising an idealist might have been expected to possess a more pleasing appearance and a less shifty look in his eyes ... but soothed vanity and youthful eagerness to appear in print and a feeling that very often appearances were against idealists, caused him to sign the agreement which Mr. Jannissary had already prepared for him.
"How's the book getting on?" Hinde demanded when they had greeted each other. John told him of what Jannissary had said. "I tell you what I'll do." said Hinde. "I'll work up a boom for it in the Evening Herald. "But you don't like the book," John expostulated. "You told me it wasn't much good!" "Och, I know that," Hinde replied, "but that doesn't matter. I'd like to do you a good turn.
Hinde had disturbed John's complacency very considerably when he saw the agreement which John had signed. Eleanor had begun the process by failing to understand why the first five hundred copies of the novel should be published free of royalty. If Mr. Jannissary was to make money out of these five hundred copies why was John not to make any?
Jannissary longed for the day when booksellers would look upon their shops as places of adventure and romance!... A curious sensation of distaste for these words passed through John when he heard them spoken by Mr. Jannissary. The booksellers, said the publishers, should be ambitious to earn the title of the new Elizabethans ... hungering and thirsting after dangerous experiences.
Eleanor's doubts, however, had revived when Hinde, who dined with them on the evening of the day on which the agreement had been signed, declared with extraordinary emphasis that Mr. Jannissary was a common robber and would, if he had his way, be enduring torture in gaol. "He's a notorious little scoundrel who has been living for years on robbing young authors by flattering their vanity.
John visited Mr. Jannissary on the morning after he had received that enlightened gentleman's letter, and was overwhelmed by the praise paid to his book. Mr. Jannissary said that he was not merely willing, but actually eager to publish it.
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