American Publishing Company
24 June 1876 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: CtHC, UCCL 01346)
of Directors:1explanatory note
I have just written Mr. Bliss to say I think a reduction of our business is desirable. I desire I would greatly like to have your judgment in the matter. Mr. Bliss once told me that when he placed the Innocents Abroad on the market, the company was in debt to a considerable amount.
What had your circumstances been? These: You had a cheap little house in Asylum street, & a storage-cellar over the way. Your salary bill was very modest. You had been rud running the “Mississippi” & an excellent & popular book; also “Field, Dungeon,” ditto ditto.2explanatory note With all these advantages you were in debt.
What are your circumstances now?
These: You occupy a great & I suppose expensive establishment; you own a printing office, presses, and (I sup and (I think Mr. Bliss said) the Columbian Book Company.3explanatory note What are you publishing, to support this great burden? NotⒶemendation a single book that is as salable as were the two which seem to have run you in debt in the days when your expenses must have been a mere bagatelle compared to what they are now.
Mr. Bliss told me that the Innocents Abroad took the company out of debt & paid several dividends beside.
ThenⒶemendation there was not another dividend (although you were in cheap quarters most of the time) until, two or three years later, Roughing It came out. That book paid 3 or 4 dividends.
No more dividends for a couple of years or more—then the Gilded Age (which would have paid 2 & possibly 3 dividends in the old modest quarters) paid one dividend.once4explanatory note
Even my own notorious modesty does not withhold me from saying that if one will add up the above facts, the conclusion he will arrive at will be that my books were almost the only ones that should have been published by the Company. I say “almost.” In the intervals other books could have been used to pay expenses in our former modest quarters. WeⒶemendation are now publishing several books which I think would make considerable money if our expenses were more moderate, forⒶemendation they are good books & are doubtless very popular.5explanatory note
I think Mr. Bliss has done his very utmost. I think the business was extended with large profits in view. ButⒶemendation I think that this extension has proved itself to be a mistake. We get out new books so often that I think canvassers are now prone to merely skim the cream of a district & then call for the next new book.
6explanatory noteWhat it is the remedy? I should say, put up the printing presses, the types, half the copyrights & plates, the Columbian Book Co., & all needless material of whatever sort, at auction, & retire to the quarters & the expenses of “Mississippi” days. Publish one new book a year & put the whole canvassing force on it. The regular annual sale of my four books will go far toward paying al all expenses. 7explanatory note , if not all. You know
I have a selfish interest at stake. Tom Sawyer is a new line of writing for me, & I would like to have every possible advantage in favor of that venture. When it issues, I would like it to have a clear field, & the whole energies of the company put upon it; & not only this, but I would like the canvassers to distinctly understand that no new book would issue till Tom Sawyer had run 6, or even 9 months. In that case I think we should all be better off.
My notions may be all wrong, but still I desire to submit them, in the hope & belief that the Board will give them a fair hearing & a wise verdict. I wish I could go to Hartford & present my views in person & have objections to them explained to me, but as I am about to go steadily to work to complete my next book, I cannot do that.8explanatory note Awaiting your decision,
Ys Truly
P. S. I think I may be wrong about wanting to sell any of our copyrights, for doubtless these books can go on publishing in the proposed modest quarters, & become a source of revenue; but I am satisfied that we ought to add no new books for months to come; & am entirely satisfied that we ought to sell the other things mentioned.9explanatory note
letter docketed: S. L. Clemens | June 24 1876
In addition to Clemens and Elisha and Frank Bliss, the directors of the American Publishing Company at this time were: Newton Case, president of Case, Lockwood and L. Brainard Company, printers and blank-book manufacturers (with James Lockwood and L. Brainard); Sidney L. Clark, secretary of the Weed Sewing Machine Company; Sidney Drake, of Drake and Parsons, bookbinders (with James G. Parsons); and James S. Tryon, of Baker and Tryon, insurance agents (with William E. Baker) (Geer 1876, 29, 50, 63, 150, 163, 295–96).
The Secret Service, the Field, the Dungeon, and the Escape (1865) and Beyond the Mississippi (1867), both by Albert Deane Richardson.
In the spring of 1872 the American Publishing Company had moved from 149 Asylum Street to larger quarters at 116 Asylum Street, which two years later became 284 Asylum Street, when the street was renumbered. The Columbian Book Company, one of its subsidiaries, shared the address ( L6 : 9 Oct 1874 to Watterson, 253 n. 6; 8 Apr 1875 to Webb, 444 n. 5).
Continuing sales of Roughing It (1872) and The Innocents Abroad (1869) contributed to three dividends paid in 1873 (24 Mar 1874 to Aldrich, L6 , 92 n. 8), but the “several dividends” Clemens attributed exclusively to Innocents have not been confirmed. Since publication of The Gilded Age in late 1873, the American Publishing Company had paid at least two dividends, in January and April 1874.
One of these books was Charles Dudley Warner’s Mummies and Moslems, which the firm issued in early June; another was William Wright’s The Big Bonanza, issued in late July (APC 1866-79, 131-32, 134-35; “Alphabetical List of Books Just Published,” Publishers’ Weekly, 10 June 1876, 759).
Clemens’s fourth book was Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old (SLC 1875).
The “next book” may have been his unidentified “double-barreled novel” (9 Aug 1876 to Howellsclick to open link, n. 5).
Almost three years after writing this letter Clemens was still awaiting a formal response from the board. On 10 May 1879click to open link he complained to Frank Bliss (NjP):
I received a rather impertinent letter from Mr. Drake a week ago, mentioning reports & inquiring somewhat particularly into my affairs,—on behalf of the Company, I suppose,—but I suppose he can wait for an answer as long as I have waited for one to the letter I wrote the Company on the same subject 3 years ago.
MS, CtHC.
MicroPUL, reel 1.